BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The College Football Playoff has announced a new playoff seeding format for 2025, but it’s a year too late for Indiana as the Hoosiers would have had a very different kind of playoff experience in 2024 under the revised format.
In 2025, the process will be simple – the teams will be seeded as they’re ranked in the CFP rankings. The top five conference champions will still have automatic bids as they did in the 2024 format, but the top four conference champions won’t get preferential seeding.
“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP Management Committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment,” said Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff in a press release. “This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season.”
The 2024 format was criticized as unfair to teams that earned a higher ranking and confusing, with teams several spots down in the rankings getting byes that jumbled the bracket.
“We all have a responsibility to serve our constituents while also being mindful as to what’s best for college football,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips told ESPN. “Today’s decision was done in the best interest of the sport. It may not always benefit the ACC, but it was the right decision and that’s a responsibility I take very seriously.”
In the 2024 College Football Playoff, the top four seeds went to the highest-placed conference champions. Oregon (Big Ten) and Georgia (SEC) were 1-2, but the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds went to Boise State (Mountain West) and Arizona State (Big 12) who were No. 9 and No. 12 in the rankings, respectively.
That scrambled the at-large teams out of recognition from the CFP ranking, including Indiana.
No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Penn State had to play in the first round of the CFP. In the 2025 format, both would have received a bye.
Most notable for Indiana is that had the 2025 format been used in 2024, the Hoosiers would have hosted a first round game.
Using the 2025 rules for the 2024 rankings, the pairings would have been:
The Boise State-Indiana winner would have gone on to play No. 1 Oregon in a quarterfinal game, presumably at the Rose Bowl where Oregon lost its quarterfinal contest against Ohio State.
Certainly, this would have been a far more favorable scenario than the one the Hoosiers got instead – a road playoff game at Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish won 27-17 and went on to finish runner-up in the CFP.
As it turned out, it was No. 5 Ohio State that won the first 12-team College Football Playoff. Their championship was not side-tracked by having to play a first-round game.
This could be a one-year situation. Speculation that the field could be expanded to 16 teams, with possible guaranteed spots for certain conferences, continues to circulate in the college athletics world.
The 2025-26 playoff will finish at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on Jan. 19, 2026.
