Penn State celebrates after winning the Fiesta Bowl over Boise State on Dec. 31, 2024. Photo by Paul Burdick | For StateCollege.com
The seeding format of the College Football Playoff has been modified. The playoff’s management committee has unanimously adopted a move to straight seeding, effective this year, it announced on Thursday. It will replace the format that reserved the bracket’s top four seeds for conference champions.
This was a necessary alteration.
The old format lessened the incentive for winning conference championships and created an uneven bracket. Penn State, for example, may have lucked out by not claiming a first-round bye, as Oregon did after beating the Nittany Lions in the Big Ten title game last season. The Ducks ultimately fell to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl as Penn State rode a favorable draw to the semifinals.
Teams should be rewarded for winning their conference title games, not penalized. And that’s likely at the core of this change to playoff seeding. It hardly made sense for Oregon to play the eventual national champion Buckeyes in the second round as the Nittany Lions played a home game against SMU and a quarterfinal matchup with group-of-five champion Boise State.
“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,” Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff, said in a statement. “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.”
This change will also bring forth a meaningful development for Penn State’s Fiesta Bowl foe, Notre Dame. As an independent program, the Fighting Irish were barred from claiming a first-round bye under last season’s seeding structure. But now that the first four seeds are no longer exclusive to conference champions, Notre Dame will be eligible.
There remain some structural concerns regarding the playoff, and it’s likely things change again ahead of the 2026 season. Perhaps, a 16-team playoff is on its way. But for as long as the playoff features 12 teams, the straight seeding format is a step in the right direction.
Last season, all four auto-bidded conference champions — Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State — fell in their first playoff games. Notre Dame and Ohio State, seeded at No. 7 and No. 8, respectively, ultimately competed in the national championship without facing much of a contest in each of the first two rounds.
This seeding alteration should boost the overall level of competition throughout the playoff and reward higher-ranked teams. That should be promising for the Nittany Lions, a team with national title aspirations who are currently projected to begin the season ranked as a top-four team in the country.
That said, winning is a difficult thing in the Big Ten, and Penn State will have to nearly emulate, if not exceed, its success from a season ago. With key returnees, such as quarterback Drew Allar, running backs Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen and defensive linemen Dani Dennis-Sutton and Zane Durant, the Nittany Lions should have the firepower to do just that.
Penn State will begin its season against Nevada on Aug. 30, the start of a campaign that includes matchups with all three fellow Big Ten playoff teams from this past season: Ohio State, Oregon and Indiana. In order to claim a first-round bye, the Nittany Lions can likely only afford a single regular season loss.
A conference title win could also help their chances, and the new seeding format certainly amplifies the incentive to do so.
