The College Football Playoff will look a little different for the 2025 season.
The CFP management committee, consisting of the 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, unanimously approved a change to a straight seeding of teams in the playoff for the upcoming season on a Thursday afternoon call.
“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 CFP, 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.”
Last year, the four highest ranked conference champions were given byes into the quarterfinal round regardless of where they were actually placed by the CFP selection committee in their year-end top 25. This led to some controversy as the Boise State Broncos, which were the committee’s ninth-ranked team in their final rankings, were given the No. 3 seed and a Fiesta Bowl berth. The No. 12 Arizona State Sun Devils, as Big 12 champions, also received a bye into the Peach Bowl where they played the third-ranked Texas Longhorns.
A source indicated that revenue distribution for the four highest-ranked conference champions—worth roughly $8 million—would stay the same as a financial reward for those teams and leagues even if they wound up ranked outside the top four squads that earned a pass into the quarterfinals.
The move to straight seeding would have significantly changed the pairings of last year’s 12-team playoff. As an example, the No. 6 Ohio State Buckeyes were given a home game against the No. 7 Tennessee Volunteers. In the new format, the Vols would have hosted the No. 10 SMU Mustangs at Neyland Stadium and potentially advanced to play the SEC champion Georgia Bulldogs (the second seed) in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal. The Buckeyes, meanwhile, would have faced ASU at home in the first round and moved on to the Peach Bowl to face Texas.
Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the tweak would have been the then-undefeated Oregon Ducks. Instead of playing eventual national champion Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, they would have taken on the winner of the 8 vs. 9 game between Boise State and the Indiana Hoosiers. The Ducks then would have been able to advance to the semifinals with a much more favorable path forward.
Set in the background of the decision was that no consensus was reached with regard to the so-called “Year 13” of the CFP beginning with the 2026 season. That campaign will be the first under a new contract that includes even more significant changes to how money is distributed and ultimate control over the direction of the postseason tournament that will be firmly in the hands of the Big Ten and SEC.
The commissioners of those leagues, along with the heads of the other Power 4 leagues—the Big 12 and ACC—have met twice in recent weeks to discuss the shape of the playoff longer term but so far consensus has been fleeting. There has been increased talk of moving to a 16-team bracket—resulting in three straight format changes in three seasons—with heavy debate over the addition of more automatic qualifiers beyond the current five top-ranked conference champions.
The Big Ten and commissioner Tony Petitti have pushed hard for as many as four guaranteed spots in the playoff for their league and the SEC, with the ACC and Big 12 each getting two spots to go with a Group of 5 champion and the rest of the openings for at-large teams (including the Irish if ranked in the top 16).
Yet there has been growing pushback over the concept, not just from the other two power conferences but from much of the rest of the sport. There had been some thought that any changes to the 2025 edition of the playoff—which requires unanimous approval from all 11 parties—would be used as leverage against future format tweaks for ’26 and beyond.
Thursday’s news appears to throw that out the door, however, as the decision on the upcoming season needed to be made well in advance of the season so CFP officials can plan for the changes and their impact on operations in December and beyond.
The good news is the move to straight seeding should produce more compelling matchups in the early rounds and justly reward teams who earn top seeds with byes and better paths to the semifinals and championship game.
It could also allow for a more easily digestible format for fans as college football’s often messy postseason structure is refined yet again.
