College Football Playoff format changes: What's potentially on the table and how/when things could happen

Three years ago, when a small group of college executives chose college football’s 12-team expanded playoff format, they left plenty of other proposals on the cutting-room floor.

Those include an eight-team format awarding the five highest-ranked conference champions with automatic berths and the next three ranked teams at-large spots, with no first-round byes. There was the simple format of selecting the highest-ranked eight or highest-ranked 12 teams with zero automatic bids.

And, finally, officials deeply explored remaining at four teams with an added wrinkle: the selection process would happen after all teams competed in bowl games.

“Twelve teams or 24 teams or 36, there are always five schools outside looking in who are unhappy. We can’t solve that,” said Bob Bowlsby, the former Big 12 commissioner who was on the four-man expansion committee that created the format. “We put a premium on winning a conference championship as a difficult accomplishment and one that deserved to be heavily weighted. In the end, we gravitated to 12 and spent a lot of time on what are the downsides.”

One round into the inaugural year of the 12-team playoff, the college football world is examining those downsides with format and selection suggestions of their own. Recommendations, from pundits on television to casual fans on social media, range from a 24-team bracket to a return to the two-team BCS structure.

But as the sport lurches toward a group of highly billed quarterfinals next week, only a few possible playoff changes really exist.

What are they?

In this analysis, we try to answer that and provide insight into the governance structure of the College Football Playoff, the entity overseeing the sport’s postseason (a reminder: the NCAA has no role in the postseason of major college football).

Governance

The CFP is an entity created through an agreement among the 10 conferences of the Football Bowl Subdivision and Notre Dame.

Much like a conference exists out of an agreement among member schools, the CFP exists for its member conferences and binds them together through a television contract (currently with ESPN). The CFP’s executive director, newly hired former Air Force general Richard Clark, serves at the whim of the CFP’s two, 11-member governing bodies: (1) the Board of Managers, which is composed of one university president from each of the 10 FBS leagues and Notre Dame; and (2) the Management Committee, composed of the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director.

In the spring, CFP commissioners struck a new six-year agreement that extends the CFP as an entity through the 2031 playoff. The new agreement begins in 2026. Changes to the format in the last year of the original agreement — next season’s playoff — requires unanimity among the 11 members of the board.

Changes to the format starting in 2026, however, are a bit different. As part of the new six-year extension, the conferences agreed to cede decision-making powers on format to the SEC and Big Ten (at least that’s what those two leagues claim), but with certain agreed-upon guarantees of any future format: (1) the automatic inclusion of the five highest-ranked conference champions; (2) a protection for independent Notre Dame if the school finishes high enough in the committee’s rankings; (3) a field of 12 or 14 teams.

The Group of Eight

If you haven’t noticed, the SEC and Big Ten, from a resource and success standpoint, are distancing themselves from the other conferences in college athletics.

The two conferences have asserted their will on everyone else with threats that they will exit both the CFP and NCAA framework to start a separate entity. This is not new and was something explored in a Yahoo Sports story in the spring, when the two leagues wrestled away both a larger share of playoff revenue in a new distribution structure and control over future playoff format decisions.

This is why the success in the playoff of football programs outside of those two conferences is so important. Can the ACC, Big 12 and, perhaps even, the Group of Five make a dent in the perception (and maybe reality) that the SEC and Big Ten (Notre Dame too) are in another stratosphere? Can they do enough to strengthen their arguments related to opportunities in future playoffs?

So far, not so good: The other guys are 0-2. The ACC is out of the field after Round 1. Its champion, Clemson, lost by two touchdowns against the SEC’s runner-up, and its runner-up, SMU, got crushed by the Big Ten’s runner-up. Granted, both were on the road.

The next two games pitting The Other Eight against the Power Two unfurl on neutral fields. The Group of Five’s best team, Boise State, plays Big Ten runner-up Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl, and Big 12 champion Arizona State meets SEC runner-up Texas in the Peach Bowl.

Left carrying the banner for college football’s other guys, the performances of Boise and ASU may impact arguments on future format changes.

Seeding

Speaking of Boise and Arizona State, the two programs were the beneficiaries of a format seeding structure that may be the first item on the chopping block.

Despite being ranked No. 9 and No. 12 by the CFP selection committee, the Broncos and Sun Devils were seeded No. 3 and No. 4 as required by a format rule designating the four highest-ranked conference champions as seeds Nos. 1-4 and recipients of a first-round bye.

In this year’s playoff, the rule has resulted in unequal seeding and bracketing. For instance, Ohio State, ranked sixth by the committee, was seeded No. 8 and now meets No. 1 seed Oregon in a quarterfinal game. ASU and Boise State, better seeds than Texas and Penn State, are giant underdogs. Texas and Penn State were ranked No. 3 and No. 4 but seeded fifth and sixth.

The conference championship seeding rule — and the 12-team format in general — was intended for a world that featured five somewhat equitable power conferences and not the current landscape of four inequitable power leagues, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged in an interview with Yahoo Sports two weeks ago. The most recent conference realignment strengthened the Big Ten and SEC as it absorbed previous brands from the Pac-12 (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington) and Big 12 (Oklahoma and Texas).

Sankey described it as a “whole different [conference] dynamic” and suggested the format should be examined.

When CFP leaders meet for their annual gathering at the championship game site in Atlanta, there is a likelihood that there will at least be discussion on eliminating the rule designating the top four seeds (and byes) for conference champions and, thus, seeding directly based on the committee’s rankings.

But, as a reminder, any change for next year’s playoff requires unanimity. Would Group of Five commissioners or those from the ACC and Big 12 — the beneficiaries of the rule this year and likely in the future — vote for such a move?

Without the rule, this year’s top four seeds would have been Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Penn State. The 8-9 game, instead of Ohio State-Tennessee, would have been Indiana-Boise State, and Notre Dame would have hosted Arizona State in a 5-12 game.

Multiple AQs

Among some league administrators, there is talk of a proposal that grants a single conference multiple automatic qualifiers.

In this specific 14-team proposal, the Big Ten and SEC would receive four automatic qualifiers each presumably determined through conference standings; two each for the ACC and Big 12; one for the best Group of Five champion; and one at-large, intended for Notre Dame if it finishes ranked inside the top 14 (or, if not, the next highest-ranked team after the automatic qualifiers are selected). Officials describe it as a 4-4-2-2-1+1 model, with the top two seeds receiving a first-round bye.

The Big Ten made a similar proposal during meetings in the spring. But that proposal featured one less automatic qualifier for the SEC and Big Ten and more at-large spots: 3-3-2-2-1+3. In either proposal, conference championship games likely become less valuable and a reimagined championship weekend could feature conference play-in games for the automatic berths.

We are likely a long way from this becoming reality. Conference title games, the future of which was explored in this Yahoo Sports story, are big-time money-makers for the power leagues and are tethered to their league TV contracts.

If the 4-4-2-2-1+1 model were used this year, the SEC and Big 12 would have each gotten one more team into the field (Alabama and Iowa State). The change to the 4-4-2-2-1+1 model could come with the SEC moving to a ninth league game and, then, possibly striking a non-conference scheduling agreement with the Big Ten. The concept also limits the maligned selection committee’s role, leaving them only to rank teams and choose the best of the Group of Five programs.

Weekly rankings

Some believe that part of the problem is the CFP’s weekly rankings show.

Six weeks before the final selection rankings are revealed, ESPN airs five weekly shows to reveal the selection committee’s latest top 25. While they create the intended buzz, the shows, some have purported, negatively impact the integrity of the process.

Why not have one or, at most, two shows, Bowlsby suggests? The NCAA men’s basketball tournament, for instance, releases just one group of rankings before seeding the field on Selection Sunday. Just get rid of the shows, right?

It’s not that easy, says Sankey. For one, there is a contract to honor. Under the new CFP television contract agreed to in the spring, ESPN pays the conferences more than $1 billion annually for rights to the playoff. That includes the six rankings shows.

“It becomes easy to make observations and much more difficult to make change. One of those is the show,” Sankey told Yahoo Sports. “Are you really going to have a grand surprise on Sunday afternoon in December? Just have no rankings. Somebody is going to fill that information. Does it create a different outcome? You’re going to have a group show up and armwrestle for three days?”

In previous interviews, Bill Hancock, the former executive director of the CFP, has said that the shows are there not only to generate interest and attention on college football. They exist for transparency as well.

“If the committee dropped rankings out of the sky on championship weekend, the public would be puzzled and would tend to think that other polls (AP and coaches) were the end-all be-all up to that point,” he told Yahoo Sports in an interview last month.

Game sites

Lastly, another discussion point may be the game sites.

The success of the four on-campus first-round games — each was either sold out or nearly sold out — has, for some, sparked a conversation: Should the quarterfinals and even semifinals be held on campus as well?

The New Year’s Six bowl games host the quarterfinals and semifinals in a rotation. However, the CFP’s contracts with the six bowl games beyond 2025 are not yet executed, multiple sources confirm to Yahoo Sports. While there is an agreement for the bowls to operate within the playoff structure, the deals have not yet been finalized, something that was expected to happen by the spring.

However, evicting the bowls from the playoff rotation is not so simple. College leaders are faced with a delicate balance. There is history and tradition to preserve, rightfully so. Bowl games, one of the hallmarks of the industry, have for years provided college football with a platform to showcase their teams.