There will likely be a brand new 16-team format for the College Football Playoff in 2026, but we have one more season- this one coming up- of a 12-team field.
Turns out, there will be tweaks this coming season to the seeding.
So what does that mean? That means instead of what happened last year- which in our opinion is an outlier- with a Group of Five champion, Boise State, being one of the four highest-ranked conference champions and getting a bye over teams like eventual National Champion Ohio State, runner-up Notre Dame and semifinalists Penn State and Texas- the seeding structure with the byes into the quarterfinals will simply be the four highest-ranked teams.
Had this been the format last season it would have been a little more intriguing in the first round match-up wise with more geographic balance and the quarterfinals (or New Years Bowl games) would have looked a little different. Penn State and Texas would have gotten byes into the bowls and Boise and Big 12 Champion Arizona State would have played in the first round.
FIRST ROUND IN 2024 WITH STRAIGHT SEEDING
(12) Clemson at (5) Notre Dame
(9) Boise State at (8) Indiana
(11) Arizona State at (6) Ohio State
(10) SMU at (7) Tennessee
QUARTERFINALS (NEW YEARS BOWLS) (based on who we think would have won the first rounders)
Penn State vs. Notre Dame (we got this anyway eventually)
Oregon vs. Boise State
Ohio State vs. Texas (we got this anyway eventually)
Tennessee vs. Georgia
WHAT WE COULD HAVE SEEN IN THE SEMIS
Notre Dame vs. Oregon
Ohio State vs. Georgia
CHAMPIONSHIP
Could have still been Buckeyes-Irish or a game we got anyway in the Rose Bowl, Ohio State-Oregon Part II
GOOD TWEAK, BUT
The Group of Five and other conferences will get taken care of financially. That was the objection to changing things around (shocker). The bottom line is that we don’t really know right now how much of an advantage it is to get the bye. The “bye” teams went 0-4 in the quarterfinals. Was that because of a month long layoff while the other teams were fresh? Plausible. Or was it because the bracket and seeding was terrible thanks in no small part to the “bye” rules.
The selection process needs to be better to really avoid what happened last season (the nation was robbed of good match-ups with clearly non-championship level teams littering the field because of a committee hell bent on putting together the rankings like it was 1988) there needs to be auto-bids or better people on the committee.
It looks like the conferences are taking things into their own hands with auto-bids likely coming in 2026. There is very little hope the college football playoff committee is capable of picking anything more than a four-team field, which is much easier.
