Phase one complete.
The College Football Playoff announced plans to modify the seeding for the 2025 season on Thursday – a move that makes sense for the integrity of the postseason moving forward.
The top five highest-ranked conference champions will still make the playoff – but they will not be guaranteed byes. The 12 teams will be seeded based directly on their final ranking by the CFP selection committee.
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“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,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said in a statement.
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Why the CFP committee changed seeding model
The first round of the 12-team CFP last season was brutal. Seeds 9-12 lost their first-round games by an average of 19.3 points per game. The 8-9 game was Ohio State vs. Tennessee, teams that were ranked No. 6 and No. 7, respectively, in the final CFP rankings. It should have been No. 8 Indiana vs. No. 9 Boise State – which would have put dueling Cinderella stories in Curt Cignetti and Ashton Jeanty on the same field. This was common sense for anybody who watched those first-round blowouts up close.
Here is what the first round looked like in 2024 against what it should like heading into next season.
| YEAR | 2024 MATCHUP | WITH NEW MODEL |
| 5 vs. 12 | No. 5 Texas vs. No. 12 Clemson | No. 5 Notre Dame vs. No. 12 Clemson |
| 6 vs. 11 | No. 6 Penn State vs. No. 11 SMU | No. 6 Ohio State vs. No. 11 Arizona State |
| 7 vs. 10 | No. 7 Notre Dame vs. No. 10 Indiana | No. 7 Tennessee vs. No. 10 SMU |
| 8 vs. 9 | No. 8 Ohio State vs. No. 9 Tennessee | No. 8 Indiana vs. No. 9 Boise State |
We can say with 20/20 hindsight the revised model matchups would not have been decided by an average of 19.3 points per game.
There should be little – if any – pushback for this move, outside of the possibility of the fifth-highest conference champion being ranked outside of the top 12. Clemson was ranked No. 16 in the final rankings last season despite winning the ACC. They would bump out No. 11 Alabama in this model, too. We can live with that scenario for the 2025-26 season.
This is the next step toward perfecting the College Football Playoff – which is in the best interest for the sport moving forward.
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Next four fixes for the perfect College Football Playoff
So what’s next? As college football fans, we need to stop lamenting the subjective importance of the regular season. Traditionalists would argue that the regular season has been diminished because two-loss and (sooner or later) three-loss teams will make the CFP. Progressive college football fans love November, which was full of head-spinning tie-breaking procedures and more access for more teams in the CFP.
From either vantage point, the regular season has changed to an NFL-like model – and that means that the CFP needs to continue the course toward a perfect playoff model heading into the 2026 season.
Is it better? Ohio State won a national championship after losing to Michigan in the regular-season finale. How you feel about that in terms of the value of the CFP playoff answers that question.
What’s next? We have repeatedly called for the following four tweaks:
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Expand to 16 teams
Don’t go to 14 teams. Don’t do play-in games with the 16 teams. Simply go four rounds with no byes. Everybody has to win four games to hold up the CFP championship trophy.
On-campus games
While the first-round games were blowouts, the on-campus experience in South Bend, Austin, Columbus and State College was off the charts. If we go to 16 teams, then why not play the first two rounds on campus before getting into the bowl rotation for the semifinals and CFP championship game? That’s a more-complicated fix – but it’s doable.
Automatic qualifiers
This one won’t happen the way we want. Don’t make the College Football Playoff the electoral college by assigning each conference a certain number of guaranteed automatic bids. Just take the top 16 teams in the CFP rankings. If you want to keep the conference championship games and the five highest-ranked conference champions, that’s fine, but we would take both of those out, too. You can replace the money from the conference championship game with the first two rounds of the CFP. That’s easy. How do you pick those 16 teams? Make it a joint effort between the CFP selection committee and a data-based formula.
Fix the playoff schedule
Start the regular season one week earlier in August. Start the playoffs the week after the regular season ends. Play the first two rounds then take a one week break before the semifinals. Play the CFP championship game two weeks later. That should steer clear of the NFL playoff chase, which no doubt impacted the TV ratings for a CFP championship game that was played on Jan. 20; more than seven weeks after the regular season ended on Nov. 30.