The Powers That Be in charge of the College Football Playoff are moving toward consensus toward a "straight seeding" format for the 2025 event, Brandon Marcello of CBS Sports reported Wednesday.
When the 12-team Playoff was formally announced in the summer of 2021, it was with a "6+6" format, where six bids were reserved for the six highest-ranked conference champions and six for at-large teams, and byes reserved for the top four conference champions. Weeks later, the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma, and the following summer, the Big Ten decimated the Pac-12 by adding USC and UCLA, and later Oregon and Washington. The CFP responded by altering its format to "5+7," but byes were still reserved for conference champs. With so much emphasis built into maintaining the importance of conference championship games, CFP leadership could not and would not make such a drastic change before the inaugural 12-team event even began.
And then the 2024 season happened.
Mountain West champion Boise State, ranked No. 9 in the selection committee's final rankings, was seeded third. Big 12 champ Arizona State, ranked 12th, was seeded fourth. In a quirk no one could have foreseen, all the top four seeds went 0-4 in the quarterfinal round, in part because No. 1 Oregon had to play Ohio State, who was ranked No. 6 by the committee but seeded eighth. (Elsewhere, 2nd-seed Georgia lost to No. 7 seed Notre Dame while playing backup quarterback Gunnar Stockton; Boise State and Arizona State were both double-digit underdogs.)
Under a straight seeding format, the 2024-25 bracket would've looked like this:
No. 8 Indiana at No. 9 Penn State
winner plays No. 1 Oregon at the Rose Bowl
No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Notre Dame
winner plays No. 4 Penn State at the Peach Bowl
No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee
winner plays No. 2 Georgia at the Sugar Bowl
No. 11 Arizona State at No. 6 Ohio State
winner plays No. 3 Texas at the Fiesta Bowl
A "straight seeding" fix has not faced much resistance in the court of public opinion for two reasons: 1) the NCAA-run postseason tournaments reserve automatic bids for conference champions but do not guarantee a given seed line, and 2) any changes would be for the 2025 season only.
A new CFP contract begins in 2026, where the Big Ten and SEC have spent months trying to ram through a 14- of 16-team field in which they guarantee themselves a combined eight automatic bids before the season begins. This non-competitive, un-American proposal was received resistance from multiple corners within the college football world.