New Year, New Format

Overview of the New College Football Playoff Format

Photo by Dave Adamson on Unsplash

Every year toward the end of August, all 136 College Football (CFB) teams in the NCAA Division One Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) suit up to kick off the season. Every team has the same goal at the end of the year: to hoist the national championship trophy and claim themselves as champions. However, the path to the championship game will look different than it was last year.

Last year marked a new era for the CFB as it was the first year with a 12-team playoff. This move came after 10 years of a 4-team playoff format, which proved to be very repetitive because the same teams would compete for the championship every year. The main goal of the 12 team playoff is to give different teams a better opportunity to compete for a national title. Still, there were some proven problems after last year, even with the new format.

The biggest problem with last year’s playoff was how lopsided the games of the first two rounds were. The winning teams of the first eight games won by an average of 17 points. The main reason for these lopsided games was the way the playoff seeding worked last year. A total of 12 teams were selected to be in the playoff, with the five highest ranked conference champions getting automatic bids.Yet, the four highest ranked conference champions automatically earned spots one through four and first round byes. Spots five through twelve would play each other in the first round, with the higher seed in each game having home field advantage. This was the main reason why the first eight games were so unentertaining. 

For example, the Texas Longhorns were ranked third in the nation when the playoff rankings came out, but they were seeded fifth because they lost their conference championship against the Georgia Bulldogs. The Longhorns soundly defeated the Clemson Tigers in the first round 38-24 and showed they deserved a top four spot. The same problem occurred to the Penn State Nittany Lions, who were ranked fourth, but seeded sixth because they lost their conference championship against the Ohio State Buckeyes. Regardless, the Nittany Lions dominated the SMU Mustangs in the first round 38-10 and proved they deserved a top four spot.

Some teams got lucky with their seeding. The Arizona State Sun Devils were ranked at 12th, but seeded at fourth because they won their conference championship against the Iowa State Cyclones. Despite their high seeding, the Sun Devils lost in the second round, in the only one-score game of the entire first two rounds, to the Longhorns 39-31. The Boise State Broncos also got lucky as they were ranked ninth, but seeded third because they won their conference championship against the UNLV Rebels. The Broncos got crushed by the Nittany Lions in the second round 31-14 and proved they should not have been seeded inside of the top four.

These complicated seeding problems led to these uncompetitive games. Because of this, the playoff committee knew they needed to make a change. That is why this season the College Football Playoff (CFP) will move to a straight seeding format based on the final CFP rankings. 12 teams will still be selected for the playoff, the five highest ranked conference champions will still get automatic bids, and seeds five through twelve will still play in the first round, with the higher seed still having home field advantage. However, seeds one through four, who will still get byes for round one, will be based on the top four teams in the nation, not the four highest ranked conference champions. According to the executive director of the CFP, Rich Clark, "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."

The CFB fanbase hopes this change will bring even more playoff exciting games when the CFP rolls around in mid December.