4-team playoff

From its formation in 2014 to the end of the 2023 season, the College Football Playoff has used a four-team knockout bracket to determine the national champion. Six bowl games—the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl– rotated as hosts for the semifinals.^[14] The rotation was set on a three-year cycle with the following pairings: Rose/Sugar, Orange/Cotton, and Fiesta/Peach. The two semifinal bowls and the other four top-tier bowls were marketed as the New Year's Six.^[15] Per contract, the Rose and Sugar Bowls are always on New Year's Day. Originally three games were held on New Year's Eve with the other three on New Year's Day. However, disappointing TV ratings in the first rotation led to games originally planned for New Year's Eve be moved to as early as December 27 in some years.^[2] The selection committee seeds the top four teams, and also assigns teams to the at-large bowls (Cotton, Fiesta, and Peach) in years when they do not host semifinals.^[16]

The four-team format pited the No. 1-ranked team against No. 4 and No. 2 against No. 3. The seeding determines the semifinal bowl game assigned to each matchup; the No. 1 seed chooses its bowl game to prevent it from playing in a "road" environment. There are no limits on the number of teams per conference, a change from previous BCS rules.^[2] However, some non-semifinal bowl selections still maintain their conference tie-ins, similarly to the BCS's automatic qualifier berths.^[17] A team from one of the "Group of Five" conferences is guaranteed a spot in one of the New Year's Six bowls.^[18]

12-team playoff

The CFP will expand to a 12-team format for the 2024–25 College Football Playoff following for the 2024 season^[4] Features of the expanded playoff include:^[19]

• Guaranteed bids for the top five conference champions in the CFP rankings; no conference will have an automatic bid, a conference must have a minimum of eight members to be eligible for an guaranteed bid.
• At-large bids for the seven highest-ranked remaining teams, which could include additional conference champions.
• The four highest-ranked conference champions will receive first-round byes.
• The remaining teams will play each other in the first round at the home fields of the better seeds, matched in the standard format of 5–12, 6–11, 7–10, and 8–9.
• The quarterfinals and semifinals will be hosted by the New Year's Six (the Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose, and Sugar bowls) on a rotating basis.
• The championship game will continue to be held at a separately determined neutral site.
• The playoff bracket will not be reseeded at any time.
• First round games will occur in December, quarterfinal games on or around New Year's Day, semifinal games at least one week later, and the championship game one week after the semifinals.

On-campus games

In the 12-team playoff format, the four best-seeded teams receive a first-round bye and advance directly to the quarterfinals.^[19]

The teams seeded 5–12 will play first round games hosted by the better seed, either at their home stadium or a neutral venue of their choosing.^[19]

New Year's Six

The semifinal and quarterfinal rounds of the playoff are hosted by the New Year's Six: the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl. These games are played annually on or around New Year's Day and represent six of the oldest and most prestigious college football bowl games.

During the 4-team playoff era, the bowls rotated on a 3-year cycle. Two of the six bowls served as the CFP semifinals for any given year with the following pairings: Rose/Sugar, Orange/Cotton, and Fiesta/Peach. The year's four off-cycle bowls hosted bowl games outside of the CFP tournament bracket.

In the 12-team playoff format, four of the six bowls host quarterfinal games on or around New Year's Day. The winners advance to play in the semifinals, held in the two remaining bowls one week later. The bowls will again cycle on a rotating basis.^[19]

Championship game

Cities around the country bid to host each year's championship game. The playoff group's leaders make a selection from those proposals, in a similar fashion to other large sporting events, such as the NCAA Final Four. Officials say the championship game will be held in a different city each year, and that bids must propose host stadiums with a capacity of at least 65,000 spectators.^[20] Under the system, cities cannot host both a semifinal game and the title game in the same year.

Selection Committee

The College Football Playoff Selection Committee consists of 13 members who generally serve three-year terms, although some initial 2013 selections served two- and four-year terms "to achieve a rotation" of members.^[21][22]

The 2023 CFP selection committee members are:^[23]

• Chris Ault, retired Nevada Wolf Pack athletic director and football coach
• Mitch Barnhart, Kentucky athletic director
• Boo Corrigan, NC State athletic director
• Chet Gladchuck, U.S. Naval Academy athletic director
• Jim Grobe, retired football coach at Wake Forest, Baylor, and Ohio
• Mark Harlan, Utah athletic director
• Warde Manuel, Michigan athletic director
• David Sayler, Miami (Ohio) athletic director
• Will Shields, former NFL player and Nebraska All-American
• Gene Taylor, Kansas State athletic director
• Joe Taylor, former Virginia Union head coach and current athletic director
• Rod West, former Sugar Bowl president and current trustee at Notre Dame
• Kelly Whiteside, former college football reporter for Newsday, Sports Illustrated, and USA Today

The committee members include one current athletic director from each of the five "major" conferences—ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC—also known as the Power Five conferences.^[24][25] Other members are former coaches, players, athletic directors, and administrators, plus a retired member of the media. The goal was for the panel to consist proportionally of current "Power Five" athletic directors, former coaches, and a third group of other voters,^[24] excluding current conference commissioners, coaches, and media members.^[26] During the selection process, organizers said they wanted the committee to be geographically balanced.^[27] Conference commissioners submitted lists totaling more than 100 names from which to select the final committee members.^[28][29]

Voting procedure

The committee releases its top 25 rankings weekly on Tuesdays in the second half of the regular season. The top four teams are seeded in that order for the playoff.^[40][41] During the season, the committee meets and releases rankings six or seven times, depending on the length of the season (the number of games is consistent, but the number of weeks those games are played over can vary from year to year).^[33] The group, which meets at the Gaylord Texan hotel in Grapevine, Texas,^[42] reportedly meets in person up to 10 total times a year.^[29]

A team's strength of schedule is one of the most pertinent considerations for the committee in making its selections.^[43] Other factors that the committee weighs are conference championships, team records, and head-to-head results,^[12] plus other points such as injuries and weather.^[44] Unlike the BCS system, the AP Poll, Coaches' Poll, and the Harris Poll, computer rankings are not used to make the selections.^[7][24] Advanced statistics and metrics are expected to be submitted to the committee, though like other analytics, they have no formal role in the decision.^[45] Committee members are not required to attend games.^[42]

Long said the panel considered less frequent rankings, but ultimately decided on a weekly release. "That's what the fans have become accustomed to, and we felt it would leave a void in college football without a ranking for several weeks," he said. Long also noted: "Early on there was some talk that we would go into a room at the end of the season and come out with a top four, but that didn't last long."^[46] In analyzing this change in thinking, Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated commented: "The whole point of the selection committee was to replace the simplistic horse-race nature of Top 25 polls – where teams only move up if someone above them loses – with a more deliberative evaluation method. Now the playoff folks are going to try to do both."^[47] Addressing the "pecking order" nature of traditional polls, George Schrodeder of USA Today wrote that "if it actually works as intended, we could see volatile swings" from week to week, with lower-ranked teams moving ahead of higher-ranked teams without either team losing (a rarity in traditional polls). Both Long and Bill Hancock, the CFP executive director, say they expect that to happen.^[48]

The committee's voting method uses multiple ballots, similar to the NCAA basketball tournament selection process and the entire process is facilitated through custom software developed by Code Authority in Frisco, Texas.^[49] From a large initial pool of teams, the group takes numerous votes on successive tiers of teams, considering six at a time and coming to a consensus on how they should be ranked, then repeating the process with the next tier of teams. Discussion and debate happens at each voting step. All votes are by secret ballot, and committee members do not make their ballots public.^[46] Each week's ranking process begins anew, with no weight given to the previous week's selections.^[48] In this fashion, the committee selects the four teams to compete for the national championship.

Committee members who are currently employed or financially compensated by a school, or have family members who have a current financial relationship (which includes football players), are not allowed to vote for that school. During deliberations about a team's selection, members with such a conflict of interest cannot be present, but can answer factual questions about the institution.^[46] All committee members have past ties to certain NCAA institutions,^[42] but the committee decided to ignore those ties in the recusal requirements. "We just boiled it down to where we felt this group was fit to its high integrity and would differentiate from those past relationships," Long said.^[46] Some football writers, like Dennis Dodd and Mark Schlabach, have said the recusal arrangement isn't transparent or objective, suggesting that members' alma maters and former coaching jobs should be considered disqualifying conflicts of interest.^[50][51]

Background

The Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) is the only National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sport for which the NCAA does not sanction a yearly championship event. As such, it is sometimes unofficially referred to as a "mythical national championship".^{[52][53][54][55]} Due to the lack of an official NCAA title, determining the nation's top college football team has often engendered controversy.^[56] Championship teams have been independently declared by multiple individuals and organizations, often referred to as "selectors".^[57] These choices are not always unanimous.^[56]

While the NCAA has never officially endorsed a championship team, it has documented the choices of some selectors in its official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication.^[57][58] In addition, various analysts have independently published their own choices for each season. These opinions can often diverge with others as well as individual schools' claims to national titles, which may or may not correlate to the selections published elsewhere. Among the most widely recognized national champion selectors has been the Associated Press (AP), which has conducted the AP Poll of sportswriters since the 1935 season.^[59] The AP's main competition, United Press, created the first Coaches Poll in 1950. The two polls have picked different final national poll leaders at the end of 11 different seasons since then;^[60] this situation is referred to as a "split" national championship.^[61]

In the absence of an NCAA-sanctioned postseason tournament, various cities across the country developed their own regional festivals featuring postseason bowl games. Many of these were held on or near New Year's Day. Among the major ones were the Rose Bowl, first played in Pasadena, California in 1902; the Orange Bowl, first held in Miami Florida in 1935; the Sugar Bowl, first played in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1935; the Cotton Bowl Classic, first held in Dallas Texas in 1937; the Peach Bowl, first played in Atlanta, Georgia in 1968; and the Fiesta Bowl, first held in Tempe, Arizona in 1971. These bowl games generally made agreements with specific conferences. For example, the Rose Bowl traditionally hosted the conference champions from the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences (or their predecessors). This made it difficult to schedule even the season's top two teams to play in a single bowl game,^[62] let alone all of the deserving teams.^[63]

Calls for a college football playoff became frequent, most notably from Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, whose independent teams finished the 1968, 1969, and 1973 seasons unbeaten, untied, and with Orange Bowl victories yet were left without a single major national title.^[64][65] The Bowl Coalition (1992–1994)^[66] and then Bowl Alliance (1995–1997)^[67] were formed to more reliably set up a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, rotated annually among the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange bowls. But their efforts were hampered by the Rose Bowl's historic draw and contractual matchup between the Big Ten and the then-Pac-10 conference champions.^[67]

The Bowl Championship Series in 1998 succeeded in finally bringing the Big Ten and Pac-10 into the fold with the other conferences for a combined BCS National Championship Game rotated amongst the Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar bowls.^[59] BCS rankings originally incorporated the two major polls as well as a number of computer rankings to determine the end of season No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup.^[68] Although the BCS era did regularly produce compelling matchups, the winnowing selection of the top two teams resulted in many BCS controversies, most notably 2003's split national championship caused by the BCS rankings leaving USC, No. 1 in both human polls, out of the Sugar Bowl.^[69]

Establishment

In 2014, the College Football Playoff made its debut, facilitating a multi-game single-elimination tournament for the first time in college football history. Four teams are seeded by a 13-member selection committee rather than by existing polls or mathematical rankings.^[21][70] The Cotton and Peach bowls were also brought into the fold. The two semifinal games became rotated among these New Year's Six bowl games, set on a three-year cycle with the following pairings: Rose/Sugar, Orange/Cotton, and Fiesta/Peach.^[15] The College Football Playoff National Championship is then played a week later at a separately determined neutral site.^[14]

Expansion

A common suggestion before the planned expansion to twelve teams in 2024 was for the playoff to expand to an eight-team format, guaranteeing all five major conference champions a spot along with the highest ranked "Group of Five" champion. The remaining two spots would have been at-large selections awarded to the next two highest ranking teams. The seed pairings would have been ordered to fit the playoff format, with 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc.

NCAA coaches were polled in 2014 and asked if they were in favor of a larger playoff system. More than half of the coaches (53 percent) from the Power 5 conferences who voted chose an eight-team playoff, compared to 33 percent for the four-team model. CFP executive director Bill Hancock said at the time that his group was committed to only four teams for the length of the 12-year contract through 2026, and "there has been no discussion of expanding".^[71]

In June 2021, the CFP announced that it would begin studying an expansion to a 12-team playoff. The CFP stated that the starting time of any new format would only be determined after it had been approved.^[72]

On February 18, 2022, the CFP rejected the playoff proposal, pushing implementation of any changes to the playoff pool to no sooner than the 2026 season;^[73] however, the decision was reversed on September 2, 2022, when the CFP Board of Managers unanimously voted to expand the playoffs to 12 teams, with the earliest possible change happening in the 2024 season.^[74]

Conferences and bowls negotiated early expansion for several months during the fall of 2022. A potential sticking point was the Rose Bowl, which desired to keep its exclusive 5 PM ET kickoff time on January 1, even during years it will host the semifinals instead of the quarterfinals. The problem was resolved when the commissioners gave the Rose Bowl an ultimatum to accept no special treatment or be excluded from the new playoffs, with the bowl agreeing to forgo its demands.^[4] By the end of 2022, a new 12-team format was approved to be implemented for the 2024 season.^[4] Originally, the expanded playoff was to include the top six ranked conference champions and six at-large bids, though it was later changed to five conference champions and seven at-large bids after the 2021–2024 NCAA conference realignment resulted in the Pac-12 Conference dropping to two members.^[75]

Selections by year

To date, 32 of the 40 teams selected for the College Football Playoff have been undefeated or 1-loss conference champions from Power Five conferences. Three 1-loss Power Five teams have been selected without playing in their conference championship game, and three others have been selected after losing their respective conference championship games. One undefeated independent team has been selected, and one undefeated conference champion from a Group of Five conference has been selected. No teams with two or more losses have been selected.^{[88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95]}

Appearances by team

Alabama

Clemson

Oklahoma

Ohio State

Georgia

Notre
Dame

Florida
State

LSU

TCU

Cincinnati

Michigan

Michigan State

Oregon

Washington

Texas

Teams that have appeared in the College Football Playoff
6 or more, 3–5, 2, 1

Alabama

Clemson

Georgia

LSU

Michigan

Ohio State

Teams that have won the College Football Playoff
3, 2, 1

Appearances by conference

Ratings

The inaugural College Football Playoff games in January 2015 generated larger ratings than previous BCS games. The 2015 College Football Playoff National Championship had an 18.9 Nielsen rating^[99] and was watched by approximately 33.4 million people, the largest broadcast audience of all time on American cable television (non-broadcast), according to AdWeek. That was a 31 percent audience increase over the previous year's championship game and a 22 percent increase over the BCS title game's best rating on cable (a 16.1 rating in 2011).^[100] The semifinal games, the 2015 Rose Bowl and 2015 Sugar Bowl, saw 28.16 million and 28.27 million viewers, respectively.^[101] According to ESPN, these games also set (and briefly held) all-time records for cable TV viewership.^[102][103]

In 2015, the ratings for the two semifinal games were down from the prior season's equivalents, with the Orange Bowl reaching a 9.7 rating (in comparison to 15.5 for the 2015 Rose Bowl) and the Cotton Bowl reaching a 9.9 rating (in comparison to a 15.3 rating for the 2015 Sugar Bowl). On the online WatchESPN streaming service, excluding 2014 FIFA World Cup games, the Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl drew the second and third-largest streaming audiences in the service's history, behind the 2015 national championship. The ratings drops were attributed to the New Year's Eve time slot, as fewer people were at home to watch the game.^[104] The decline in ratings was a factor in changes for the scheduling of future CFP semi-final games.^[11]

Board of Managers

According to the CFP website, the system's operations are controlled by the Board of Managers, which consists of presidents and chancellors of the playoff group's member universities. The eleven members have sole authority to develop, review and approve annual budgets, policies and operating guidelines. The group also selects the company's officers.^[118]

• Eric Barron – President, Penn State (Big Ten)
• Rodney Bennett – President, Southern Miss (C-USA)
• Joe Castro – Chancellor, California State University; former president, Fresno State (Mountain West)
• Gordon Gee – President, West Virginia (Big 12)
• Jack Hawkins – Chancellor, Troy (Sun Belt)
• Rev. John I. Jenkins – President, Notre Dame (Independent)
• Mark Keenum – President, Mississippi State (SEC)
• Kirk Schulz – President, Washington State (Pac-12)
• John Thrasher – President, Florida State (ACC)
• Satish Tripathi – President, Buffalo (MAC)
• R. Gerald Turner – President, SMU (The American)

Athletics Directors Advisory Group

According to the CFP website, the Athletics Directors Advisory Group is appointed by the management committee to "offer counsel" on the operations of the system. As an advisory board, it has no authority in the management of the CFP.^[118]

• Gary Barta, Iowa (Big Ten)
• Tom Bowen, Memphis (The American)
• Tom Burman, Wyoming (Mountain West)
• Joe Castiglione, Oklahoma (Big 12)
• Jeremy Foley, Florida (SEC)
• Dan Guerrero, UCLA (Pac-12)
• Chris Massaro, Middle Tennessee (C-USA)
• Terry Mohajir, UCF (The American)
• Mike O'Brien, Toledo (MAC)
• Stan Wilcox, Florida State (ACC)

Team selection

Because the tournament has four teams, at least one Power Five champion misses the playoffs every season. However, not all teams selected have been conference winners:

• In 2016, Ohio State (11–1) – who did not qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game – was selected by the committee. Both the Big Ten champions Penn State (11–2) and Big 12 champions Oklahoma (10–2) had worse records; Penn State had advanced to the conference championship game over Ohio State by virtue of a close victory earlier in the season; Oklahoma lost at home to Ohio State early in the season;
• In 2017, Alabama (11–1) – who did not qualify for the SEC Championship Game due to a final-week loss against SEC runners-up Auburn – was selected ahead of the Big Ten's Ohio State (11–2) and Pac-12's USC (11–2);
• In 2021, Georgia (12–1) lost the SEC Championship Game to Alabama (12–1) but was selected over three Power Five conference champions with multiple losses;
• In 2022, TCU (12–1) was selected for the playoff despite losing the Big 12 Championship Game to Kansas State (10–3) in overtime. Ohio State (11–1) – who once again missed the Big Ten Championship Game due to a Week 12 loss to eventual Big Ten champion Michigan – was also selected, ahead of the ACC's Clemson (11–2) and Pac-12's Utah (10–3).

Some analysts have discussed whether the committee should select conference champions only.^[120][121]

Another critique centered around a perceived bias against smaller conferences such as the Big 12 which used to not stage a conference championship game, but reintroduced one for the 2017 season. The American Athletic Conference addressed this issue by enlisting Navy to its ranks for 2015, bringing its membership to 12 teams, which allowed it to stage a conference championship game under then-current NCAA rules.^[122] Since the 2016 season, FBS conferences have been allowed to stage football championship games even if they do not have 12 members.^[123]

There are opinions labeling the CFP system "just as" or "even more polarizing" than the BCS or the old wire-service poll system.^{[124][125][126][127]} However, most in sports media believe the College Football Playoff Committee got the right foursome for the 2017–18 playoff, for example, for advancing Alabama, a one-loss team excluded from its conference championship on a tiebreaker, instead of Ohio State, a two-loss conference champion.^{[128][129][130]}

In 2019, Urban Meyer, head coach of the national champion 2014 Ohio State Buckeyes football team, said that he intentionally ran up the score against Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game to help his team be chosen for the playoff. Criticizing the subjectivity of the selection process, Meyer said that he left the starting lineup in the game despite Ohio State being ahead 45–0 in the third quarter—not resting the starters and risking their health, and poor sportsmanship—because "I don't think the 'eye test' and 'people think' is going to get enough to bump TCU and Baylor". He continued, "I had a job to do, and that was to get Ohio State in the playoff. Do I think that's right? That's wrong", proposing a selection system based on defined criteria.^[131]

Late in the 2020 season, which was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde was strongly critical of the CFP committee for what he considered unfair treatment of teams outside the Power Five; he note that the Big 12's Iowa State, at 8–2, were ranked No. 7, one spot ahead of the top Group of Five team, the AAC's then-unbeaten Cincinnati, and twelve spots ahead of the Sun Belt's Louisiana, a team who had beaten Iowa State by 17 points and whose only loss to that point had been in a conference game against unbeaten Coastal Carolina.^[132] Michael Aresco, commissioner of Cincinnati's American Athletic Conference, had equally pointed criticism, accusing the committee of "undermining its credibility with rankings that defy logic and common sense and fairness," and said that he would much prefer the computer-calculated BCS rankings system."^[133] No Group of Five team was ranked in the CFP top four until Cincinnati was fourth in the rankings released on November 23, 2021.^[134]

Selection committee

The qualifications of selection committee members have also been scrutinized. As an outsider to the sports world, Condoleezza Rice's selection was the focus of some criticism. Former Clemson head coach Tommy Bowden expressed the opinion that the committee's members should be "people who played the game and preferably coached the game".^[137] Former Auburn head coach Pat Dye said, "All she knows about football is what somebody told her ... or what she read in a book, or what she saw on television. To understand football, you've got to play with your hand in the dirt". Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese also gained membership on the selection committee despite having never played football in college.^[138] Former sportswriter Steve Weiberg and retired U.S. Air Force General Michael Gould are other committee members without significant football playing, coaching, or administrative experience.

Scheduling

The semifinal games for the 2015 season were scheduled for December 31; they were expected to have lower television viewership because the date is not a federal holiday, and because the second game faced heavy competition for television viewers in primetime from New Year's Eve specials (such as New Year's Rockin' Eve, which is aired by ESPN's sister broadcast network ABC). Under television contracts with ESPN that predate the College Football Playoff, both the Rose and Sugar Bowl games are guaranteed exclusive TV time slots on January 1 (or January 2 if New Year's Day falls on a Sunday), regardless of whether they are hosting a semifinal game.^[139] In an interview with CBS Sports, CFP commissioner Bill Hancock suggested this scheduling issue would "change the paradigm of what New Year's Eve is all about," opining that "if you're hosting a New Year's Eve party, you better have a bunch of televisions around".^[140] Although ESPN proposed moving the Thursday, December 31, 2015, semifinal games to Saturday, January 2, 2016, the idea was rejected.^[141] The semifinal games' ratings were ultimately down significantly from those of the previous season.^[104]

In an effort to reduce the impact of their New Year's Eve scheduling, the 2016 semifinal games, which fell on a Saturday, had earlier kickoff times, at 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. ET respectively. The 2016 Orange Bowl was played in primetime on December 30, 2016, rather than in an early afternoon window on New Year's Eve. Hancock considered the earlier start times to be a compromise to reduce the games' intrusion into New Year's Eve festivities, but reiterated that there were no plans to move the semi-final games from New Year's Eve outside of years where they are hosted by the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl.^[142][143]

On July 28, 2016, however, Hancock reversed this stance and announced revisions to the scheduling for future College Football Playoff semi-final games. The games were rescheduled so that they will not necessarily be played on New Year's Eve yearly: outside of years when they are hosted by the Rose and Sugar Bowls (where they retain their traditional New Year's Day scheduling), they will now be scheduled primarily on the last Saturday or federally observed holiday of the year. In some years, this date will land on New Year's Eve. In 2021, the games were played on Friday, December 31, because the day was observed as a holiday.^[11][144] Viewership of the 2018 semi-finals were down by 25% over the previous semi-finals, which were played on New Year's Day.^[145]