College Football Playoff expansion to 12 teams in 2025 and beyond, explained
Everything you need to know about the future expansion in college football.
This is the final year we’ll need to deal with controversy when it comes to selecting the College Football Playoff.
Okay, that’s probably not true — but 2024 will be the last year we’ll have to deal with talk of “snubs” as profound as Florida State being left out of the CFB Playoff. Beginning in the 2024-25 season we move to a proper, legitimate 12-team playoff that will increase the field, and give a more diverse field of competitors.
Now, to be fair to the current system, we got some incredible games to decide the National Championship Game. Both Michigan vs. Alabama and Washington vs. Texas proved that we had the correct four teams at the end — and both games came down to the wire.
That said, it will be nice to see a more diverse field and there are some weird little caveats for how to teams will be selected moving forward. We’re going to break those down to prepare you now for what this process will look like in a year.
The power ... six?!
The process begins with the six highest ranked conference champions. Yes, that’s a bit of a mouthful — but winning your conference is the first step to receiving an automatic playoff bid.
Typically this would mean the power five, plus another — but having the Pac-12 dissolve makes this much murkier. For example, if we remove the Pac-12 from the conversation and looked at the winners for 2023 here are the teams who would automatically get in.
- No. 1 Michigan (Big Ten Champion)
- No. 2 Texas (Big 12 Champion)
- No. 3 Alabama (SEC Champion)
- No. 4 Florida State (ACC Champion)
- No. 11 Tulane (AAC Champion)
- No. 12 Liberty (Conference USA Champion)
The top four matters A LOT
Inside of these six automatic bids there’s a huge motivation to be ranked as one of the four top teams. These teams receive a first round bye into the quarterfinals. While it remains to be seen how important this is, logic tells us that playing one fewer game will have a mammoth impact on a team’s ability to succeed in the playoff.
What about the other six teams?
The remaining six bid are decided purely by final ranking, independent of conference championship status. These are then seeded so the lowest rank plays the highest, like any other playoff system.
This means we’d have a slate based off 2023 that looks like...
1st round
- No. 12 Liberty vs. No. 6 Georgia
- No. 11 Tulane vs. No. 7 Ohio State
- No. 10 Penn State vs. No. 5 Washington
- No. 9 Missouri vs. No. 8 Oregon
Quarterfinals
Interestingly teams are not reseeded between rounds.
- Michigan vs. winner of Oregon/Missouri — Fiesta Bowl
- Texas vs. winner of Tulane/Ohio State — Peach Bowl
- Alabama vs. winner of Liberty/Georgia — Rose Bowl
- Florida State vs. winner of Washington/Penn State — Sugar Bowl
Semifinals
- Fiesta Bowl winner vs. Sugar Bowl winner — Orange Bowl
- Peach Bowl winner vs. Rose Bowl winner — Cotton Bowl
National Championship
Orange Bowl winner vs. Cotton Bowl winner
What are the set dates for the 2025 College Football Playoff?
- Dec. 20-21: First round
- Dec. 31: Fiesta Bowl
- Jan. 1: Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl
- Jan. 9: Orange Bowl
- Jan. 10: Cotton Bowl
- Jan. 20: National Championship Game