The College Football Playoff is moving to a straight seeding model.
CFP executives on Thursday approved a change to how teams are seeded in the 12-team field, voting unanimously to place teams based directly on the selection committee’s rankings and not by conference championships, multiple sources tell Yahoo Sports.
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In the current structure, the top four seeds in the playoff are designated to the highest-ranked conference champions. In a straight seeding format, teams are seeded in the same slot in which they are ranked, 1-12, with the top four seeds earning a bye into the quarterfinals.
The Management Committee, the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director, approved the move during a call Thursday. They gained the necessary unanimity for the change despite it potentially adversely impacting the Big 12, ACC and Group of Six leagues.
However, the decision comes with a financial compromise, according to those with knowledge of the agreement. Under the current revenue model, the four highest-ranked conference champions earn $8 million: $4 million for qualifying for the CFP and $4 million for a quarterfinal appearance.
According to the compromise, the four highest-ranked champions, even if they are not the top four seeds, are expected to continue earning the $8 million — at least for this year. The 2026 playoff will bring a new revenue-distribution model that was established last spring where conferences earn a base amount in a system without performance payments.
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Next year will also bring with it a new format.
Though no future format has been finalized, college football’s postseason is expected to undergo significant change in 2026.
Officials from the Big Ten and SEC — the two conference controlling the format starting next year — are supporting a 16-team playoff that features multiple automatic qualifiers per conference. The format — dubbed the “4-4-2-2-1” model — grants the SEC and Big Ten four automatic qualifiers each, as well as two each to the Big 12 and ACC. Then one bid would go to the highest-ranked Group of Six conference champion and there would be three at-large selections — one of those contractually designated for Notre Dame if the Irish finish inside the top 16 of the rankings.
What will the College Football Playoff look like in the future? (Paras Griffin/Getty)
(Paras Griffin via Getty Images)
The format negotiations have ignited discord among leaders of the four power conferences. A fight is brewing.
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The group of four commissioners has met twice in the last two weeks over the subject, separately gathering away from other CFP executives. ACC and Big 12 stakeholders have pushed for alternate models that don’t disadvantage their schools, including granting each a third automatic qualifier — a 4-4-3-3-1 concept that reduces the at-large field from three to one — or a 16-team field similar to the current format but with four additional at-large spots.
Those formats received little support from administrative groups in the SEC and Big Ten, according to those with knowledge of the talks. President and athletic director groups in both conferences are in support of the 4-4-2-2-1 model, no matter the public pushback, political pressures and, even, Notre Dame’s resistance to it.
The future format has evolved into a divisive issue that, in many ways, began last spring.
Last February, officials from the SEC and Big Ten threatened to leave the CFP if not granted both significant revenue in a new distribution model (the leagues will now get 58% of the revenue) and authority over any future format.
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The eight other conferences and Notre Dame granted such requests, all of them inking a memorandum of understanding that extended the CFP’s life another six years through 2031 with a television agreement with ESPN.
The 4-4-2-2-1 model, if formally adopted, is expected to result in a domino of decisions, starting with the SEC adding a ninth regular season conference game and ending, perhaps, with the SEC and Big Ten striking a scheduling agreement — possibilities that Yahoo Sports outlined in a February story.
The remade playoff is also expected to introduce an entirely new season-ending structure to college football.
Officials within the Big Ten and SEC are in deep discussion over holding season-ending, conference-tournament style matchups where the leagues would pit their third, fourth, fifth and sixth-placed teams against one another in potential play-in games for their final two automatic qualifying spots in the CFP. Teams finishing No. 3 in the standings would host No. 6 and No. 4 would host No. 5 in on-campus games during conference championship weekend in must-see matchups with huge stakes.
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For the schools, these are new multi-million dollar assets to sell to any television network or streamer at a time when universities are financially stressed as the age of athlete revenue sharing arrives.
The future of their conference championship games remains unclear. The leagues are contractually bound by their TV partners, ESPN (SEC) and FOX (Big Ten), to host their top two teams in a title game. But some administrators, especially in the SEC, want to expand the play-in tournament to include the top seed hosting the No. 8 seed and the No. 2 seed hosting the No. 7 — a four-game, conference tournament bonanza of football unfolding on the first weekend in December.
Those conversations continue, as do discussions on whether play-in game losers remain eligible for the three-team at-large pool.
The ACC and Big 12, if granted two automatic qualifiers each, would need to decide how to determine their CFP participants. Possibilities include holding a championship game — both teams assured of a playoff spot — or having play-in games similar to the SEC and Big Ten.
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Championship games still provide some value. Under the proposed format, conference champions may earn one of two coveted double-byes into the quarterfinals.
A 16-team bracket is expected to necessitate a schedule shuffle of playoff games in December, as reported last week by Yahoo Sports. Under one idea, two CFP games would be played the second weekend of December, when Army-Navy traditionally meet and when no NFL games are scheduled. Winners of those two first-round games — No. 13 seed hosting the No. 16 seed and the No. 14 hosting the No. 15 — would advance to a bracket of 10 awaiting teams.
The top-two seeded conference champions would be waiting in quarterfinal games on New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve.
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To operationalize any multi-AQ format with play-in games, the NCAA’s maximum of regular season competitions allowed (12) would need changing. To have the first two playoff games on the second weekend of December — just a week after conference championship weekend — a CFP rule needs changing: At least 10 days are required from the date of conference title games to the first round of the CFP.
Any 16-team bracket may also trigger a renegotiation of the CFP contract with ESPN. The memorandum signed last spring covers a 12 or 14-team playoff, granting ownership of those games to the network. The addition of four teams — and four games — likely gives the CFP an avenue to renegotiate the contract or, at the very least, separately sell the additional games.
CFP officials used data from the last 11 years to determine the future revenue-distribution model they agreed on last spring. Similar metrics were used in the Big Ten and SEC’s 4-4-2-2-1 concept.
Since the 2014 playoff, the Big Ten led all conferences with 59 total teams ranked inside the top 16 of the CFP’s rankings heading into conference championship weekend, or about 5.3 teams a year. The SEC has had 55 teams (5.0 a year), followed by the Big 12 (2.4) and the ACC (2.1). The Group of Six would have had four teams inside the top 16 over the 11-year stretch, and Notre Dame would have finished inside the top 16 seven of those 11 years.
The data considers conference realignment shifts (i.e.: Oklahoma is counted toward the SEC figures, USC for the Big Ten, Stanford for the ACC, Utah for the Big 12, etc.).
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