How to fix the College Football Playoff: Format, schedule changes necessary with expansion on the horizon

Change is coming to the College Football Playoff. We don’t know what the format will look like in 2026 after the Big Ten and SEC gain control over it, but we know it won’t look like the version we saw in 2024. That format didn’t even last a year, as the powers that be saw the flaws in it and — rightfully — made the correct change in going to straight seeds.

It was a refreshing breath of fresh air to see swift and productive change.

It’s also not something I’m counting on becoming the norm. So while The Powers That Be continue to meet over steak dinners in the coming months to hammer out a format, I’ve decided to gently nudge them in the direction they need to go.

Put the company credit cards away, boys, because Tom has all the answers you need.

A lot of people have shared their ideas for what the ideal College Football Playoff should look like, and plenty have been good. Some even great. However, I’ve yet to find one that addresses all my concerns, and what I believe to be the concerns of the sport at large.

To be clear, I was never a fan of playoff expansion past four teams. Four teams was fine. There were rarely four teams good enough to win a national title in any given season to begin with, but this is a battle that has been lost. You see, the point of the College Football Playoff was never truly about determining the best team; that was simply icing on the cake. No, the primary reason was money. Money is the cake, so an incredible television product was needed that would bring in big brands, and therefore more eyes to the product.

So what I set out to do is create a postseason format that would serve both ends: determine the best team in the country and provide an incredible television product. And, to be clear, that great television product isn’t simply for the postseason. No, my playoff format would increase the television product during the regular season as well. I’m guessing there will be aspects of it you like and some you don’t. That’s fine. There are parts of my proposal I’m not a fan of philosophically, but this is how it must be! In a sport with 135 teams who can only play one game per week, there is no perfectly logical way to determine a champion. If there was, we’d have been doing it all along.

When it’s all said and done, though, I do believe my solution has enough to make everybody mostly happy.

We’ll get to the nitty gritty of it all as we go along, but we’ll start with the basics.

Format

We immediately expand to 16 teams, which serves multiple purposes. First, it eliminates byes and the need to figure out who gets those byes. Second, it creates more playoff games, which leads to more revenue and also opens up slots for more teams.

It will be straight seeding. The No. 1 seed plays the No. 16 and so on. Seeds will be based on where teams finish in the rankings, with conference champions receiving no bonus in their seed. As for the games, the first two rounds will be played on campus. Not only does this lower the impact on fans, who aren’t forced to shell out a bunch of money to travel across the country during the holiday season, but it will give some schools two additional home games. That’s more money!

The semifinals and championship games will be played at neutral sites. The two semifinals rotate annually between the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls, assuming those four bowls want to be part of the process. If they don’t, the Cotton and Peach are waiting. In the years those games aren’t hosting a semifinal they can host a traditional bowl game between non-playoff combatants.

The title game will be auctioned off a la the Super Bowl. There are plenty of football stadiums across the country that make suitable hosts, and the variety of locations will make access to the game better for college football fans across the country.

How teams qualify

There are 16 spots available, so who fills them? Well, it’s simple. The top six conference champions receive automatic bids. That’s right, I said six. Most seasons that means we’ll have the champions of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and two Group of Five champions. One of my primary goals was to make this more of an actual playoff, and providing greater access to everybody accomplishes that.

How do we make it a better television product? By giving the Big Ten and SEC three automatic bids. Is it entirely fair? No, but they’re the biggest leagues with the biggest teams and the biggest ratings. Plus, most years, those leagues are also home to the best teams. Since the creation of the College Football Playoff, Clemson is the only school to win a national title (which it’s done twice) from outside either of those two leagues. Also, using the current formations of our Power Four conferences, going back to the first College Football Playoff Rankings of 2014 there hasn’t been a single season where both the Big Ten and SEC didn’t have three teams ranked in the top 16. Most years they had three in the top 10. So while the automatic berths feel “dirty” from a competition sense, the reality is nothing will change as far as the makeup of the field.

The three automatic bids per league will be determined by conference record, not ranking. I’ll have more on why this is necessary later.

Between the conference champions and automatic bids, that gives us 10 teams, leaving six at-large spots. Now, here’s the twist. The Big Ten and SEC are currently asking for four auto-bids, which we aren’t giving them. Instead, we are placing a cap on conferences.

No conference can get more than four teams into the field in any given season. That’s called compromise!

That means there will be an annual minimum of four at-large berths available to the ACC, Big 12, G5 and Independents. I would assume Notre Dame would grab one most seasons, and then the remaining three would be split between the ACC and Big 12, with the possibility of a third G5 school sneaking in.

On the surface this may seem like a format the Big Ten and SEC would hate, but it’s to their benefit. Since seeding is based on where teams finish in the rankings, limiting the amount of schools from those two leagues provides an “easier” path in the playoff.

The No. 16 seed the No. 1 seed faces in the first round is likely to be the lowest-ranked G5 program. There’s a possibility that, barring an upset, the No. 1 seed could then face another G5 team in the second round. In other words, by expanding the field to include more teams that would cause fans of the 9-3 Big Ten and SEC teams who missed out to angrily type on message boards about how terrible the system is, you increase the likelihood of your best teams advancing further in the tournament, which increases the odds of incredible matchups that will draw the most eyeballs possible.

If we put this format into action, this would’ve been the first round last season.

1. Oregon vs. 16. Army
2. Georgia vs. 15. Clemson
3. Texas vs. 14. Ole Miss
4. Penn State vs. 13. Miami
5. Notre Dame vs. 12. Arizona State
6. Ohio State vs. 11. Alabama
7. Tennessee vs. 10. SMU
8. Indiana vs. 9. Boise State

Hey, Oregon fans, would you have rather played Army at home in the first round last season or Ohio State in the Rose Bowl? That’s what I thought.

So, those are the basics, let’s get to the rest.

Uniform scheduling

One of the more complicating factors in determining a playoff field has been the inequity of schedules faced by teams. Some conferences play eight games, while others play nine. Well, we’re changing that. Every Power Four league will play nine conference games. The SEC may balk at this idea as it has so many times before, but remember that the automatic berths are based on conference record and nothing else. You can go 6-3 in conference play and still earn an automatic berth if that’s good enough to finish in the top three.

I considered going to 10 because that would lead to more crossover among opponents in leagues that continue to expand, but not every league has enough schools to make it work. Plus, convincing the SEC to go from eight to 10 may be a bridge too far. Whether or not leagues keep certain annual rivalries is up to the individual leagues. 

As for nonconference scheduling, the Power Four leagues would be required to play at least one nonconference game against another Power Four school, a Group of Five school and an FCS school for playoff eligibility. These games should be seen as an opportunity, and I expect you’ll see more marquee nonconference matchups than you might think.

Nonconference games are something of a free roll in this format. If the automatic berths are determined by conference record, Georgia can play Ohio State in the regular season and the loser is not harmed in its bid for an automatic berth. However, winning a game of that magnitude would carry a lot of weight in the chase for an at-large bid should that team not finish in the top three of its conference standings. The same can be said of every ACC and Big 12 school that fails to earn the automatic bid.

Obviously, not every school would be aggressive in its pursuit of nonconference opponents, but that’s the case now. What matters is we’d still see plenty of big-time matchups, which will provide quality television content early in the season.

Scheduling Group of Five games gives schools from those leagues the chance to take a Power Four scalp, which will help boost their resume as they chase one of the two spots available to G5 champions.

As for the FCS games, I have two motivating factors. The first is that these teams could use a “break!” We’re asking them to play a lot of games here. The second is playing games against FBS teams goes a long way in the athletic department budgets of those FCS schools, and I don’t want to abandon them at a time when the gap continues to widen.

Then there’s Notre Dame. We’re making every Power Four team play 10 games against Power Four competition. We will ask the same of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish must schedule at least 10 games per season against Power Four teams. The school is already doing that in 2025, so it’s not as if we’re forcing it to do something it’s not already willing to do. Also, playing Notre Dame would fulfill any Power Four school’s Power Four nonconference requirement. Notre Dame is one of the premier programs in the sport, and we want it in the College Football Playoff when it’s worthy of selection. However, just because we’re not going to force it into a conference doesn’t mean we’re going to give it preferential treatment, either.

Calendar

A serious problem the current playoff faces is the looming specter of the NFL playoffs, which is not a battle college football will ever win. You can’t escape the league, as its regular season will still be raging and Roger Goodell will keep trying to put games on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays. Hell, he may even invent an eighth day of the week he’ll call Footballday.

But we can try to mitigate the damage the NFL will do to the playoff by trying to keep the College Football Playoff from overlapping too much with the NFL playoffs.

So, the first thing we’re going to do is start the season earlier. Television networks love starting the season on Labor Day weekend because it allows them to play games from Thursday through Monday. Five straight days of college football before the NFL has begun is television crack. But guess what? Even if we start the season a week earlier, the networks can still do that, and it’ll still be before the NFL season begins.

The first college football games of the 2025 season will be played on Saturday, August 23. I propose we start them on Thursday, August 14 instead. Don’t tell me it’s too hot for games as if it’s any cooler on Aug. 23 than the 14th. If we include three byes for every school, that means the regular season lasts 15 weeks. Again, using the 2025 calendar, the final weekend of the regular season would be Saturday, Nov. 22, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

College football then takes Thanksgiving off. We spend the week arguing with our family about the final playoff rankings and which teams were snubbed while discussing who will win the first-round games next week.

The first round begins the following Friday night, Dec. 5, with two games. The other six games are played on Saturday, Dec. 6. The second round is the next week, the third the week after that, and our championship game is played on Saturday, Dec. 27, two days after Christmas when everybody is busy not working and has nothing better to do than watch the national championship.

In years when Christmas falls on Saturday, adjust as needed, whether that means starting the season a week earlier or going from three bye weeks to two during the regular season.

Conference championship games

We’re getting rid of them. I know the conferences and networks love them because they’re cash cows, but they don’t serve much of a purpose anymore. Conference champions will be decided by regular season record. How conferences choose to handle tiebreaker scenarios when needed is up to them. They can use the combined record of conference opponents or the College Football Playoff Rankings; I don’t care. As long as everybody in that league knows the rules they’re playing by, that’s all that matters. 

The week will be replaced with a well-deserved bye to allow our playoff participants a chance to heal and catch their breath.

Bowl games

The playoff ends before New Year’s, which will no doubt bum some of you out. Believe me, I get it, but I think it’s better not to force the players and coaches to play during Thanksgiving, and only two schools will have to miss time with the family around Christmas.

But at no point have I said we’re abolishing bowl games. Hell no! Keep those beauties around. There’s no reason bowls cannot continue being played during our new playoff, and there better be two days of games on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

People will still watch them. They’re football games, and Americans love football. One of the silver linings of capping the Big Ten and SEC at four playoff teams is that every year there will be big-name programs to fill the slate of New Year’s bowl games.

Selection process

I’m not going to overhaul the process too much, but I am going to change it. Yes, a committee will still get together at the end of the season to put together a ranking, but no, we will not have weekly updates from that committee (you’ll find out why later). The committee will comprise college administrators, former coaches, former players and members of the college football media. I want media in the room to provide greater transparency of how the process works to eliminate all the conspiracy theories that rise every year.

I’m not dumb enough to think they’ll stop, but the more eyes we allow to see how the sausage is made, the better.

However, the committee’s ranking will not be final. We’re going back to using some computer polls as well. Power ratings, to be exact.

For those unfamiliar, I don’t mean power ratings in the sense of somebody writing their weekly power rankings for you to read. I mean the kind of power ratings that are used by sportsbooks to determine spreads and totals for every single game you watch during the season. We’re going to hire somebody away from a sportsbook to put together College Football Playoff Power Ratings. Hell, maybe we’ll sell the rights to these ratings to a sportsbook.

We’re also going to use the AP Top 25 poll because if the AP poll is part of the formula, we don’t need to do a damn CFP Rankings show every week.

We’ll then blend the committee poll with the AP poll and power ratings to get the final College Football Playoff Rankings. The committee and AP polls will carry 1.5 times the weight of the power rating. The reason for this is I still want results to matter more than possible results. However, I’m including power ratings because, again, this is a television product. They will help get “better” teams into the field, which will lead to more interesting games as the tournament goes on, which leads to ratings, money, etc. We went over this earlier.

Broadcast rights

You’re reading this on CBS Sports, which means I’m part of the same company that owns CBS, a network that televises college football games across its multiple platforms. But don’t let that lead you to believe I have an agenda with this latest change. I don’t. I would feel this way if I were just the guy sitting next to you at the bar rambling about how he would fix things.

The College Football Playoff would be divided among multiple networks every year. When you give one network exclusive rights to the product, that network then has the ability to exert influence over the product, and I want to avoid that as much as possible. Like, you know, a weekly rankings release show that has no actual value other than filling air time on a Tuesday night.

So whether it’s a combination of CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC or a streaming platform, what matters is multiple outlets broadcast the games. It can follow a similar path to the one in the NFL, where the first three rounds are distributed among them, while the championship game rotates between the partners on an annual basis.

So the title game would be on CBS one season, then ESPN, then Fox and you get the idea. Everybody gets a taste.

That’s it! That’s my proposal. It is not a perfect proposal, and I’m sure there are some unforeseen kinks that would need to be ironed out, but I have full confidence in our capabilities as a species to do so. It’s a format that helps preserve the value of regular season games, as well as the bowl system, which, corny as those bowls may be, they’re the lovable kind of corny. I also firmly believe it’s a solution that addresses as many concerns as possible while also giving us not only a great television product but a format that is highly likely to produce a deserving champion every year.