FRISCO, Texas — Although the future format of the College Football Playoff remains in flux, a key tweak to the selection process is set to be finalized in August.
The CFP is expected to present its final version of new, refined metrics involving strength of schedule in mid-August, when its 13-person selection committee convenes in Colorado Springs for their annual preseason meetings, CFP executive director Rich Clark told CBS Sports on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the debate on whether to expand the playoff from 12 to 16 teams — and reward multiple automatic qualifiers to the Big Ten and SEC — still hangs over the head of the sport, with no resolution in sight other than the promise of a looming Dec. 1 deadline that will force the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevacqua to make a decision. Clark confirmed the CFP’s executives have not met since June, when format discussions restarted with multiple formats for 12-, 14- and 16-team fields on the table. Executives are not scheduled to meet in person again until Sept. 24.
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“I know they want to [decide] before [Dec. 1],” Clark said. “They want to get it resolved so that they can make decisions within their conferences and the rest of college football can make decisions as well.”
CFP format could directly affect whether the SEC moves from eight to nine conference games, a sticking point for the league that has not been resolved despite intense discussions over the last three years. Universal conference scheduling is a concern among many in the industry; the Big Ten and Big 12 play nine conference games, compared to eight in the ACC and SEC.
At the very least, imminent changes to the tools utilized by the selection committee are on the way. The selection committee will meet Aug. 12-14 to learn more about the new metrics.
“We still have time if we want to tweak something or need to … but our goal would be to be able to brief our selection committee members at the August meeting so that they have a complete understanding of what they’re going to be dealing with this fall,” Clark said.
The new metrics will be utilized for the upcoming 2025 season. The CFP will also transition to straight seeding for the 12-team CFP — for at least one year — with spots reserved for the five highest-ranked conference champions, but they’re no longer guaranteed a first-round bye.
Conferences advocated for a reevaluation of SOS metrics used by the selection committee after the 2024 season, and a study was commissioned in the spring by SportSource Analytics, the CFP’s metrics partner. They outsourced help from mathematicians, including from Google and the University at Buffalo, to tweak the formula. Proposed changes were presented to the 10 FBS conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletics director Pete Bevecqua in June, but more tweaks could be made before the final presentation is provided to the selection committee in August.
“We got some feedback from the commissioners on just preliminary data points, but we’re still working with some of our data analytics professionals to figure out really what it should look like and how we can tweak it,” Clark said. “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s going to be sweeping changes, but there are going to be tweaks and adjustments. … Relevant to the data that we have, if you look back to where the conferences were 10 years ago when some of these data points were established, it looked totally different. We’re trying to make data points that are relevant for where college football is now.”
Conference realignment has significantly shifted the landscape, expanding the SEC from 14 to 16 teams and the Big Ten from 14 to 18 teams, as both the ACC and Big Ten have expanded their boundaries from coast to coast over the last three years.
SEC administrators criticized the selection committee in the offseason after three, three-loss teams missed the playoff last season: Ole Miss, South Carolina and Alabama. Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin outright questioned whether a committee should exist.
The conference even distributed a seven-page memo entitled “A Regular Season Gauntlet” to assembled media members after its spring meetings last month in Florida.
In the memo, the SEC ranked No. 1 over the last decade in a number of metrics, including SOS and strength of record (SOR). SEC teams comprise the entire top 10 of the toughest schedules for 2025 in ESPN’s Football Power Index this summer. The FPI was one of the several metrics the SEC used in its public push for changes within the selection committee’s tools.
“The rigor of this schedule is unique and it stands alone by comparison,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said at the conclusion of the league’s spring meetings in June. “How is that best respected in this national evaluation system?”
Discussions on the CFP format for 2026 and beyond remain open, although formal talks have not taken place among the 11 executives since June. The Big Ten has long supported a 4-4-2-2-1-3 format that provides four automatic qualifiers for the Big Ten and SEC, two apiece for the ACC and Big 12, one spot for the highest-ranked Group of 6 champion and three at-large selections.
“The goal is to play more nonconference games, because if you’re qualifying for the CFP off your conference record and then a play-in game, the fact that you play a tough SEC or ACC or Big 12 team and maybe get beat on the road, or whatever the result is, that might impact your seeding down the road, but it’s not going to impact your access,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said in June on FOX Sports analyst Joel Klatt’s podcast. “There’s three at-larges, so yeah, it does a little bit. But, at the end of the day, that loss isn’t fatal.”
The SEC, however, expressed interest in considering a format with more at-large spots after its coaches in May voiced they prefer the 5+11 format proposed by the ACC and Big 12. That format awards five automatic bids to conference champions and the rest to the top 11 teams.
On Tuesday, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark reiterated his support for a “5+11” format, which he said is “fair” for college football, even though he believes it may hurt the Big 12. “I’m doubling down today on 5-11,” he said at the Big 12’s media days.
At the heart of the Big Ten’s argument is the belief that more automatic qualifiers — and a potential play-in championship weekend — would keep more fan bases invested later in the season, which ultimately leads to better fan attendance and television ratings. Play-in games would also provide more inventory for television partners (and more revenue for schools).
Petitti argues 11 at-large spots in a 16-team playoff will make comparing and contrasting teams more difficult for the selection committee.
Negotiating control over the future of the CFP format is in the hands of the Big Ten and SEC, according to a memorandum of understanding signed last year. A bigger cut of the money (29% to each conference) is also set to be paid, starting with the 2026 season. The Big Ten and SEC have largely been in lockstep on major issues until the recent divergence concerning the CFP format.
Clark reiterated Tuesday that any changes tothe format will be discussed among all commissioners.
“It’s a group effort here, and we’ll give them all the information that we can to help them get there,” he said.
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