The 2024 college football season is almost here, which means the first 12-team postseason in the sport’s history is just a few months away.
After a decade of two rounds and three games and years of discussion about how best to expand, the College Football Playoff will officially feature a dozen teams this year. More teams equals more games, a later national championship game and home playoff games for the first time in college football history.
Here’s what you need to know about the new playoff format before the season begins.
Five conference champions qualify
To ensure that conference title games will always carry weight, the top five conference champions in the College Football Playoff rankings are guaranteed a playoff spot.
With four major conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC) still in the running after the demise of the Pac-12 as we knew it, it’s safe to assume that the champions of those leagues will be in the top five. That leaves one more spot for a Group of Five champion. A year ago, the highest-ranked Group of Five champion was Liberty, and the Flames were rewarded with a crushing loss to Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.
The top four conference champions will also receive the top four seeds and first-round byes, regardless of their position in the final CFP standings. A year ago, this would have been easy. Michigan, Washington, Texas and Alabama all won their conference titles. In 2022, No. 7 Clemson would have earned the No. 4 seed in this format, as No. 4 Ohio State, No. 5 Alabama and No. 6 Tennessee failed to win their conferences.
Seven large-scale teams
With five conference champions assured in the field, there is room for seven wild-card teams. Those spots will be awarded to the top seven teams in the standings that did not win their conference title.
Teams seeded 5-8 will host first-round playoff games in their respective stadiums. A year ago, No. 5 Florida State would have hosted No. 12 Liberty, while Georgia would have hosted Ole Miss, Ohio State would have beaten Penn State and Oregon would have hosted Missouri. With two of those hypothetical first-round games pitting opponents from the same conference, it’s plausible that the CFP committee would change its rankings to avoid conference play in the first round.
Notre Dame being an independent team, it can’t be ranked higher than fifth in the CFP. The same goes for Oregon State and Washington State, as they are the last two teams left in the Pac-12 and play a schedule that is mostly comprised of Mountain West teams.
The playoffs begin in December
The first playoff games will take place before the majority of the games are played. The CFP will begin on Friday, December 20th with one game, followed by three games on Saturday, December 21st. That Saturday will be a huge day of football, with two NFL games also taking place as the NFL will play additional games on Wednesday, December 25th.
ESPN owns the television rights to the College Football Playoffs and has sublicensed two first-round games to TNT.
The last seven games will be played on neutral grounds.
The top four teams will not have the option to play at home, as the final three rounds of the playoffs will be played at neutral sites. The quarterfinals will be on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1; the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl will be on Dec. 24, and the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl will be on Jan. 1. The top four teams will be assigned to bowl sites “by considering historical bowl relationships and then considering seeding.” In other words, the Big Ten champion will likely go to the Rose Bowl and the SEC champion will go to the Sugar Bowl.
The semifinals will be played at the Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl. The Orange Bowl semifinal will be played on Thursday, January 9, while the Cotton Bowl semifinal will be played the following day, January 10. There will then be more than a week between the semifinals and the title game. The national title game is scheduled for January 20 in Atlanta, 11 days later than the 2024 national title game.
