A Look at the New 12-Team College Football Playoff Format

The NFL is just over two weeks away from starting, but regarding NCAA football, that is literally around the corner. The 2024 season of Division I football starts on Saturday, August 24 with a plethora of games all over the country and all around television. As long as I can remember, while the NFL owned Sundays, NCAA football owned Saturdays. Here in the West Coast, games aired as early as 9AM Pacific Standard Time, and the day of action usually spanned 12 hours.

Even before I had cable, I did enjoy college football Saturdays, but cable and digital TV has made those days very chaotic--in a good way. Nowadays, CBS stands as the SEC's main network, NBC airs Notre Dame games, ABC has the top games, Fox is the main Big 10 channel, and then there's the ESPN networks airing games, and the Power Six conferences have their own channels. This year, Turner Sports will be involved. Holy guacamole!

So, of course, August 24 begins the perennial road to crowning the National Champions, and starting this year, it's a whole different ball game. For the last decade, the quest to the championship finally...finally has been determined via a playoff format after the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has been mired in so much controversy and bullshit. The first playoff took place in 2014 and was played under a four-team format, with the playoff teams selected every year. It was always the top four ranked teams who played in this round robin, with the semifinal games--known as the College Football Playoff (CFP) Semifinals--usually taking place on either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, while the National Championship occurred on the second Monday in January.

This year, as announced during the previous year, the playoff has extended. I figured that it would extend eventually, but I had the playoff (at most) doubling to eight teams. The NCAA didn't double down on this; rather, they tripled down:

12 teams. Twelve teams! This year and next year will feature a 12-team playoff, with an option in 2026 to possibly extend it even more. Here's how this will work. The 12 playoff teams will be selected on Selection Day, which will take place on December 8 this year. The five best conference champions will receive guaranteed bids, while the seven highest ranked remaining teams will receive at-large bids. As for the College Football Playoff bracket, the top four teams will receive byes straight to the Quarterfinals, while the remaining teams (seeded #5-#12) will play in the First Round. The First Round games are not Bowl Games, and the higher seeds will host the lower seeds in these games (#12 @ #5, #11 @ #6, #10 @ #7, and #9 @ #8).

The four First Round winners will advance to the Quarterfinals, and there is no reseeding; it's a set bracket. #1 will face the #8/#9 winner, #2 will face the #7/#10 winner, #3 will face the #6/#11 winner, and #4 will face the #5/#12 winner. The Quarterfinals and Semifinals will be hosted by the New Year's Six Bowls--Cotton, Fiesta, Rose, Peach, Orange, and Sugar--on a rotating basis.

Regarding this year's schedule, the First Round will take place on December 20 and 21, 2024, with one game being simulcast on ABC and ESPN on 20th, while the other three games (two on TNT, one on ABC/ESPN) taking place on the 21st. ESPN will have the rest of the Playoff, beginning with the Fiesta Bowl (the first CFP Quarterfinal) on New Year's Eve, while the other three Quarterfinals (Peach, Rose, and Sugar Bowls) will take place on New Year's Day. The Semifinals will take place on January 9 (Orange Bowl) and January 10 (Cotton Bowl), and the National Championship will take place in Atlanta on January 20, 2025.

I'm all ready for this college football season! The playoff field tripling in size has opened things up. The big conferences will be giving more than they usually do in this year's quest, and the games played in November all the way to championship December will definitely be intriguing! I sense some wild moments in this first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, regardless of who gets in.