The first twelve-team College Football Playoff (CFP) is officially here. Once seen as a complicated process involving mathematical equations and many disagreements, college football’s postseason structure has changed a lot over the past thirty years.
It started in 1997 when college football’s six major conferences joined forces to create the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS. This system used a complex equation to pit the top two teams against each other, ranking teams based on three criteria:
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The average of human polls (such as the AP Poll and Coaches Poll)
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A compilation of computer rankings
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A power-of-scheme factor
The problem with this process was that it was constantly changing and deliberately opaque. Over the years, alternative categories such as quality win and margin of victory have been added or removed. Many fans had no idea how it worked and claimed it was aimed at the blue bloods of the sport. Worst of all, the Coaches Poll and AP Poll didn’t always agree on the national champion, even though a title game took place.
So in 2014, the College Football Playoff was created. Instead of letting a computer decide the national championship game, a committee of thirteen people would now vote to determine the top four teams in the country. These four teams were then invited to a knockout tournament to crown that year’s national champions.
Some people say that a thirteen-member committee that votes to determine the best teams in the country inherently introduces more bias than a computer algorithm — hello, the state of Florida! However, almost everyone agrees that more games are better, and given the financial success of the four-team format, the play-off has now been expanded to twelve teams.
The new format is simple: conference champions from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and the top-ranked school from the Group of Five receive an automatic berth in the playoffs. The four highest-ranked champions receive a bye into the quarterfinals, while the lowest-ranked champion plays in the first round with the other seven major teams.
The first round matches take place on college campuses and are hosted by the highest seeded players in each game. The quarterfinals and semifinals are hosted by the more prestigious bowls – Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl – and the national championship takes place at a neutral site selected by the committee.
There is a little oddity with Notre Dame. Even if the Irish are the highest-ranked team before the start of the playoffs, they will never get a top-four seed (and a first-round bye) because they don’t belong to a conference. But overall, the twelve-team format makes for more intriguing matchups and generates significantly more money for these schools.
By expanding the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams this season, there will now be 11 games with national championship implications instead of three. This additional inventory allowed the CFP Commission to sign a massive media rights expansion with ESPN last year worth $7.8 billion over six years, or $1.3 billion per year.
In fact, there is so much extra inventory now compared to years past that ESPN has actually sublicensed some of the first round games to TNT. ESPN will still produce the games and use its own broadcast talent. However, TNT pays ESPN about $25 million per game to use the TNT logo and cash in on advertising revenue.
The individual teams and conferences also benefit from this TV money, as each conference receives a percentage of annual revenue based on past success.
For example, starting in 2026, when the new ESPN expansion kicks off, SEC and Big Ten schools will receive approximately $21 million each, while each ACC and Big 12 school will receive $13 million and $12 million, respectively.
Payouts for the Group of Five schools will be lower, at about $1.8 million each, and Notre Dame’s payout as an independent school will average about $12 million per year.
But those payments are just a floor. For this year’s playoffs, the conferences will also receive $4 million for each school participating in the 12-team field. Conferences receive an additional $4 million if one of their teams reaches the quarterfinals. They will receive a check for $6 million if one of these teams advances to the semifinals and another $6 million if that team advances to the national championship game.
Take the Big Ten, for example. Ohio State, Indiana and Penn State will receive $4 million for creating the field. Oregon automatically receives $8 million because it is already in the quarterfinals with a first-round bye. These payments do not include the $3 million compensation the conference gets for each team (per round) to cover costs, and total payouts could reach $50 million if a Big Ten school wins it all.
Television money plays a big role in the equation, but there are other factors as well.
First-round hosts, for example, won’t be able to maintain the expected seven figures in ticket revenue from home games. The College Football Playoff will redistribute ticket revenue to each participating conference once the tournament concludes.
Home teams in the first round are allowed to keep the on-field sponsorship, making these deals more lucrative if a team consistently reaches the playoffs.
But while the color schemes will match the look of a stadium during the regular season, the CFP logo will be on every field. The CFP will also supply goalpost casings and monitor all digital signage, with schools required to cover up all lower-tier advertising seen on television so it can be replaced by CFP sponsors.
There is some uncertainty about how much home field advantage teams will have since it is a unique time of year with winter break and families going on vacation. But the CFP did its best to keep ticket prices low before the secondary market took over, requiring all schools to sell student tickets for $25 and primary market tickets between $100 and $250, with the exception of clubs and suites.
The CFP also signed 90 deals with hotels in each of the 134 FBS student cities to ensure hotels would be available for the first round games. And home teams are required to provide visiting teams with 3,500 tickets, 1,500 of which are in the lower bowl.
The College Football Playoff committee has made it clear that it doesn’t know how Year 1 will play out. Expectations are high, and adding eight more teams seemed to add more drama to the conclusion of the 2024 college football regular season.
This whole structure could change in just a few years. Several conference commissioners are already discussing expanding the playoff from 12 to 14 teams when the new CFP contract takes effect in 2026. But whether that happens, the result is clear.
College football is big business. The expanded play-off has made it even bigger. And with NIL budgets growing every year, the commercialization of the sport won’t stop there.
