The 2024 American football season is almost here, meaning 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 talk about how best to expand, the College Football Playoff will officially include a dozen teams this year. More teams means more games, a late 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 pre-season play-off format.
Five conference champions step in
To ensure the conference finals still matter, the top five conference champions in the College Football Playoff rankings are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs.
With four power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC) remaining after the demise of the Pac-12 as we knew it, it’s safe to assume that the champions of those leagues will be among the top five. That leaves one spot for a Group of Five champion. A year ago, Liberty was the top-seeded Group of Five conference champion, and the Flames were rewarded with a blowout loss to Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.
The top four conference champions also get the top four seeds and first-round byes, regardless of where they are in the final CFP rankings. A year ago, that would have been easy. Michigan, Washington, Texas and Alabama all won their conference titles. In 2022, No. 7 Clemson would have gotten the No. 4 seed in this format, as No. 4 Ohio State, No. 5 Alabama and No. 6 Tennessee all failed to win their conferences.
Seven at-large teams
With five guaranteed conference champions in the field, there is room for seven wildcard teams. Those spots go to the top seven teams in the standings that did not win their conference titles.
The No. 5-8 seeds in the first round of the playoffs play in their own 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 blown out Penn State and Oregon would have hosted Missouri. With two of those hypothetical first-round games involving opponents from the same conference, it’s likely the CFP committee will adjust its rankings to avoid first-round games.
Because Notre Dame is an independent, it cannot be seeded higher than No. 5 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 consisting primarily of Mountain West teams.
Play-offs start in December
The first playoff games will be held before most bowls are played. The CFP will begin with one game on Friday, December 20, and then three games will be played on Saturday, December 21. That Saturday will be a huge day of football, with two NFL games as well, since the NFL is playing extra games on Wednesday, December 25.
ESPN has the television rights to the College Football Playoff and has sublicensed two first-round games to TNT.
The last seven matches will be played on neutral ground
The top four teams will not get a chance to play at home, as the final three rounds of the playoffs are played at neutral sites. The quarterfinals are on December 31 and January 1; the Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl are played on New Year’s Eve, and the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl are played on New Year’s Day. The top four teams are assigned to bowl sites “in consideration of historical bowl relationships, and subsequently in consideration of rankings.” Translated, this means that the Big Ten champion will likely go to the Rose Bowl and the SEC champion will likely go to the Sugar Bowl.
The Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl will host the semifinals. The Orange Bowl semifinal is on Thursday, January 9, while the Cotton Bowl is the day after on January 10. This will separate the semifinals from the finals by more than a week. The national championship game is scheduled for January 20 in Atlanta, 11 days after the 2024 national finals.
