New CFP Seeding is a Step Back for the ACC: The Extra Point

Just one year after transitioning to a 12-team playoff format from a four-team one, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Management Committee is deciding to step in a new direction.

The old format, which lasted solely for the 2024-25 season, consisted of a first-round bye for the four highest-ranked conference champions, and guaranteed that the five highest-ranked conference champions earned a spot in the Playoff.

The new 12-team bracket is going to be seeded by whatever the CFP Selection Committee decides, with the four highest-ranked teams from that seeding receiving a first-round bye. 

Additionally, if a team that is ranked outside of the top 12 is among the five highest-ranked conference champions, that team—or teams—move into the Playoff as the 12th seed, 11th seed, and so on, depending on the number of conference champions outside of the top 12.

The remaining operational policies for the old 12-team format will stay the same for the 2025-26 season.

While the new structure awards who the Committee deems are the top four teams in the country with a first-round bye, this format is strikingly reminiscent of the four-team playoff format, just with a new look.

Ultimately, because of this change, the new format overlooks conference champions existing outside of the Southeastern Conference and Big Ten—the conferences which dominated the four-team CFP format—and will severely limit the chances of an Atlantic Coast Conference team from contending in the future.

During the 10 seasons of the four-team playoff, the SEC filled 12 playoff spots, or 30 percent, while the Big Ten had nine, which is another 22.5 percent. Nothing is stopping the Committee from reviving this trend with these new addendums.

This revision to the 12-team format makes sense in principle, considering how often teams from the SEC and Big Ten have won the College Football National Championship, and tend to prove year in and year out how they accumulate the most success. But just a year of testing the now-old 12-team format is far too little for a number of reasons, chief among them being the current state of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL).

The idea of the 12-team format was to give fair representation to every deserving team in any conference in college football, whether it be the SEC and Big Ten or the ACC and the Big 12, the latter of which—for more than a decade—have not experienced the same form of representation. The Committee’s decision to leave out 12-0 Florida State from the 2023-24 CFP is the most recent, egregious example.

A 12-0 season in the ACC is not the same as a 12-0 season in the SEC, per se, but every other NCAA playoff format, most notably March Madness for college basketball, gives teams in what are deemed "worse" conferences a chance at the very least. Those Cinderella runs happen for a reason.

The 2024-25 CFP gave first-round byes to Oregon, Arizona State, Georgia, and Boise State—two of which are not in the SEC or Big Ten, and one, Oregon, who just recently joined the Big Ten—and all four were knocked out in the second round. This gave the Committee more of a foothold to make another change. 

But the sample size is too insignificant to determine how teams outside of the SEC and Big Ten will do in future years in the Playoff, especially considering how NIL is reshaping the college football landscape. The SEC and Big Ten are already losing a grip on recruiting due to NIL, and teams outside of those two conferences, or in the lower ranks of them, will continue to rise up.

Overall, this next step in the CFP process screams control. The ones in charge—the Committee—are not represented equally across conferences, with the SEC and Big Ten dominating those decisions as well, mostly due to recency bias.

While 12 teams is still a lot better than four, it won’t be a surprise to see the top four teams, which are selected by the Committee and receive a bye, come out of the SEC and Big Ten disproportionately to the other conferences for years to follow.

This modification makes it abundantly clear who is in the front seat in these decisions, and shows how the ACC is still at a disadvantage in terms of its support system within the Committee and at the CFP decision-making level.

For more information on the decision, click here.