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'Tweaks' to 2025 CFP format not ruled out at annual FBS commissioner meeting

By Austen Bundy | Last updated Jan 19, 2025 4:54 PM ET

The new 12-team College Football Playoff has been mostly a success in its inaugural edition, resulting in two lower seeds meeting in what will still be a highly watched national championship game on Monday (No. 8 Ohio State vs. No. 7 Notre Dame).

However, that doesn't mean the format didn't have its hiccups. The very fact that two non-conference champions, in which all five who did and made the bracket lost in their first game, will play for the national title became a point of contention.

Questions also arose over whether the first-round bye the top-four-ranked conference champions received was more a detriment than a reward.

All five conference champions have been ELIMINATED from the CFP.

All teams with a first-round bye LOST pic.twitter.com/RYGMEfIly1
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) January 3, 2025

ESPN's Heather Dinich reported Sunday that the annual meeting of FBS commissioners in Atlanta, Georgia, didn't yield any permanent solutions to the CFP seeding issue or any others for that matter. But "tweaks" to the 2025 format were not immediately ruled out.

"I would say it's possible, but I don't know if it's going to happen or not," CFP executive director Rich Clark told Dinich on Sunday. "There's probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven't determined that yet."

Any changes made to the 2025 tournament would need unanimous approval from the commissioners, a tall task considering that the threshold will be lowered in 2026.

The 12-team field is set to expand to 14 that same year, with the value of conference championships concerning seeding and byes expected to be re-examined by then as well.

"We're going to tee [the commissioners] up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done ... and then look back and figure out what is it that we need [to change]," Clark said.

Fans shouldn't be holding their collective breath for a massive overhaul of the CFP but meaningful alterations that could benefit the tournament in the long run don't appear to be too far away.

Austen Bundy

Austen Bundy is a journalist and sports junkie from the Washington, D. C. area

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