The College Football Playoff management committee agreed Thursday to change the seeding format for the 12-team field this season, no longer reserving byes for conference champions and instead having seeds match the committee’s rankings.

“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP Management Committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment,” said Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff. “This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season.”

The format for the 2026 is still undecided, with more expansion likely on the way, and not expected to be settled soon. The next in-person meeting of the management committee is scheduled for mid-June.

The 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director who make up the committee held a call to vote on a change in the seeding, and it received the unanimous approval needed.

The format for last season’s first 12-team CFP reserved the top four seeds and byes that go with them for the four highest-ranked conference champions that made the Playoff.

That produced an odd bracket last year when ninth-ranked Boise State, the Mountain West champion, was the third seed and 12th-ranked Arizona State, the Big 12 champ, was seeded fourth.

The expected change would have the seeds match the selection committee’s final rankings, regardless of conference affiliation. A move to straight seeding would also allow independent Notre Dame to receive a top-four seed and a first-round bye.

The five highest-ranked conference champions are still guaranteed a spot in the Playoff, even if they are ranked outside the committee’s final top 12. If a conference champ is ranked outside the top 12, it will be bumped up into the bottom seeds. That was the case last year when ACC champ Clemson was ranked 16th but seeded 12th.

The change will come with a tweak to the CFP financial agreement, too, according to two people involved in the decision. Each team that makes the CFP receives $4 million and another $4 million for reaching the quarterfinals.

With a seeding change, the top-four conference championships would receive $8 million, which goes to teams that reach the quarterfinals regardless of whether they advance to that round.

What does this mean

A seeding change for this season seemed destined to go through for months, but as with everything CFP-related, it takes a while to get things done.

The conferences that benefited last year — the Big 12 and Mountain West — and were likely to benefit again in 2025 — the ACC — from the original format were in no hurry to make the change.

ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips noted earlier this year that NFL playoff seeding gives preference to division winners over wildcards with better records. A proposal to change that was submitted by the Detroit Lions but withdrawn before it ever got to a vote by the league’s owners.

Phillips had talked about wanting to look at the CFP format holistically and avoiding a one-off format change just for 2025.

Ultimately, though, that’s exactly what happened. Phillips indicated last week he could support a change to straight seeding for this season and from there it was all but a foregone conclusion.

It’s probably the right move. The seeding seemed to make the CFP both more complicated for fans to follow and less fair for the teams competing. The problem was that the format was out of date before it finally went into effect.

The 12-team format the CFP used last season was unveiled back in 2021, well before massive realignment reshaped major college football, wiping out the Pac-12 as a power conference and shifting even more big-brand schools into the SEC and Big Ten.

With the Power 5 down to a Power 4 and even more separation within that group, the first 12-team CFP created a bracket that gave fifth-seeded Texas and sixth-seeded Penn State more manageable second-round opponents than top-seeded, Big Ten champion Oregon.

The Longhorns faced fourth-seeded Arizona State in the Peach Bowl, Penn State played No. 3 seed Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl and Oregon got a rematch against eventual national champion Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

The switch, though, is likely to make conference championship games in the Big Ten and SEC even less consequential. Last year, the winners (Georgia and Oregon) received byes and the losers (Texas and Penn State) had to play in the first round, albeit at home.

With straight seeding, all four of those teams would have received byes last year, though if Notre Dame had been eligible for a bye, it could have changed the conversation about the Irish for the committee. — Ralph Russo, senior college football writer 

(Photo: Kirby Lee / USA Today via Imagn Images)