PASADENA, Calif. — On Tuesday and Wednesday, the College Football Playoff’s ludicrous seeding system will be on full display.
Four quarterfinal games, two legitimate matchups — Georgia vs. Notre Dame and Oregon vs. Ohio State — and two matchups conceived after realignment made the original plan obsolete.
No. 3 “seed” Boise State and No. 4 “seed” Arizona State absolutely belong in the College Football Playoff as conference champions. They do not, however, under any reasonable analysis, metrics, straw poll or ranking system deserve a first-round bye.
Boise State is an 11-point underdog to No. 6 “seed” Penn State, while Arizona State is a 12.5-point underdog to No. 5 “seed” Texas.
Yes, it’s college football, and there have been numerous upsets by underdogs twice as large. This doesn’t mean Boise State and Arizona State can’t or won’t win either game, but neither team should have received a first-round bye when the College Football Playoff selection committee ranked the Broncos ninth and the Sun Devils 12th.
The good news — for the overall legitimacy of the College Football Playoff — is multiple sources said there will be “in-depth discussions” about changing the seeding process for the 2025 season when the conference commissioners meet later this month.
This would provide first-round byes to the top four teams in the final rankings regardless of whether it won a conference title, sources said.
In 2026, it’s unknown what the playoff will look like. Twelve or 14 teams? 120 teams? Who knows, but it absolutely will not feature the same seeding format as this season. What 2026 will look like is unknown except that SEC and Big Ten bigwigs Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti's fingerprints will be all over it.
So, what about 2025? Sources said there's momentum to do something for next season — the final year of the current 12-year contract — to tweak the seeding so teams not deserving a first-round bye don’t jump five or six teams ranked ahead of them.
The most popular concept for 2025 is to still give automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions but award the top four seeds to the selection committee’s four-highest ranked teams, sources said.
“We should be open to getting (the seeding) right regardless of what that means,” a commissioner said. “But protecting conference champions and securing a spot in the playoff is a must.”
Another conference commissioner said they “could get there,” to allow first-round byes to the four highest seeds teams, regardless if they were a conference champion.
What makes this tricky to pull off is there must be unanimous agreement by all parties: conference commissioners, the College Football Playoff management committee and, of course, ESPN has to give its blessing. That’s the only way the final year of the contract could change.
A change won’t guarantee there still won’t be lopsided results in the first-round matchups or quarterfinal round, but at least they would appear more competitive.
Here are the current seedings, along with what the seedings would be based on the selection committee rankings (not guaranteeing first-round byes to conference champions):
*-conference champions
- (1) *Oregon, (1) *Oregon
- (2) *Georgia, (2) *Georgia
- (3) *Boise State, (3) Texas
- (4) *Arizona State, (4) Penn State
- (5) Texas, (5) Notre Dame
- (6) Penn State, (6) Ohio State
- (7) Notre Dame, (7) Tennessee
- (8) Ohio State, (8) Indiana
- (9) Tennessee, (9) *Boise State
- (10) Indiana, (10) SMU
- (11) SMU, (11) *Arizona State
- (12) *Clemson, (12) *Clemson
Here are the 2024 first-round point spreads and results (seeding in parentheses):
*-conference champions
- (12) *Clemson at (5) Texas -13.5 — Longhorns won by 14
- (11) SMU at (6) Penn State -9 — Nittany Lions won by 28
- (10) Indiana at (7) Notre Dame -7 — Irish won by 10
- (9) Tennessee at (8) Ohio State -7.5 — Buckeyes won by 25
Here are the current quarterfinal point spreads (seeding in parentheses):
- (8) Ohio State -2.5 vs. (1) *Oregon
- (2) *Georgia -1.5 vs. (5) Notre Dame
- (6) Penn State -11 vs. (3) *Boise State
- (5) Texas -12.5 vs. (4) *Arizona State
Now, here's how the first-round matchups would have looked if the seedings were based on the rankings (with the five conference champions not guaranteed first-round byes). Projected point spreads from Action Network’s Collin Wilson:
- (12) *Clemson at (5) Notre Dame -11½
- (11) *Arizona State at (6) Ohio State -14
- (10) SMU at (7) Tennessee -7
- (9) *Boise State at (8) Indiana -8½
If the higher-seeded home teams won the first-round matchups, this would have been the quarterfinal matchups and projected point spreads from Wilson:
- (1) *Oregon -9.5 vs. (8) Indiana
- (2) *Georgia -3 vs. (7) Tennessee
- (3) Texas -2 vs. (6) Ohio State
- (5) Notre Dame -1 vs. (4) Penn State
So, what’s different? Two non-champions — Texas and Penn State — receive first-round byes because the committee ranked them Nos. 3 and 4, respectively.
Three of the five conference champions — Boise State, Arizona State and Clemson — received three of the four lowest seeds in line with the selection committee’s rankings. Boise State drops from No. 3 to No. 9, and Arizona State from No. 4 to No. 11.
By ranking the teams based on seedings, the first-round games still have the same lopsided spreads — and likely results. However, the quarterfinal round looks much, much more competitive with three of the four games featuring point spreads of three points or less.
Do games with smaller point spreads guarantee more competitive games? No, but they appear more fair and actually reward the better teams.
The current seeding system makes college football the only sport — professional or amateur — where the No. 1 seed (Oregon) has the hardest path to a title, while the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds (Texas and Penn State) have the easiest.
There's hope the powers to be will change this monstrosity for 2025.
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