CFP working group recommends 12-team playoff format
The four-team College Football Playoff format may soon be a thing of the past.
A CFP working group formally recommended a new 12-team format Thursday, which would see the six highest-ranked conference champions make the cut, along with six at-large bids, according to a CFP release.
A management committee will review the recommendation next week at a meeting in Chicago, although a potential change will not go into effect this year or next, the release states.
“The four-team format has been very popular and is a big success,” the members of the four-person working group said in a statement. “But it’s important that we consider the opportunity for more teams and more student-athletes to participate in the playoff. After reviewing numerous options, we believe this proposal is the best option to increase participation, enhance the regular season and grow the national excitement of college football.”
Any change to the preexisting template would be the first since the CFP system was adopted for the 2014 season, wherein a selection committee picks the top four teams in the nation to match up for a semifinal round and a subsequent national championship game for the winners.
In the new recommended format, the four highest-ranked conference champions would receive a first-round bye, while the eight other teams would play first-round games on campus.
Ohio State has been selected to play in the CFP in four separate years, with the Buckeyes defeating Oregon to claim the first CFP title in January 2015. Ohio State was bounced from the semifinals by Clemson in both 2016 and 2019, but got past the Tigers this past season to earn a berth in the national title game against Alabama, where Ryan Day and company ultimately came up short.
Ohio State’s four appearances in the CFP are tied with Oklahoma for the third-most behind only Alabama and Clemson, which each have six.
The Buckeyes are the only program in college football to have been ranked in the top 12 by the CFP committee on selection day in each of the past seven years, while contemporaries like Alabama and Clemson each sat outside the top 12 in at least one season.
Playoff expansion has been a pervasive topic for as long as the CFP era has been in effect, and particularly due to the fact that the four-team format means at least one Power Five conference champion will be left on the outside looking in every year.
In 2014, Big 12 co-champions Baylor and TCU were the first two teams out, leading to the creation of a championship game in the conference moving forward, and the Pac-12 champion has been left out in five of the past six years, including four years straight.
Ohio State was left out of the playoff as a two-loss conference champion in 2017, and did not make the cut the next season either as a one-loss conference champion.
The lack of Group of Five conference champions in the playoff has been another point of contention with the current CFP format, with undefeated champions like Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina coming in at No. 8 and No. 12, respectively, on selection day this past year.
Prior to the CFP format, the Bowl Championship Series pitted the top two teams in the nation against each other for a national title game from 1998 through 2013.
