Big Changes Coming for 2025 College Football Playoff Format, with or Without Expansion

Much of the discussion about potential changes to the College Football Playoff (CFP) format centers on expansion. After all, who wants to see teams like Notre Dame, Texas, and Vanderbilt get excluded to make room for two Group of Five qualifiers who will end up being three-touchdown underdogs in their first and only round games?

Expansion should and, in all likelihood, will happen.

However, significant changes are coming to college football in 2026, whether the field expands to 16 teams or stays at 12.

According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed in the Spring of 2024, the champions of the SEC, ACC, Big 12, and Big Ten receive a berth in the postseason field, plus the highest-ranked non-power-conference champion.

How is that different than this year’s playoff format?

This year’s format awards automatic bids only to the highest-ranked conference champions, not to championship teams from specific conferences.

In addition, under the terms of the MOU, the University of Notre Dame would have something like an automatic bid of its own. If the Fighting Irish finish ranked in the CFP Top 12 of the 12-team playoff, they will automatically be included in the playoff field as well.

So, what would this year’s playoff look like if it were put together under next year’s rules? It would look very different indeed.

First, despite being unranked and a 5-loss football team, Duke would automatically qualify for the playoffs as the ACC conference champion. This would, in turn, knock James Madison out of the playoffs as the second-highest-ranked non-power league champion.

Arguably more importantly, given how controversial it was at the end of the year, Notre Dame would be in the playoff over Miami despite the Hurricanes’ Week 1 victory over the Irish, because ND ranked #11, just inside the 12-team field.

Why would the non-power conferences, such as the Mountain West, C-USA, MAC, and others, agree to only one G5 automatic bid as opposed to the two they received this year? The answer to that can be traced back to behind-the-scenes hardball played by the Big Ten and the SEC last year.

As Dellenger explains, “Last spring, during intense and, at times, heated negotiations over the future of the College Football Playoff, leaders of the Big Ten and SEC threatened to create their own postseason system if they were not granted a majority of CFP revenue (they now have a combined 58% of it) and full authority over the playoff format (they have that, too). The non-power conferences only had a finite amount of time to opt into the deal.”

In essence, the G5 teams agreed because being left with only one seat when the music stopped is better than being left with no seat at all.

Now, all this is well and good. However, as Dellenger points out, the changes discussed above only apply if the playoff field is increased from 12 to 14. Would they still apply if the field were increased to 16? The number most talked about when playoff expansion is discussed.

It varies, as it turns out. Some administrators say the basic tenets and framework agreed to in the Spring of 2024 would still apply in the event of a 16-game expansion. Others say the Notre Dame automatic-bid guarantee would need to be revisited.

Of course, the likelihood of Notre Dame not being ranked within the top 16 in a format where only one G5 gets in is highly unlikely. In any event, change is coming. Further change could follow if Miami doesn’t win this weekend.

As Dellenger points out, teams outside the Big Ten and the SEC are 0-4 since the expansion to 12 teams. With Tulane and JMU almost mathematically guaranteed to lose, if Miami falters, the record would drop to 0-7.

Not exactly a strong case for an automatic bid.