How can the College Football Playoff be Improved?
College football is evolving rapidly and changes to the postseason form part of that evolution. As the sport transitions towards professionalism, the College Football Playoff (CFP) is on the brink of further evolution. But as we make steps in that direction, I asked myself, how can the College Football Playoff be improved? What steps need to be taken to keep it as a worthy season-ender for the top tier of college football? Here is what I came up with.
The Problem
The 2024 season was the first following the shift to a 12-team playoff using a “5+7” model. This format meant each power 4 conference champion and the highest ranked G5 team received a spot in the playoffs, supplemented with 7 at-large teams chosen by a Selection Committee. The top 4 ranked conference champions received first round byes.
This method, whilst an improvement on the old BCS model, still leans too heavily on subjective rankings (and potential soft influence). I personally struggle, in 2025, with having a room of people choose who enters a playoff.
Embed from Getty ImagesAlso, under the current system, Notre Dame could never receive a bye as they are not part of a conference to win a championship.
As an alternative, I would like to re-imagine the College Football Playoff as a “Champions League” for college football.
I reference the Champions League as the analogy between European football and college football fits quite well. The conferences are similar to their own league organisations (i.e. Premier League, Serie A, La Liga etc). The top teams fight each season to earn entry into the Champions League (a playoff equivalent) with the goal of being crowned the Champions of Europe. It is not a perfect analogy, and I would see the trick being to borrow aspects to add to the CFP rather than a simple copy/paste.
Embed from Getty ImagesMy Proposal for the College Football Playoffs
I would propose a 16-team playoff system adding new elements not used in College Football before. This would include the use of pots and a draw to determine brackets as well as a revamped rankings model. It would reward performance, respect the current hierarchy of college football, and deliver the kind of drama fans crave.
My model would have the follow benefits:
- Make the regular season matter more
- Reward conference champions
- Treat the playoff as its own competition
- End subjectivity
- Add draw-day drama to the mix
How my proposal would work
In terms of a framework, instead of simply seeding 16 teams by rankings and awarding byes, my idea would use a draw system based on four pots as follows:
- 16 teams qualify for the playoff.
- Teams are assigned to Pot 1 through Pot 4 based on conference position and a remodelled team ranking.
- A live draw is held to set up the bracket.
- Pot 1 teams drawn against Pot 4
- Pot 2 teams drawn against Pot 3
- Pot 1 teams cannot meet each other before the semi-finals.
- Round of 16 on campus, Pot 1 and Pot 2 guaranteed a home draw in the first round.
- Drawing rules set to aim to minimise intra-conference matchups in early rounds.
How would the pots be constructed?
The playoff pots would be filled based on current conference strengths and team performances as follows:
Pot 1: These are the “top seeds.”
- SEC Champion
- Big Ten Champion
- Highest-ranked P4 Champion (Big 12 or ACC)
- Highest-ranked of: Notre Dame, the other P4 champ or next highest-ranked team
Pot 2: These are teams who missed out on Pot 1.
- Remaining P4 Champion (Big 12 or ACC) if not in pot 1, or next highest team
- Top-ranked G5 Champion
- Next highest ranked SEC team
- Next highest ranked Big Ten team
Pots 3 & 4: At Large Teams
- 1st position in pot 3 filled by Notre Dame if they are not in pot 1 (but in the top 20), then highest ranked team
- Rest of slots filled by the next highest-ranked teams based on their team ranking.
If you wanted to follow the Big Ten proposed AQ (4+4+2+2+1+3) model you could add teams in boxes 7 and 8 and in pot 3 and 4 in order of conference allocation. A more general explanation of the AQ proposal can be found here:
No More Committees – Introducing the new Team Ranking
Perhaps the most radical, and necessary, change in my proposal is scrapping the selection committee altogether. No more subjective closed-door meetings.
Instead, I would create a team ranking based on weighted, accumulated points for wins. The idea is a combination of the soccer league points system and the UEFA club coefficient.
The Ranking would Include:
- Use of a conference coefficient to measure wins and allocate points.
- Post season wins earning more points, especially playoff and Championship wins.
- Weighted across three to five seasons, with a weighting emphasis on the most recent 12 months.
- In the event of a points tie, post-season points or points per game could be used.
Using the 2024 Season as an Example
For the purposes of this example, I only used 2024 data, but I would propose using 3/5 years for the real thing.
Conference Coefficients
To create a simple example, I created a basic team coefficient as I am just demonstrating the principle. More science should be added to the mix for a better score in practice, to reflect how conferences evolve over time. In my example each win is multiplied by the following;
SEC/Big Ten – 5 points; Big 12/ACC/Notre Dame – 3 points; Everyone else – 1 point
To reward post season performance, I added a multiplier of +3 to championship and playoff games. There was no multiplier added on bowl games.
Rankings
My method created the following rankings for a top 20. I stopped at 20 here as I was only looking at 1 year’s data so didn’t expect to see any teams that were not already in the AP rankings, sneak in. Plus, what was important for my purposes was not the composition but the order of that top 20. The results were as follows:
A Mock Draw
This translated into the following pots. For fun, I ran both the scenarios for pots 3 and 4 where the highest ranked teams were selected or the 4+4+2+2+1+3 method. Admittedly some of the permutations could be trickier in the latter method but all could be solvable.
I then used this ranking to create a random draw of the pots.
Potential Round of 16 under this scenario:
Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Oregon v South Carolina Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Notre Dame v Ole Miss
Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Georgia v Alabama Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Arizona St v Iowa State
Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Boise St v Penn St Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Ohio St v Tennessee
Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Clemson v Illinois Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Texas v Indiana
Potential Round of 16 under this scenario:
Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Oregon v Ole Miss Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Notre Dame v South Carolina
Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Georgia v Indiana Pot 1 v Pot 4 = Arizona St v Alabama
Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Boise St v Illinois Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Ohio St v Iowa St
Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Clemson v Tennessee Pot 2 v Pot 3 = Texas v Penn St
As a comparison the playoff bracket in 2024 looked as follows:
Is 16 Too Many?
There is rightful concern that 16 teams is too many for a playoff and it will dilute the product. This viewpoint is rooted in the idea that every game should matter, too many losses should rule you out and we should have a playoff with a handful of teams with a perfect (of close to) record.
The old system of 4 teams was clearly too few and many see 8-12 max as the sweet spot.
I have sympathy for this view but my counter-argument is that if a team loses a game or two in October, you don’t want their season to be effectively over at that point. Playoff qualification should be seen as a long marathon with twists and turns and the playoffs as a separate event where anything can happen. The key for me is ensuring games in November are still meaningful.
An important point of my rankings system is to reward the risk of winning games against tough opponents.
The Champions League of College Football
College football’s future path must navigate between respecting tradition and upholding modern fairness. A pot-based, coefficient-driven, 16-team playoff would:
- Keep every weekend meaningful
- Maintain conference prestige
- Remove the guesswork
- And turn playoff qualification into a season-long campaign
I believe my model would achieve these things and would be marketable.
The College Football Playoff is not just a final step in the season, it is a competition in its own right. It should be like March Madness or the UEFA Champions League.
What do you think? Could the game, steeped in so much tradition and history, shift to this kind of model?
