The actual 2025 College Football Playoff bracket is:
Dec 19 - Dec 20
Dec 31 - Jan 1
Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA)
Orange Bowl (Miami Gardens, FL)
Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA)
Cotton Bowl (Arlington, TX)
Jan 8 - Jan 9
Peach Bowl (Atlanta, GA)
Fiesta Bowl (Glendale, AZ)
Jan 19
Miami Gardens, FL
Imagine if it was this instead:
Dec 19 - 20
Dec 31 - Jan 1
Sugar Bowl (New Orleans, LA)
Rose Bowl (Pasadena, CA)
Orange Bowl (Miami Gardens, FL)
Cotton Bowl (Arlington, TX)
Jan 8 - Jan 9
Peach Bowl (Atlanta, GA)
Fiesta Bowl (Glendale, AZ)
Jan 19
Miami Gardens, FL
Better, right?
Here are the fixes to the process:
Together these changes create four full rounds of playoff football—16 teams, then 8, then 4, then 2. More games means more drama, more revenue, and more opportunities for upsets.
Expand the playoff field from 12 to 16 teams.
A 16-team bracket increases representation across conferences and independents and remains stable through conference realignment.
A 16-team bracket eliminates byes entirely. All teams play in the first round during the same week, maintaining their normal game rhythm throughout the playoffs.
Byes create a competitive problem: top seeds sit idle for 3-4 weeks while lower seeds build momentum through playoff wins. Rust vs. rhythm is real. In the current 12-team format, #1-4 seeds get punished with extended layoffs while #5-12 seeds stay sharp playing meaningful games.
The evidence from the first year of the 12-team format is striking. In 2024, all four bye teams—#1 Oregon, #2 Georgia, #3 Boise State, and #4 Arizona State—lost in the quarterfinals. A complete sweep. The "reward" of a bye turned into a 0-4 record.
The recruiting calendar overlap makes this worse. When coaches must split attention between opponent preparation and recruiting pitches during the bye week, the supposed advantage becomes a curse.
Eliminate automatic qualifiers for conference champions. Select the top 16 teams by the final AP poll.
This approach is conference-agnostic and avoids complications from conference tiebreaker rules.
Replace the selection committee with the Associated Press poll, a weekly vote by 62 independent sportswriters and broadcasters. This long-running, well-understood system reduces perceived conflicts of interest.
The top 16 teams in the final 2025 AP poll following conference championship games were:
The conferences represented in the top 16 include seven teams from the SEC, four from the Big Ten, three from the Big 12, one from the ACC, and one independent.
The remaining teams in the top 25 that would be left out of the CFP would be:
The conferences represented by those left out include three from the American, two from the ACC, one from the SEC, one from the Big Ten, one from the Big 12, and one from the Sun Belt.
This approach may seem to disadvantage teams from smaller conferences. How does a program in the American, Sun Belt, or Conference USA climb into the top 16?
The answer is to do what James Madison's former coach did. Curt Cignetti left JMU for Indiana, a program with the most losses in college football history. Using the transfer portal and NIL, he went 24-2 in two seasons, won the Big Ten championship, and led Indiana to their first #1 ranking in the AP poll. These tools are available to any program in any conference willing to invest.
Assign quarterfinal and semifinal bowl locations by proximity to the top seeds. The #1 seed's side of the bracket gets the nearest quarterfinal bowl, then #2, #3, and #4; apply the same order for semifinals.
This reduces travel for top seeds in a 16-team bracket without byes.
Quarterfinal bowl assignments by proximity to top seeds:
Semifinal assignments:
Under this rule, the CFP still sets the calendar—primetime vs. afternoon, Friday vs. Saturday, and which bowls host quarterfinals vs. semifinals— but those choices should be fixed before the season starts.
Move all portal entries, signings, and binding agreements to a single 30‑day window that opens the first Monday after the championship game.
Today transfer‑portal activity and signing periods fall in December, overlapping the playoff. Teams may lose players before postseason games, and staffs must recruit while preparing for opponents. For top seeds with first round byes, this compounds the competitive disadvantage—coaches spend their "rest" week juggling recruiting calls instead of focusing on their next opponent.
Recent December moves illustrate the overlap: UCLA hired James Madison head coach Bob Chesney, Kentucky hired Oregon offensive coordinator Will Stein, and Cal hired Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi. BYU head coach Kalani Sitake publicly declined Penn State after reported overtures north of $10 million annually.
The NCAA (not the CFP) controls the calendar and could make this change.