The Ohio State football program captured history with claiming the first-ever College Football Playoff National Championship when the four-team model made its debut in the 2014 season. A decade later, the Buckeyes have emerged again as postseason pioneers with another title after defeating Notre Dame to cap the first season of the 12-team College Football Playoff.
Just like in 2014, there was a lot to learn about how the new bracket and postseason format would impact the sport. During the season, and especially in those final weeks of the conference title races, the new CFP absolutely did its job to keep more fan bases invested in the pursuit of a national championship. Access towards winning a national championship has never been as abundant, and that was reflected by the fact that nearly two dozen teams still had a shot to make the final bracket deep into November.
As for the playoff itself, if you believe in the “all’s well that ends well” theory, then we have reached a conclusion not that far from where the sport started back in August. Ohio State was a top-two team coming into the season based on a roster that both retained potential pros and also added All-American talent through the transfer. The expanded CFP opened the door for two-loss teams to remain in the title hunt, and the Buckeyes utilized that opportunity better than anyone else. Tell the tale of Ohio State’s season in a vacuum and it reflects well on the 12-team format, but just because the bracket produced a worthy and deserving champion does not mean there aren’t some issues that can be addressed by the sport’s decision-makers moving forward.
Zoom out from Ohio State alone and it’s a more interesting picture where the 12-team format delivered some epic scenes on campus for first-round games and paved the path for playoff runs that will be remembered for a generation at Penn State and Notre Dame. But seeing the bracket play out also brought some second-guessing for a format disconnecting seeds from rankings and awarding favorable positioning to conference champions. The fact that conference champions went 0-5 in the CFP also heightened the conversation around the future of conference championship games; both of the national title game participants did not even play for a conference championship in early December and Ohio State became just the fourth team in the title game era (since 1998) to win it all without winning their conference.
Ohio State makes rare history joining short list of national champions to not win conference title
David Cobb
So at the risk of overreacting, because what else is the fresh offseason ready for but overreactions, let’s take stock of what we learned from the College Football Playoff’s new 12-team format given the results of its maiden voyage in the 2024 season.
The good teams win
If you covered up the school names and knew very little about the process or format, the 2024-25 College Football Playoff has the appearance of bracket-busting chaos with an 8-seed taking down the 7-seed in the title game. But, in reality, there was not a single Cinderella to be found, and the closest thing there was to an “upset” was Notre Dame beating Penn State 27-24 in the Orange Bowl semifinal as a 1.5-point underdog.
Betting favorites won 10 of the 11 games in the College Football Playoff, not only advancing as projected but going 9-2 against the spread as well. CBS Sports senior writer Dennis Dodd stood behind his chalky picks when the field of 12 was first announced in early December, and now he stands as the only expert to put together the “perfect bracket” in this first run of the system.
Mathematically, it is unlikely that every year will be defined by the higher-rated team advancing in nearly every game, but the fact that it happened in Year 1 did duck the expectation that creating a bigger tournament would lead to some kind of upset-fueled chaos. Basketball lends itself more to upsets with smaller rosters and a fast-paced game with more variance, but college football remains a sport that makes it very difficult for the underdog to get over on the big boys. Arizona State came awfully close in a double-overtime loss to Texas as a double-digit underdog in the Peach Bowl quarterfinal, but much like many of the games from the four-team era of the CFP, the favorites not only won but did so without much drama.
The format is flawed
Consider the earlier point about betting favorites going 10-1 in the first year of the 12-team CFP. Those results were aided by a bracket format that allowed lower-ranked teams to achieve higher seeds based on the automatic byes provided to conference champions. This disassociation between seeding and rankings was confusing for some fans to follow during the regular season and ended up creating an imbalance in the bracket that worked against the top two teams in the field. No. 1 seed Oregon was the only undefeated team in the country, and after winning the Big Ten, its reward was facing eventual national champion Ohio State. No. 2 seed Georgia emerged from its toughest schedule in years as SEC champion and then squared off against the eventual runner-up Notre Dame in its first CFP game.
If we use the AP Top 25 poll as an objective reference here, that’s the No. 1 team facing the No. 6 team in a quarterfinal round that would usually produce a No. 8 or. No. 9 seed. Even more telling is the poor draw for Georgia, which as the No. 2 seed should face a No. 7 or No. 10 seed but in Notre Dame had to square off with the No. 3 team in the country, according to the AP poll. The No. 2 vs. No. 3 matchup is usually reserved for the semifinals, not the quarterfinals.
All of this occurred because of the overcomplicated seeding rules. Boise State jumped up to the No. 3 seed while ranked No. 8, Arizona State got the No. 4 seed while ranked No. 10 and Notre Dame was relegated to the No. 7 seed because of the explicit favoritism given to conference champions and implicit favoritism that the committee gave to the runners-up from the Big Ten and SEC.
If we line up seeding to rankings, it will remove these unnecessary complications and create more games between teams that are objectively rated similarly. It will not avoid blowouts, which we also saw often in the semifinals of the four-team format, but it will lessen the likelihood that teams that are advantaged — or disadvantaged — by the draw.
There will be a push to change the seeding/ranking conundrum immediately, but whether they have the support among all the CFP decision makers is yet to be determined. There’s a lot on the table and the stakes are high, so it would not be a surprise if the respective boards and committees elect to stay put for another year as opposed to overreacting to Year 1 results in the 12-team format.
But if this is a group that’s already leaning towards more expansion for 2026 and beyond, then why push back on trying something else for 2025? If these two seasons are a test kitchen for the future of the postseason, then improve something simple — like seeding — and run it back to learn more about the format.
“Next man up” will be an X-factor
As we try to project what teams have the characteristics necessary to win it all in the expanded CFP era, the focus will pivot slightly away from old cliches about quarterbacks or “defense wins championships.” Now, in this 12-team format, any title hopeful must have a roster that is robust with competitive depth. Needing more good players is not a new requirement of title contention, but being able to sustain injuries and trust backups has never been more important than this format which requires college football teams to carry a workload that’s inching closer to a full-blown professional schedule.
Ohio State and Notre Dame just played 16-game seasons, and part of the reason they were able to make it to the national championship game has been the way they faced and overcame injury-related adversity. For the Buckeyes, it started along the offensive line with a group that was reshuffled multiple times throughout the season as injuries piled up; however, they had versatile talent like Donovan Jackson, who could play multiple positions at a high level, and gifted backups that were able to learn fast under immense pressure. Notre Dame had significant injury issues in almost every month of the season, yet the team’s “next man up” response allowed the Fighting Irish to continue their winning ways through a 13-game winning streak. They lost All-Americans, starting linemen on both sides of the ball and had multiple key players dealing with nagging injuries all the way to Monday night’s title game. But thanks to Marcus Freeman’s recruiting and player development process that’s ongoing in South Bend, Indiana, the playoff run stayed alive.
Penn State and Texas were one win away from playing a 17-game season, and it’s unknown how star Nittany Lions EDGE Abdul Carter or Texas’ offensive line would have held up with yet another test of their injury status. Georgia was less than fortunate with its injury luck as it relates to the playoff, losing starting quarterback Carson Beck in the SEC Championship Game before getting bounced in the quarterfinals, and it was revealed after the season that Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke was dealing with a significant knee injury as he tried to bring the Hoosiers’ dream season to a conclusion.
For better or worse, the College Football Playoff has become a “second season” for the sport similar to the postseasons we see in professional American sports. Sometimes, the last teams standing are literally the last teams that have legs to stand on; multiple teams’ title hopes get dashed by injury issues in the waning games of a long season. If we accept that additional wear and tear at the end of a college football season is part of the deal with expanding the playoff, than teams must be prepared for that with roster construction and a mentality that empowers everyone on the depth chart to be ready to go if needed.
Ohio State provided blueprint for success in 12-team College Football Playoff era: Will others follow suit?
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Home-field advantage matters
In the first year of the 12-team format, we learned that home games in December are not only possible — they’re awesome. The first-round, on-campus games were met with tremendous excitement and delivered incredible scenes across the country. From a White Out in Happy Valley to the snow in South Bend and even Ohio State sending thousands of orange-clad Tennessee fans home early in Columbus, college football finally was able to inject some of what makes the sport truly special into its postseason.
On-campus, home-field environments are college football. It’s the community of fans gathering together to perform the rituals that have been a part of their history for generations. They cheer, scream, shout and cry just like the fans did before them and just as the next generation will in the future. That connective thread lasts throughout the decades and is set in the some of the greatest cathedrals of sport that you can find in this country. Neutral-site games remove home-field advantage, but the CFP showed us that home-field is a precious edge that should be awarded.
Also, all four teams that hosted first-round playoff games proceeded to win their next game and advance to the semifinals. Now, as we discussed earlier, all four of those teams were betting favorites, so there’s not a clear connection to the home win sparking further success. But there’s something to be said about a college football team getting the postseason juices flowing with a win in their own building and how that stands in comparison to the cold plunge-like shock to the system that teams with a bye faced in the quarterfinals. The ultimate impact of the on-campus, home-field wins may be marginal, but at this time of the year, college football is decided at the margins.
More on-campus playoff games would bring what’s special about college football to the forefront in this new postseason format, and the value of having that home-field advantage would work against any attempts to manipulate the bracket or seeding during the regular season. If we’re going to expand to an NFL-sized playoff bracket, then carry also the importance of being a top seed and guaranteeing as many home games as possible.
