College Football Playoff announces scheduling format of 12-team bracket

We now know part of the future College Football Playoff scheduling format. According to The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, the initial playoff first round games will occur on the weekend, with one game played Friday night and the other three on Saturday the next day. However, with the added teams and lengthened playoffs, the CFP semifinals now line up with the NFL’s wildcard weekend. So, per Auerbach, those semifinal games will be moved to weeknight slots to avoid NFL competition.

Here was her tweet Thursday afternoon reporting these scheduling notes for the new-look CFP, which begins in the 2024 season and will bleed into early 2025:

“The first-round, on-campus CFP games will be played as such: 1 game Friday, 3 games Saturday. The CFP semifinal games will be on weeknights to avoid the NFL’s wildcard weekend.”

Brett McMurphy added some reporting on Friday morning, revealing when each round of the playoffs will actually take place. According to a tweet he sent out (which you can see further below), the 2024-25 CFP will host its on-campus first-round games on Dec. 20 and 21, with one game scheduled for Friday the 20th and three on Saturday the 21st.

The quarterfinals will then take place when the semifinals used to — on New Year’s Week. Again, it’ll be one game on New Year’s Eve and then three more the next day on Jan. 1.

Lastly, the semifinals will take place Thursday and/or Friday, which would be Jan. 9 and 10, which avoids the NFL games. That just leaves the title game, which McMurphy claims will be played on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.

Here was his tweet for those who just want a cliff notes version:

1st year of 12-team @CFBPlayoff in 2024:

1st round on campus sites: Fri., Dec 20 (1 game), Sat., Dec. 21 (3 games)

Quarterfinals at Sugar, Fiesta, Peach, Rose: Tues., Dec. 31 (1 game), Wed., Jan. 1, 2025 (3 games)

Semifinals at Orange, Cotton
Thurs. and/or Fri., Jan. 9-10,…

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) April 27, 2023

Auerbach included in a separate tweet what this year’s 12-team College Football Playoff would have looked like. According to this mock-up, TCU would somehow have dropped a spot in the seeding, and it would’ve been Clemson taking the No. 3 seed rather than the Horned Frogs, with Utah also sliding in at No. 4 while leaving Ohio State at No. 6

Strange stuff, but take a gander:

CFP just handed us a mock-up of what the 2022 CFP teams would look like if that season took place in 2024, with a 12-team bracket. pic.twitter.com/5BBwXynFdj

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) April 27, 2023

What a 12-team College Football Playoff will look like

The 12-team playoff will feature six conference champions and the next six highest-ranked teams. The top four teams will get a bye, while the other eight teams play first-round games at campus sites. Quarterfinal and semifinal games will, in turn, be played at bowl game sites pending agreements with the bowls.

Additionally, the playoff can start in either the second or third weekend of December, and the committee called for “at least 12 days between the conference championship games and the first-round games.”