College Football Playoff: Explaining selection committee rankings process, seeding 12-team bracket

Tuesday night, the College Football Playoff selection committee will announce its first rankings of the season. It’s the start of a new era for the CFP, which will have 12 teams in the field after the final Top 25 comes out next month.

For the last decade, the top four teams at the end of the year made the cut. That all changes this season when the five highest-ranked conference champions and next seven highest-ranked teams make up the bracket.

Although the field is expanding, the selection committee will still rank the teams just as it’s done since the CFP’s inception in 2014. From there, the bracket will come together.

“[The committee’s] role hasn’t really changed that much over what they did in the past,” said CFP executive director Rich Clark, speaking on a media webinar last week. “Their main job – their No. 1 job, their prime directive – is to pick and rank the 25 best teams in college football, plain and simple. They have to get that right. That, then, leads to everything else.”

“Everything else” includes seeding the teams. Instead of just the top four teams making the semifinals, the CFP process is going to change.

College Football Playoff rankings differ from seeding

Every Tuesday in November and the first in December, the College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings will come out exclusively on ESPN. It will be the same as years past. The committee will rank the teams, 1-25. Sunday, Dec. 8, the final rankings will come out following conference championships.

The rankings, though, are not the same as seedings. To put the 12-team bracket together, the committee will seed the teams based on the rankings. The five highest-ranked conference champions will be in the field – the four highest-ranked will receive byes – and the next seven highest-ranked teams will round things out.

Guide to 12-team College Football Playoff: Dates to know, details on seeding

When it comes time to seed the teams, the four highest-ranked conference champions will get the 1-4 seeds. For the fifth champion, it will either stay in its current spot if ranked between 5 and 12, or it will take the No. 12 seed if it falls outside the Top 12.

For example, last year, Liberty was the highest-ranked Group of 5 champion at No. 23 in the final rankings. If the 12-team bracket was in place, the Flames would be the No. 12 seed in the bracket.

Example: Mock seeding of the 12-team playoff using the final 2023 CFP Rankings + 2024 conference line-ups.

Note: Quarterfinals this season (& next) will first be set by conf ties (Rose, Sugar), with other 2 by proximity to the host. Semis are proximity *only*. pic.twitter.com/AIk6qsT9cH

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) October 30, 2024

But if the fifth conference champion isn’t ranked in the Top 25, the committee has a plan in place. It will rank the conference champions, and the fifth-highest ranked will get the No. 12 seed.

Notre Dame, however, presents an interesting case. Because the Fighting Irish are independent, they cannot win a conference championship. As a result, they cannot be seeded 1-4 to get a bye and will then try to be seeded 5-8 to host a first-round game.

How the committee ranks the Top 25

When ranking the teams, the selection committee looks at a few metrics, including head-to-head results and performance against common opponents. Strength of schedule is also an important one, though. The CFP uses SportSource Analytics for its data, which plays an important role in putting the rankings together and helping the committee see the “whole body of work.”

Those points of data allow the committee to focus on just the results of this season. Of course, Clark said, there’s also the “eye test” to show a loss doesn’t necessarily spell doom.

“The thing that’s really important here is the committee’s job is to pick the best teams – not based on their jersey, what they’re wearing, what conference they’re in, even their record,” Clark said. “Record matters, but we’re not trying to pick the most deserving teams. We’re trying to pick the best teams. So this committee’s got to look at their entire body of work. They’re gonna consider record, of course. That matters. Wins and losses still matter. But they’re also going to look at strength of schedule. They’re going to look at head-to-head competitions and how teams perform against each other. They’re going to look at how they perform against common opponents, as well.

“And then, there’s just that eye test of, what did they do on the field? How did they perform? Even in a loss, how did they perform? I think one of the beauties of this whole process is that a loss early in the season may not completely derail a team. Maybe it’ll change their seeding, maybe it’ll change their ranking. But it doesn’t completely derail them.”

What happens after the bracket is set?

Under the 12-team College Football Playoff, first-round games will be at campus sites. Should schools be unable to host games at their home stadium, they have the option to move to a nearby NFL stadium. However, Clark said the CFP hasn’t heard of any programs planning to take their games elsewhere.

From there, games will be at bowl sites. In the quarterfinals, sites are determined based on conference affiliation of the higher-seeded team to honor contracts already in place. Going back to last year’s rankings, No. 1 seed Michigan would host at the Rose Bowl because of the Big Ten’s ties to that particular game. If there isn’t a conference connection, the location will be determined by proximity of the higher-seeded team.

Semifinal locations will then be decided solely on proximity of the higher seed in the quarterfinal – even if that team loses, because plans have to be in place. Teams will not have the option to move the game, according to CFP spokesperson Brett Daniels.

It all ends with the national championship. This year, it will be at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 20 – capping off the 2024 season.