Report: College Football Playoff will have 'in-depth discussions' about guaranteed byes for top 4 conference champions

The College Football Playoff will reportedly have in-depth discussions about the guaranteed byes for conference champions moving forward.

According to Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, the top five conference champions would get automatic bids to the playoff, but would be seeded according to their ranking. The same would go for the at-large teams.

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This season, the four highest ranked conference champions received a first round bye and that included Group of Five school Boise State and Big 12 champion Arizona State.

Because of that, they vaulted to the No. 3 and 4 seeds despite being ranked No. 9 and No. 12 in the final CFP rankings, respectively. For reference, Oregon and Georgia were the top two ranked teams but were the top two seeds since they were Big Ten and SEC champions.

Texas and Penn State were the next two highest ranked teams but were seeded No. 5 and 6 due to the conference champion rule.

“So, what about 2025? Sources said there’s momentum to do something for next season — the final year of the current 12-year contract — to tweak the seeding so teams not deserving a first-round bye don’t jump five or six teams ranked ahead of them,” McMurphy wrote.

“The most popular concept for 2025 is to still give automatic bids to the five highest-ranked conference champions but award the top four seeds to the selection committee’s four-highest ranked teams, sources said.”

College Football Playoff to tweak seeding?

As McMurphy outlined, it still puts an emphasis on the College Football Playoff teams valuing a conference championship. But, it won’t automatically mean a bye in the first round.

Former Alabama coach Nick Saban‘s been a recent critic of how the playoff is organized, saying the 12-team format lowers the chances of getting the best teams to the title game.

“If you look ahead to what’s happening now, which is the next round of the playoffs, I think we have less of a chance, based on the way they seeded the teams, of getting the best four teams in the Final 4, than we did when we just picked four teams,” Saban said. “Oregon and Ohio State are probably two of the best four teams in the country, and they’re going to play each other in the round of eight, rather than in the semifinals. And that was all because we awarded conference champs byes …

“They should be rewarded by being put in the tournament, but they should be ranked relative to the quality of team they have relative to everybody else. Then you would have more good games, I think, and a fair tournament when you get down the road to the semifinals and the finals.”