College Football Playoff (CFP), annual series of U.S. college football postseason bowl games (2014– ) that determines the national champion of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly known as Division I-A) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The original format featured 4 teams, but it expanded to 12 teams with the 2024–25 season.

(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)

Background and BCS

The College Football Playoff replaced the first true, though imperfect, postseason football championship arrangement in the history of the NCAA’s highest division: the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a system instituted in 1998 that produced a national championship matchup based on a combination of computer rankings and polls. Since the 1970s the NCAA’s lower divisions—the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA), Division II, and Division III—and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) have determined their national champions through single-elimination tournaments with fields ranging from 16 to 32 teams. Previously, the title of Division I-A “national champion” was bestowed on the team (or teams) that ended the season atop one of the polls taken of a fixed pool of coaches or sportswriters. Conventionally, the teams ranked first in the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), and coaches’ polls were given the greatest claim to the title, but various other polls also named national champions throughout the years. As a result, many seasons ended with split national champions. Because of contractual obligations between bowl games and conferences, postseason matchups between the two consensus top-ranked teams occurred in only 8 of the 57 seasons between 1936 (the first year of the AP poll) and 1992.

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From its creation, the BCS came under increasing criticism from fans and media who agitated for a playoff system that would provide a clear-cut national champion. The bowl committees and many conference administrators resisted change, arguing that the BCS be kept principally because of the long-standing bowl tradition (more than 30 games played from just before Christmas to just after New Year’s Day, usually in warm locales, attracting hundreds of thousands of vacationing fans) and because the lack of a playoff increased the importance of college football’s regular season. Often unspoken was the great financial windfall provided by the bowls, which was occasionally supplemented by illegal bribes and other improprieties among bowl officials and local politicians, most notably in the case of an expenditure scandal that led to the firing of the Fiesta Bowl’s CEO in 2011. However, public desire for a playoff—as well as criticism of the bowl system’s corruption—grew so pronounced that a committee of university presidents replaced the BCS with the four-team College Football Playoff in 2014.

History of the CFP

The four entrants in the original College Football Playoff were selected from among all FBS schools by a 13-member selection committee composed of former college administrators and coaches. While the committee took polls and computer rankings into account, it was an autonomous entity and decided on the College Football Playoff field by weighing factors such as strength of schedule and record against common opponents. Once the field was decided upon, the teams were seeded, with the top seed facing the fourth seed in one semifinal and the remaining two teams playing in the other game. The semifinals took place consecutively on either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, rotating among the following host bowl sites on a three-year cycle: Rose and Sugar, Cotton and Orange, and Fiesta and Peach. The national championship game was held at a predetermined site that was chosen from bids submitted by prospective host cities, similar to the process for determining locations for the Super Bowl and various All-Star games for major professional sports.

Current format

In 2022 it was decided to expand the playoffs to include 12 teams, starting in the 2024–25 season. Other changes included the composition of the selection committee. While former players, coaches, and administrators continued to serve, an athletic director from each of the five major conferences (Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big 12, and Pac-12) was added.

As in the original process, the CFP selection committee ranks the top 25 teams at the end of the season. Guaranteed bids are given to the five highest-ranked conference champions. The next seven ranked schools receive at-large bids. The four highest-ranked conference champions are then seeded and given a first-round bye. The remaining schools compete in first-round games, with the 5 through 8 seeds playing the teams ranked 9 through 12. The six original CFP bowls (Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose, and Sugar) host the quarterfinals and semifinals and rotate annually. And, as in the previous system, the national championship game is staged at a neutral site.

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FBS college football champions

A list of FBS college football national champions is provided in the table.