Decoding the College Football Playoff: Rankings, Committee, and the Road to the Championship

For many, the dawn of a new year signals resolutions, celebrations, and cherished moments with family. However, for college football enthusiasts, it marks the highly anticipated College Football Playoff (CFP). With the expansion to a 12-team format, understanding how these teams are selected is more crucial than ever. This article delves into the intricacies of the CFP rankings, the selection committee, and the journey to the national championship.

The College Football Playoff Selection Committee: The Architects of the Top 25

The College Football Playoff (CFP) rankings are determined by a 13-member selection committee, officially known as the CFP Selection Committee. This committee, composed of coaches, former players, athletic directors, college administrators, and journalists, bears the responsibility of identifying the top 12 teams that will compete in the CFP. In addition to selecting the playoff teams, the CFP Selection Committee also generates a ranking of the top 25 teams, which is updated and revealed six or seven times throughout the season.

Composition and Appointment

The CFP Management Committee is responsible for choosing the members of the CFP Selection Committee. The CFP Management Committee consists of 10 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conference commissioners, formerly known as Division I-A, as well as the athletic director of Notre Dame.

The Ranking Process: A Multi-Step Approach

Starting in the middle of the NCAAF regular season, all 13 CFP Selection Committee members convene weekly to produce a new top 25 poll. These meetings involve a multi-step voting process that consists of seven total rounds of ranking. All votes are cast via secret ballot, and each round is preceded by committee discussions. Following the completion of a voting session, an updated CFP ranking is revealed the following Tuesday.

Initial Pool

Each member starts by compiling a list of 30 teams, presented in no particular order. Any team listed by three or more members will remain under consideration. At the end of any round of selections, members can add other teams to the group, provided at least three or more members agree.

Ranking Steps

The selection process involves several key steps to narrow down and rank the teams:

Listing Step: Each member lists what they feel are the six best college football teams, but not in any ranked order. The six teams that receive the most votes become the pool for the first step in the rankings.
Ranking Step: Members individually rank the teams one through six, with one being the best and receiving 1 point. The top-ranked team in each member's poll receives one point. The second-best team receives two points, the third-best three points, and etc. The members then add their rankings together, and the three teams with the fewest points become the top three seeds. From there, the members hold the three teams not seeded for the next ranking step.
Picking the Next Six: Each member of the selection committee then lists the six best teams left, in no certain order. Whichever three teams get the most votes are then added to the three teams held over for the next ranking step.
Repeat Until There's 25: College Football Playoff selectors repeat the third and fourth steps until they seed 25 total teams. There are seven rounds of voting, each consisting of a listing step and a ranking step.

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Recusal

A recused member is any member of the CFP Selection Committee who is directly related to, or has an immediate family member related to, a team that is under consideration for ranking. This includes being compensated for a salaried position or a consulting arrangement from a school, as well as being a former player or coach of a school. Recused members are not allowed to vote for that school, cannot be present during deliberations about the team's selection, but can answer factual questions about the institution. All committee members have past ties to certain NCAA institutions, but the committee decided to ignore those ties in the recusal requirements.

Selection Criteria: Evaluating Team Performance

College Football Playoff selectors create Top 25 rankings based on their evaluation of teams’ performance on the field. The committee employs several metrics to select the best teams, including:

Strength of schedule
Head-to-head game results
Results vs. teams in Top 25 rankings
Results vs. common opponents
Conference championships

Selectors are allowed to use a variety of advanced analytics to gauge teams' performance, but those numbers don't play a formal role in determining Top 25 rankings, which is a decision made by selectors' own judgement.

The 12-Team Playoff: A New Era

The Selection Committee’s seed list determines the 12-team postseason tournament bracket, which consists of the six-highest ranked conference champions and the six-highest ranked non-conference champions. Starting in the 2024 season, the four highest-ranked conference champions receive first-round byes. The fifth conference champion ranked the highest will be seeded where it was ranked or at No. 12 if it landed outside the top 12 of the rankings. Any non-conference champion team will be seeded starting at No. 5. Teams seeded 5-12 will play in the first round on campus sites (No. 5 vs. No. 12, No. 6 vs. No. 11, No. 7 vs. No. 10 and No. 8 vs. No. 9). Winners of these games will then play the top four seeds.

New Year's Six Bowl Games

The CFP quarterfinal and semifinal games rotate annually between three sets of longstanding bowl games known as the New Year’s Six (a.k.a. “NY6”). Named for their traditional holiday schedule, the NY6 bowl game pairs are the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and the Fiesta Bowl in Phoenix; the Orange Bowl in Miami and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; and, finally, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. The New Year’s Six bowl games are the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Peach Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. Although all six games were historically held on or around December 31 and January 1, the schedule extended to mid-January when the postseason field expanded to 12 teams in 2024.

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A Brief History of the CFP

The College Football Playoff era began with the 2014 season. For the first decade, four teams were selected to the Playoff field, with two semifinal games and a national championship game. Ohio State won the first championship under the current system. From 2014 to 2023, Per contract, the Rose and Sugar Bowls were always on New Year's Day. Originally three games were held on New Year's Eve with the other three on New Year's Day. From the beginning of the CFP, many within college football wanted a playoff larger than four teams. Several years of the 4-team playoff led to growing calls for expansion.

CFP National Champions (2014-2022)

2014 - Ohio State def. Oregon
2015 - Alabama def. Clemson
2016 - Clemson def. Alabama
2017 - Alabama def. Georgia
2018 - Clemson def. Alabama
2019 - LSU def. Clemson
2020 - Alabama def. Ohio State
2021 - Georgia def. Alabama
2022 - Georgia def. TCU

The Broader Landscape of College Football

College football is arguably the oldest organized sport in the United States, predating the NFL. The NCAA eventually came to oversee much of college football, organizing it into different divisions based on program size and scholarship availability. While the NCAA has never officially endorsed a championship team, it has documented the choices of some selectors in its official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication. Among the most widely recognized national champion selectors has been the Associated Press (AP), which has conducted the AP Poll of sportswriters since the 1936 season.

The Evolution to a Playoff System

As the years passed, public pressure for a playoff grew, especially following seasons in which there were split national championships in the polls. By the 1990s, the sport underwent several changes that led to a playoff. The 1992 SEC Championship Game was an enormous risk that paid off well for the Southeastern Conference (SEC) that year and in future years and gave a glimpse at what post-season football might look like. The Bowl Championship Series in 1998 succeeded in finally bringing all major conferences and bowl games into the fold for a combined BCS National Championship Game rotated amongst the four largest, most profitable bowl games - Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar. The BCS rankings originally incorporated the two major polls as well as a number of computer ranking systems to determine the two best teams at the end of the season.

Impact of the CFP on Scheduling

Due to the increased emphasis on strength of schedule, teams have considered playing more challenging opponents during the non-conference portion of their schedules. Some teams have traditionally played three or four "weak" non-conference opponents, but wins against such low-level competition are unlikely to impress the committee. Teams in the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 play nine conference games on their twelve-game schedules and thus only have flexibility in choosing their opponents for the three non-league games. In response to the new playoff system, the Southeastern Conference considered increasing its conference schedule from eight to nine games. In April 2014, the league voted to mandate that all SEC teams must play a Power Five foe (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, or independent Notre Dame) in its non-conference slate beginning in 2016.

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