This year, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, Division 1 FBS, which is the highest level of college football, expanded its playoff format from 4 to 12 teams. This change has caused lots of excitement and has already produced a few exciting games, with many more to come in the future. The change has opened the door for every team, giving the little guys of the college world a chance to take home the glory of a national championship.
Every year since 1869, at least one school has claimed to be the college football national champion. In 1992, the NCAA Division 1 FBS introduced the national championship game to help clear up the confusion caused by claims and inconsistent sports writers that the teams ranked 1 and 2 in the country would play each other in a bowl game. Their attempt helped rid the inconsistency but introduced controversy.
The BCS ranking system, a series of calculations determined to rank every team in the nation, was used to determine who made the national title game. However, it wasn’t perfect by any means and often caused fans to be outraged by the rankings. Due to the failure of the ranking system, sometimes two teams would still claim national titles even with a definitive national title game, such as in 2003 when LSU and USC split the title.
Then in 2014, they introduced the 4 team College football playoff to try to fix this. It mostly worked, outside of two Florida-sized exceptions. In 2017, a group of 5 schools (Schools in AAC, C-USA, MAC, MWC, or Sun Belt) UCF became the only undefeated team in the FBS, beat ranked Auburn in the Peach Bowl, and didn’t receive a spot in the 4-team playoff. Believing they claimed a spot, they claimed a national title that year saying that they didn’t get a fair chance.
The second Florida-sized exception was from last season, where another Florida school, Florida State, went on to be undefeated. The big difference here was that they were a power 4 school (Schools in the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, or SEC) that was ranked 4th going into the penultimate week of the season. Even though they won their conference championship, they were not invited because their quarterback got hurt. This caused mass outrage among college football fans.
Florida State athletic director, Michael Alford, embodied the sentiment of many fans by saying, “the committee failed college football today.”
Finally, this season, they began the 12-team college football playoff not only because people wanted bigger playoffs, but to make sure these two controversies never happen again.
The new 12-team playoff is made up of the top five highest-ranked conference champions, along with the next seven highest-ranked teams. Of the five conference champions, the top four get a first-round bye, with the other eight playing at the higher-seeded team’s home stadium. This way a group of 5 teams will always make it in, alleviating the UCF concerns, and another hypothetical 2023 Florida State would make it in.
After that first round, the four winners will play the four teams who were on bye with 1 playing the winner of 9 vs 8, 2 playing the winner of 10 v 7, 3 playing the winner of 11 v 6, and 4 playing 12 v 5. After that, the bracket continues like any other bracket, with the winner being crowned national champion.
This year’s bracket started out as expected, with the higher seed winning each game. However, during the semifinals, the inverse happened, with several important games. One such game was Oregon vs. Ohio State, who were undefeated. Oregon was generally understood to be the number one team, however, they got thrashed by Ohio State. Ohio State beat them 41 to 21.
“They brought the fight, and we got hit in the mouth,” said Oregon receiver Tez Johnson to sum up the game.
Arizona State vs. Texas was a close overtime thriller, with Texas winning 39-31 in double overtime despite the excellent performance by Arizona State running back, Cam Skattebo. Even though he was vomiting on the sideline before the start of the fourth quarter, he still ended up with 143 rushing yards, 99 yards on 8 catches, and a passing touchdown.
In conclusion, after 156 years of college football and national championships, the NCAA has finally expanded to a big playoff like every other major college and professional sport. Many people are happy so far with the big playoffs, as they had dreamed of it for years. Now it’s up to one of the four of the biggest, long-standing, teams in college football history in Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State, and Texas to take home the 2025 national championship, the first of it’s 12 team era.
