College football helmets line the Fiesta Bowl office in Scottsdale. Twelve of those will soon represent teams that will participate in the first CFP 12-team playoff. (Photo by Dylan Wickman/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – On Tuesday, voting will take place, and we aren’t talking about politics.
The first College Football Playoff rankings of 2024 will be released, and with a new 12-team format, discussion will center around seedings and automatic qualifiers.
Since 2014, the CFP has determined the national champion using a four-team playoff, with no automatic qualifiers. Just the four best teams in the eyes of the committee. This year, they expanded to 12 and have a completely different format.
“This new playoff is just spectacular, and I think it’s what college football has needed for a long time,” said Rich Clark, the CFP’s new executive director who replaced Bill Hancock.
The 12-team field will be comprised of the five conference champions ranked highest by the committee, and the next seven highest-ranked teams.
For the postseason, the four highest-ranked conference champions will receive first-round byes, no matter where their rankings fall in the final poll. That means it’s probable that a high-ranked SEC or Big Ten team that does not win its conference will be forced to slide down the seedings in favor of an ACC, Big 12 or even Group of Five champion that would receive a bye. The Group of Five is made up of the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt.
For example, as the AP poll, which has no bearing on the CFP committee’s rankings, sits, Oregon, Georgia, Miami and BYU would receive byes, despite Ohio State’s No. 3 ranking. Of the at-large teams, the No. 5 seed will play the 12, the No. 6 will play 11, No. 7 will play No. 10 and No. 8 will meet No. 9, with the highest-seeded team hosting the matchup on its campus.
With automatic bids receiving byes, nationally popular Notre Dame cannot receive a first-round bye since it does not play in a conference.
The Fiesta Bowl will host a CFP game again this season, as it did in 2016, 2019 and 2022, but it will be the first CFP quarterfinal game, as the other three will be played on January 1, 2025.
“We’re excited to show the rest of the country about how we do it in the Valley,” said Erik Moses, the executive director of the Fiesta Bowl. “We’re excited (for the changes) because we have been innovative in many ways, including the first title sponsor of a bowl game.”
In 1986, the Fiesta Bowl made history by receiving a name sponsor deal with Sunkist. Today, they are known as the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl.
Scott Leightmann, vice president of communications for the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, speaks to media members during a recent mock CFP selection committee event. (Photo by Dylan Wickman/Cronkite News)
Once the bracket is set, they will match bowl games with quarterfinals “in consideration of historic bowl relationships.” That means, most likely, the Granddaddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl, will host the Big Ten champion, and the Sugar Bowl will probably host the SEC champion.
What that means locally is that Valley residents can keep a close eye on the Big 12 the rest of the season, as the champion has a high likelihood of playing in the Fiesta Bowl on December 31. Right now, BYU is the lone undefeated team left after a chaotic weekend, when both Iowa State and Kansas State fell to unranked opponents, although both are still in the race. Other teams to watch out for would be Texas Tech and Deion Sanders’s Colorado Buffaloes, who face off this weekend in Lubbock.
The Rate Bowl (formerly Guaranteed Rate) will also be staged in the Valley, when a Big 12 team takes on a Big 10 team Dec. 26 at Chase Field. Neither Arizona nor Arizona State are eligible to play in the Rate Bowl. Due to the ever-changing landscape of conference realignment, for the next two seasons, all teams that have left the Pac-12 for the Big 12, ACC or Big Ten, will still be placed in bowls games based on their former Pac-12 affiliation.
After the first rankings come out Tuesday, they will continue to be released weekly on Tuesdays until Sunday, Dec. 8, when the official bracket is released and bowl selections are made.
Outside of the Fiesta Bowl, the other CFP quarterfinals are the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Peach Bowl, while the Cotton and Orange bowls will be the semifinals sites. The national championship is scheduled for Jan. 20, 2025, at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the same day as the presidential inauguration, continuing the election theme of this college football season.
(Graphic by Everett Williams/Cronkite News)
