College Football Playoff format, explained

With the college football season near its end, here is an explanation of the College Football Playoff format.

The College Football Playoff format is potentially going to undergo some changes in the coming years with expansion inevitable. It’s still a relatively new concept for the sport that used to have poll voters determine the national champion. Then, it was the BCS format that picked the two best teams to play for the national champion. When that wasn’t determined to be good enough, the playoff format was adopted with four teams chosen by a committee to play for the title.

Explaining how the College Football Playoff format works

The format remains the same as it has been since its existence. The top four teams, as selected by the College Football Playoff committee, will face off in semifinal bowl games on New Year’s Eve. The No. 1 ranked team takes on the No. 4 team, while the No. 2 team faces the No. 3 program. Those semifinal games rotate between the six bowl games — the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, PlayStation Fiesta Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Allstate Sugar Bowl and Rose Bowl Game

This year’s semifinal matchups will be at the Cotton Bowl and the Orange Bowl on December 31, 2021. The two winners will then face off in the CFP National Championship at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN. on Monday, January 10, 2022.

Every week, the 13-person committee will meet and vote on the Top 25 teams in the nation with their picks on the four teams who will compete for the National Championship.

Here is the official voting steps for the committee, as listed on the CFP’s official website.

"Each committee member will create a list of the 30 teams he or she believes to be the best in the country, in no particular order. Teams listed by three or more members will remain under consideration. At the conclusion of any round, other teams can be added to the group of teams under consideration by a vote of three or more members.Each member will list the best six teams, in no particular order. The six teams receiving the most votes will comprise the pool for the first ranking step. This is known as the “listing step.” In the first ranking step, each member will rank those six teams, one through six, with one being the best. The best team in each member’s ranking will receive one point; second‐best, two points, etc. The members’ rankings will be added together and the three teams receiving the fewest points will become the top three seeds. The three teams that were not seeded will be held over for the next ranking step.Each member will list the six best remaining teams, in no particular order. The three teams receiving the most votes will be added to the three teams held over to comprise the next ranking step.Steps No. 3 and 4 will be repeated until 25 teams have been seeded. There will be seven rounds of voting; each round will consist of a “listing step” and a “ranking step."

College Football Playoff expansion is likely coming in the future

The four-team model could be coming to an end in the next few years with pressure to expand to an eight-team format when the TV contract expires. An eight-team format will provide more teams a chance to compete for a national title and inject some new blood from the current model where the same teams keep making it every year.

There are specifics to work out with regard to automatic qualifiers for conference champions, Group of Five teams and at-large teams, but it feels inevitable that an eight-team format will be coming in the future. And a 12-team format will likely be coming a few years after that.

For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.