DALLAS (AP) — All of the commissioners who are part of the College Football Playoff were meeting Tuesday, a week after the SEC and Big Ten commissioners came out of a meeting with their athletic directors in favor of seeding changes.
The format for the second year of the 12-team playoff for the upcoming 2025 season, the final year of the current CFP contract, was expected to be only part of the discussions among the CFP Management Committee, which is made up of all 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti said after their meeting in New Orleans last week with the 34 ADs from those leagues that they favored going to straight seeding to set the playoff pairings.
While it was uncertain if a change on the seeding process would be voted on Tuesday during the meeting in a hotel at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, any change in the system for the upcoming season would have be approved by a unanimous vote.
The agenda Tuesday included operations and possible changes for next season, more than what happens when the CFP's new contract with ESPN goes into effect for the 2026 season through 2031. The SEC and Big Ten will then have the bulk of control over what happens with the playoff.
Under the format that began last season, the four highest-ranked conference champions were guaranteed the top four seeds that come with first-round byes. That means the seeding will not always be the same as the final rankings done by the CFP selection committee.
That proved to be probably the most controversial aspects for the expanded playoff, and is exactly what happened in the first season after the size of the field tripled in size, from four to 12 teams.
After Big Ten champion Oregon and SEC winner Georgia filled the top two spots, coinciding with them being 1-2 in the CFP's final rankings, ninth-ranked Mountain West champion Boise State got the No. 3 seed, and 12th-ranked Big 12 champion Arizona State got the fourth seed.
All four of those top four seeds then lost in New Year's Six games that made up the quarterfinal round, when going against opponents that had played first-round home games on their campuses, including SEC runner-up Texas and Big Ten runner-up Penn State.
The 12-team field included four from the Big Ten, three from the SEC and two from the ACC.
While straight seeding last season would have changed the matchups and byes, it wouldn't have altered the actual makeup of the field when still including five automatic qualifiers for conference champions and seven at-large berths.
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