Report: College Football Playoff to discuss changing structure of auto-byes for conference champions

That didn’t take long.

After just one season of seeing how the bracket played out, the College Football Playoff could be on the way to changing their seeding structure. The current rules award the top four conference champions an auto-bye to the quarterfinal round. This season that meant giving teams like Arizona State and Boise State a free ticket past the first round, while teams with higher rankings like Ohio State, Texas and Penn State were forced to play.

That could be a thing of the past soon, according to Action Network’s Brett McMurphy. He reports that there will be discussions about changing that rule and moving the seeding to reflect the rankings. The conference champions would still receive a bid, but they would not automatically receive a top-four seed.

McMurphy notes that the change would require unanimous approval by all stakeholders to pass. The move would be for next season and beyond.

This year’s quarterfinal round features No. 3 seed Boise State as an 11 point underdog to No. 6 seed Penn State. It also has No. 4 seed Arizona State as a 13 point underdog to No. 5 seed Texas.

If the rule were in place this season, the bracket would have changed dramatically.

2024 College Football Playoff Bracket without auto-byes

• No. 12 Clemson (ACC Champ) at No. 5 Notre Dame — winner faces No. 4 Penn State
• No. 11 Arizona State (B12 Champ) at No. 6 Ohio State — winner faces No. 3 Texas
• No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee — winner faces No. 2 Georgia
• No. 9 Boise State (G5 Champ) at No. 8 Indiana — winner faces No. 1 Oregon

This thing was always going to continue to evolve, and this certainly won’t be the last proposed change. It’s just a matter of time before it expands again, whether that’s to 14 or 16 teams or perhaps even more. But that’s all down the road a bit.

For next season, we’ll see if this new proposal passes.