GRAPEVINE, Texas — On Nov. 5, the College Football Playoff Committee will convene and release its first rankings of the 2024 season (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). Back in September, I got a close look inside the process in the same conference room that flashes on television every single week.
Each year, the College Football Playoff invites media members to go through a mock selection committee exercise at the Gaylord Texan, the very same hotel and room where the decisions will be made starting next week. I went for the first time in 2022, but things have changed quite a bit since then.
The 12-team College Football Playoff is a massive new wrinkle beginning in 2024 and our mock committee looked into the implications. Instead of longtime executive director Bill Hancock, who retired this year, new executive director Richard Clark was at the head of the table. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel will also take over as chair and spokesman for the committee, though he was unable to be in attendance for the mock due to a family matter.
For this year’s version, we went back through the 2023 season, though with the new conference layouts in order to plan for complications of the 12-team.
How the committee operates
The actual process of ranking teams in the College Football Playoff will remain essentially unchanged heading forward. The CFP Committee still includes 13 members with ties to different leagues around the country. Members are recused from discussing any school where they or an immediate family member receives compensation.
While everyone on the outside will focus on the top of the rankings, the process on the inside forces you to look smaller. The rankings are broken up into seven groups — every three spots from 1-9 and every four spots from 10-25. Votes are taken anonymously into a computer system. Only the CFP staff is able to see the results of the votes, none of the committee members know.
Part of separating into bite-sized chunks like that is that the computer analytic system that the CFP uses from SportSource Analytics is built to compare metrics from up to four different teams at the same time. However, it also means that the focus stays on individual teams rather than the big picture.
For example, in the four-team CFP, the focus was not on finding the fourth team. It was discussing the options for four through six. Ultimately, the group will hold a blind vote on just those three spots. Later, there’s opportunities to look at the big picture and “scrub” inconsistent results if a particular ranking feels inconsistent or mistaken, but most of the work is done on a micro level. And more importantly, every single slot on the board — from the battle from No. 4 to the one for No. 17 — receives a similar amount of attention from the committee. Only at the end is the bracket put together.
The CFP organization provides a great deal of information to committee members to help this happen. Each has access to a tablet with a vast library of film of every game in FBS, from TV broadcast to All-22 to cut-ups. They also can request any amount of data or information to aid you in evaluating the candidates. There have been instances where a committee person requested other members to evaluate a particular team, or go back to watch a specific game. For example, we had a conversation about Louisville’s bizarre loss to Pittsburgh; is that something we were willing to overlook? Two committee people are also liaisons to each FBS conference, so the committee could ask whether there were any extenuating circumstances for a particular loss, like an injury or anything else.
Only after putting together the full top 25 is the bracket taken under consideration.
While the stakes will be higher in an expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, perhaps the most interesting piece is just how similar the process was in both 2022 and 2024. The rankings component of the CFP Committee’s job is essentially identical to the four-team College Football Playoff. The only change comes at the end.
It’s all about the seeds, which could get crazy
When the rankings are complete, a CFP staff member pulls up the bracket. At that point, the rankings are converted into seeds. You are going to hear the distinction made between these two terms dozens of times over the next month, but the semantics are important. The top 12 teams in the rankings will not make the field. The top 12 seeds will. The difference between those two things will come down to conference champions earning slots and byes in the system.
Using the 2023 result, our mock committee ranked Washington at No. 1, Michigan at No. 2, Texas at No. 3 and Alabama at No. 4. (I voted for Florida State over Alabama, but that’s beside the point). That means that Washington and Texas would be the No. 1 and 2 seeds. Michigan and Alabama could not be any higher than five and six. Florida State clinched a three-seed due to its conference championship, while Arizona jumped from No. 14 in the rankings to the four-seed as a proxy for a Big 12 champion.
So in this one scenario, No. 14 Arizona is a higher seed than No. 2 Michigan. Since both the Big 12 champion and Group of Five champion (Liberty) were outside of the top 12, their insertion into the field pushed No. 11 Ole Miss and No. 12 LSU out of the field, despite finishing in the top 12. Get used to this, this is how the system is designed to work.
By the way, a few truly amusing scenarios have already started opening up because of this. While unlikely, it’s mathematically possible for No. 1 Oregon to get left out of the Big Ten title game for fellow undefeateds Penn State and Indiana. If that happened, it could mean that the No. 1-ranked team in the field would be ineligible for a top-four seed. Again, it’s highly unlikely, but not impossible.
By not playing in a conference, Notre Dame is also unable to earn a bye under any circumstances in this system. Don’t worry, though. Former Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick helped develop the system. They’re fine.
In our mock top 25, there was not a Group of Five team included. Unlike the real committee, Liberty was dinged hard for its strength of schedule and left out (and SMU was not considered a Group of Five for our modeling purposes though they were last year). The CFP has a contingency for that too. If only four champions are included in the field, the committee will separately rank all the FBS champions that did not appear in the top 25 to ensure participants. While our model went through that process with a Group of Five team, it could just as easily happen if a power champion is outside of the top 25 as well.
What else you need to know
One other key thing to know: The committee does not care about rematches. It’s simply unrealistic with only 12 participants, especially with the majority coming from two conferences. Sliding a team up or down a rank can also drastically impact their path to winning a national championship. In our mock, seven-seed Georgia hosted 10-seed Missouri in a rematch. This year, Oregon could end up as the five-seed and host 12-seed Boise State in a direct rematch in the same location. It’s just something we have to live with.
The 2024 mock I did in September included mostly local media members in Dallas. However, the 2022 one included a few TV personalities, which meant former players like Deuce McAllister and EJ Manuel. This is one of the most fascinating parts of being on the committee: everyone approaches football differently.
For the mock, I represented Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades. There are six athletic directors on the committee. There are also four coaches, two former players and a retired media member. Some prioritize winning above all. Others pay attention to the numbers or strength of schedule. Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne famously requested that the analytics be updated to include field possession metrics. Legendary offensive lineman Will Shields, naturally, pays a tremendous amount of attention to trench play.
If there’s ever a moment that it feels like the final rankings are built on a collection of inconsistent criteria, you’re right. There are 13 people in the room who may not agree on everything and have to vote anyway. When Manuel gets up on the television broadcast to explain, he may not even agree with what came out. Ultimately, that diversity of thought has served the committee well.
OK, let’s game out how this could look
For one second, let’s look to this year. Based on the Week 9 CBS Sports 134 Rankings, here is the top 25. Remember, these are rankings:
- Oregon*
- Georgia*
- Penn State
- Ohio State
- Miami*
- Texas
- Indiana
- Iowa State*
- BYU
- Clemson
- Notre Dame
- Texas A&M
- Tennessee
- Pittsburgh
- Boise State*
Oregon (Big Ten), Georgia (SEC), Miami (ACC) and Iowa State (Big 12) are the top four champions and would receive byes. Boise State (Mountain West) is projected as the fifth champion. That means the seeds would look like this (conference champs starred):
- Oregon*
- Georgia*
- Miami*
- Iowa State*
- Penn State
- Ohio State
- Texas
- Indiana
- BYU
- Clemson
- Notre Dame
- Boise State*
First round matchups would include Penn State hosting Boise State, Ohio State playing Notre Dame, Clemson traveling to Texas and Indiana vying with BYU. All of those games will happen on campus sites. The second round games will happen at bowls and will prioritize bowl partnerships for at least the next two years.
The Rose Bowl is a quarterfinal, so the top Big Ten champion (Oregon) will go there. The Sugar Bowl will take the higher-ranked of the SEC or Big 12 champions (Georgia). This is especially notable this year because the Peach Bowl is a quarterfinal game. It doesn’t matter if Georgia is the No. 1 seed, the Sugar has rights to them over the hometown Peach. The semifinals will also similarly prioritize the top seed when setting a path. If an ACC team is the No. 1 seed, for example, that side of the bracket is guaranteed to the Orange Bowl. There will not be flipping locations at the last minute based on upsets or actual matchups for pure logistical reasons.
Putting on the College Football Playoff is a massive undertaking. The logistics alone are excruciating. In the end, at least one fanbase will curse the committee’s names (I would know, I was a student at Baylor in 2014).
Ultimately though, that’s what makes the College Football Playoff such a unique and important process. Getting a look under the hood only emphasizes what those in the know constantly say: You can criticize the results of the CFP Committee, but the process is unimpeachable.
