CNN
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The College Football playoffs will move on to an easier way to fill up the brackets for next season, and on Thursday, they will announce that teams will place strictly in ranked locations rather than moving pieces to reward conference champions.
Ten conference members and Notre Dame athletic director have come to the unanimous agreement needed to shift the model that sparked complaints last season.
This new format no longer guarantees opening by week for the four top ranked league champions, and reserves the benefits to all four top ranked teams in general. The change was widely anticipated after last season’s cluttered brackets were given goodbye to Big 12 champions Arizona and Mountain West champion Boise, despite being ranked 12th and 9th by the Playoff Selection Committee, respectively.
That system made rankings and seeds in the tournament two different ways, bringing some matchups that came earlier than other ways, for example, in the quarterfinals between Oregon’s top ranks and the final champion Ohio State.
“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team playoffs, the CFP Management Committee felt that making this adjustment was the game’s greatest benefit,” said Rich Clark, executive director of CFP.
The five highest-ranking conference champions are still guaranteed to have a playoff spot. This means that another kind of shuffle seen last season could be repeated when CFP No. 16 Clemson was seeded 12th in the bracket after winning the Atlantic Coast Conference. As a result, Alabama, ranked 11th, became a playoff spot.
Under the new arrangement, the four top-ranked conference champions will receive $8 million against the league. It represents the $4 million you earn to make the playoffs and the $4 million to the quarterfinals.
“That was the way the commissioner retained his commitment to financially making these teams that were paid those amounts under the previous system they used last year,” Clark told ESPN.
Southeastern Conference (SEC) Commissioner Greg Sankey was one of those who called for a second year change in the 12-team playoffs, but he was cautious about being approved for the necessary unanimous vote.
Small meetings had the opportunity to use the seed issue as leverage for the next set of negotiations. This will be done after this season and can include an expansion to 14 teams and a more guaranteed bid for a particular league. The SEC and the Big Ten will have the greatest say in these decisions.
As it stands, this will be the third different playoff system for college football in three years. The CFP was a four-team event in the decade leading up to the first 12 team playoffs of last season. The seed change was first reported last year by ESPN, which signed a six-year $7.8 billion deal to air the expanded playoffs.
The playoffs for the upcoming season will begin on December 19th on campus for teams ranked 5th-8th. All games that begin in the quarterfinals are on neutral sites and end with a title game on January 19th at Hard Rock Stadium, a suburb of Miami.
Last season, looking at the possibilities of matchups in the first round, straight seeds were played (Note: Actual matchup results in parentheses):
・No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Notre Dame. The Tigers would still be in, despite being ranked 16th. Notre Dame, a team without a meeting, could benefit from this new arrangement as it is now eligible for goodbye. (No. 5 Texas 38, No. 12 Clemson 24).
・No. 11 Arizona, Ohio No. 6. Instead of receiving a goodbye for the first round, the Sun Devils face a Juggernaut. (No. 6 Penn State 38, No. 11 SMU 10).
– No. 10 SMU in Tennessee No. 7. Yes, Alabama, who is No. 11 in the CFP final rankings, would have been a strange guy for Clemson. (No. 7 Notre Dame 27, No. 10 Indiana 17).
・No. 9, Indiana, number 8, Boise. It could have been Ashton Jeanti vs. Houchier in the two best story matchups of the season. (No. 8 Ohio 42, No. 9 Tennessee 17).
Byes: No. 1Oregon, No. 2 Georgia, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Pennsylvania. Could Texas and Pennsylvania go further without playing that extra game?