The drama around the new 12-team playoffs format has been a recurring reality in the college football world in the last few months. Despite all the doubts and debates, the high-flying experiment is reaping fruits. The playoff has seen Ohio State emerging as the national champion after a decade. Everything looks like a jacked-up affair amidst the extended playoff bucket except for some heat that brews up over the conference championships’ bye elimination urge. Oh, and of course, Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina Miss missed out on a post-season spot

It leads to a very palpable question: what should the 2025 playoff look like? The head-turning statistics of the final showdown rule out the voices vouching for some change.

Are we up for another new format in 2025? Explained

The top 12 format allowed teams to come to the forefront, despite their woes during the season. The room was wider than before, and it purposefully helped the contenders to look into their flaws, work on them, get better, and walk out with a trophy. Sounds a bit far-fetched, right? But it is what it is. Under the same old format, the Buckeyes would’ve been without a post-season game following their nasty 13-10 upset to Michigan. But thanks to the kinder format, Instead, OSU and Ryan Day were offered a second chance and didn’t fail to make the most out of it this time.

The natty showdown will remain a cornerstone in the CFP playoff history, fetching the most viewership (22.1 million). It marked the highest ratings of any non-NFL sporting event from the last year. As a product, our sport has never been better. ‘‘The national championship this year was the highest-viewed non-NFL sporting event with 22.1 million followers. Even the first-round average has more viewers than all but four regular season games. These numbers tell me people are not as mad about the playoff as they might have to say,” Adam Breneman pinpointed the outcome of an allegedly flawed format. Nobody was left doubting Ohio State’s worth as the best team in college football despite its 14-2 record. It did wonders, and people are cool with it, at least as per the stats.

However, even then, in case of a potential change of the format, seeding, or any other factor, will need unanimous agreement by all the conferences and Notre Dame. It obviously won’t be a cakewalk to get every member on the same page. So any change is still up in the air.

But some tweaks seem a good gig to go. it includes more emphasis on the strength of schedule and quality wins. With the expansion to wider conferences ( if at all), uneven schedules will hit the road in future years. So it is important to keep quality over quantity and make a clear verdict on this to avoid the Alabama-Ole Miss-like controversy.

CFP’s Alabama snub still draws up heat 

The 2024 playoff was nothing but a whirlwind ride. Many unranked teams captured the attention while the big fishes failed to climb the ladder.

Let’s rewind to week 14. SEC bigwigs like Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina have eaten up three losses, and people were highly curious to see where they’d have been placed during the fourth CFP ranking. Ultimately, Alabama missed the bracket as the highest-ranked of the group at No. 13, followed by Ole Miss at No. 14 and South Carolina at No. 15. It came as a shocker to the fans as SMU managed to grab a spot. The debate ragged on when SMU managed to clinch the No. 12 spot over Bama after failing behind the Clemson Tigers in the ACC championship game.

Well, the CFP chairman Warde manual argued in defense of the backlash that SMU’s performance in the Clemson game was of value and was better than Alabama’s overall performance during the season. So, they passed the test in terms of quality wins.  He said no disrespect for Alabama’s strength of schedule, but SMU was better in their own rights.

The vague judgment is yet to be fully justified to some, so, with some clear changes in the rules, this might make sense more sometime in the future.