College Football Playoff
Updated: Wikipedia source
The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the highest level of college football competition in the United States. It culminates in the College Football Playoff National Championship game. The inaugural tournament was held at the end of the 2014 NCAA Division I FBS football season under a four-team format. The CFP Board of Managers voted in 2023 to expand the playoff to 12 teams beginning in 2024, an arrangement that will last at least through the end of the 2025 season. After 2025, the current contract between all major entities expires and a new contract will be drawn up, with indications that additional expansion to a 14-team playoff or larger may take place at that time. As the NCAA does not organize or award an official national championship for FBS football (instead merely recognizing the decisions made by any of a number of independent major championship selectors), the CFP's inception in 2014 marked the first time a major national championship selector in college football was able to determine their champion by using a bracket competition. A 13-member committee has selected and seeded the teams to take part in the CFP. This system differs from the use of polls or computer rankings that had previously been used to select the participants for the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the title system used in FBS from 1998 to 2013. The CFP format used from 2014 to 2023 was a four-team single-elimination tournament, with participants determined and seeded by the selection committee. The current 12-team CFP format features, for the first time, a first round of playoffs separated from bowl games. The first round consists of seeds 5 through 12 playing one another at the home stadium of the better seeded teams, or another venue of their choice. Then, the quarter-final and semi-final games consist of the New Year's Six bowl games, with a national championship game after that. From 2014 through 2023, the two semifinal games rotated among the six New Year's Day bowl games: the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Sugar Bowl. In addition to the teams selected for the playoff, from 2014 to 2023 the final CFP rankings were used in determining the participants for the four New Year's Six bowls that were not hosting the semifinals that year. Under the original four-team format, the two semifinal games were played on the same day; since the expansion of the CFP in 2024, they are played on back-to-back days. The College Football Playoff National Championship game is then played on the first Monday that is six or more days after the Semifinals. The venue of the championship game is then selected based on bids submitted by cities, similar to the NCAA Final Four. The winner of the Championship Game is awarded the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy, which was commissioned to avoid connections with the previous championship systems and their associated trophies. This included the AFCA "crystal football" trophy, which had been presented to the national champion since the 1990s due to the AFCA being contractually obligated to name the BCS champion as the Coaches Poll champion. While the BCS brand was retired, BCS Properties, LLC still exists and owns all CFP trademarks. The CFP is separately administered by CFP Administration, LLC, which consists of representatives from each of the FBS conferences and the University of Notre Dame.