College Football Playoff seeding likely won’t change in 2025. Here’s why.

Much of the talk during the first season of the expanded College Football Playoff centered around how to properly seed teams going forward, but any fans hoping for a big change heading into the 2025 season shouldn’t get too excited.

There’s little chance the College Football Playoff will change how it seeds teams next season, especially when it comes to first-round byes, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

Speaking on the College GameDay podcast, the college football insider explained that while talks remain open, there are too many major financial implications that make it unlikely that conferences other than the SEC and Big Ten will agree to a change in the system.

A key example was the Mountain West, a non-Power Four conference whose champion, Boise State, was able to earn one of the coveted first-round byes in the playoff after a successful season on the field.

That privileged position netted the league an extra $4 million, and the prospect of losing out on that kind of revenue in the future will likely prevent conferences from voting for a system that will result in fewer of their schools from earning higher seeds, and higher payouts.

There was some concern that higher-seeded teams received less ideal draws in the playoff this past year, especially after No. 1 seed Oregon was dominated by No. 8 Ohio State in a 20-point rout in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal, not exactly the classic the network was hoping for.

Every one of the top-four seeded teams lost their first games, including No. 2 Georgia to Notre Dame, No. 3 Boise State to Penn State, and No. 4 Arizona State to Texas.

But while things likely won’t change in 2025, the 2026 season is still an open question.

That’s because the College Football Playoff’s current agreement ends after this year, allowing the brass in the room to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new arrangement.

That could include a further expansion to 14 teams, and a new way of seeding teams.

“It’s a whole new clean slate for 2026, and this is when things are going to get, I think, really, really interesting because the future of the sport for the next six years is going to start to reveal itself at these meetings,” Thamel revealed.

“I don’t think they’re going to vote on anything there when the Big Ten leaders and the SEC Leaders meet in New Orleans, but I do think there’s going to be huge discussions.”

Currently, the College Football Playoff gives the highest-ranked conference champions the top four seeds and first-round byes while other teams are seeded by the selection committee.

Thamel added: “I would imagine we get to a more conventional seeding metric. That’s just the general tenor of the room. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of pushback to that as long as inclusion of the leagues is part of everything. I don’t think we’re going to see a significant pushback with that.”

The voices of the SEC and Big Ten will carry plenty of weight in the negotiations after they emerged as the two most dominant conferences in the realignment era.

Especially heading into 2026, where the process will no longer require a unanimous vote, allowing college football’s Big Two to have a much louder voice in the conversation.

But for now, we should see the College Football Playoff seed teams the same way in 2025 that it did in 2024. After that, it’s anyone’s guess.

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