Following a joint meeting between athletic directors representing their respective conferences on Wednesday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said they agreed that the way teams are seeded in the 12-team College Football Playoff should change this fall.
While the voices of the two wealthiest and most powerful conferences certainly carry weight, any changes for the 2025 season have to be unanimously agreed upon by the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua.
This past season, the four highest-ranked conference champions earned the top four seeds and a first-round bye. It was one of the most controversial facets of the format because it allowed for ninth-ranked Boise State, which won the Mountain West Conference, to earn the No. 3 seed and for 12th-ranked Arizona State to earn the No. 4 seed. Third-ranked Texas and fourth-ranked Penn State were runners-up in their respective conferences, but they couldn’t be seeded higher than Nos. 5 and 6 because the top four seeds were reserved for conference champions.
A popular suggestion to change the seeding for this fall — which Petitti said he favored — has been to use the selection committee’s ranking for the seeding while still making room for the five highest-ranked conference champions. In that model, the committee’s top four teams would earn the top four seeds and first-round byes, regardless of whether they were conference champions. That would also open the door for Notre Dame, which c
