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The way to determine the national champion of college football has gone through several transformations over the years. From the days of polls to the BCS, the public has pressured the NCAAto find the best way to define a single champion, and thus, the CFP emerged.
For most of the NCAA's history, that is, between 1936 and 1992, the champion was defined by polls conducted by the AP and UPI agencies. On many occasions, these polls showed different teams in first place, and only eight times did the winners of both polls meet in a bowl game, defining a single champion.
In 1998, the NCAA ended this system, creating the Bowl Championship Series (CBS), a pairing system based on a combination of the old polls and computer rankings. However, this system imploded in 2011 amid a corruption scandal at the Fiesta Bowl, giving way to the current CFP.
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What does CFP stand for, and what is its format?
CFP stands for College Football Playoff, a single-elimination tournament in which the best regular season teams face off for a ticket to the national championship game. This new format began in 2014 and recently went through a major transformation.
A 13-member selection committee designates the teams that participate in the CFP. The committee bases its decisions on a combination of media polls and factors such as the difficulty of the teams' schedule and records against common opponents.
In its early years, only four teams participated in the CFP, giving rise to a great deal of controversy. In this format, the first seed faced the fourth, and the second met the third, in a semifinal format to define the finalists, who faced each other in a national championship game on neutral ground.
The 12-team CFP
In 2022, the NCAA decided to expand the field to 12 teams, starting with the 2024-2025 season. Although the selection committee still defines the bulk of the teams that will play in the tournament, the top five conference champions of the Football Bowl Series (formerly Division I) have their spots guaranteed.
The four champions with the best records by the first round, and the rest face each other in single-elimination games, with the fifth seed facing the 12th, six the 11th, and so on. The winners advance to the quarterfinals, and the tournament continues until the champion is defined at the end of January in the National Championship game.