The rankings for college football can be confusing for some people as they are more complex than those in the NFL. If you need help understanding them, we’ve put together a guide to help you grasp the NCAA rankings and how they impact the playoffs for 2024 and onwards.
You only needed NCAA football championship odds for four teams in previous years. It took the best-ranked teams and chose four to play a series, including the semi-finals. The playoffs were a concise event, as it only encompassed three games.
However, from 2024 onwards, it will be a more significant event covering more teams. As a result, it will require a longer time and feature more games. Fans are looking forward to this change, but the changes have impacted how the NCAA reads the rankings.
The new layout will feature 12 teams instead of just four. The teams will come from the top 25 ranked teams, and the 13-person committee decides who makes up this list. However, it’s not just the top-12 teams that make the playoffs. Instead, the top five conference-winning teams instantly get a place in the playoffs.
As a result, if the fifth highest-ranked conference-winning team is in 13th place, the team in 12th will miss out on the playoffs. It’s a way for the committee to add extra prestige to winning a conference while efficiently using the rankings.
After the conference winners, the remaining seven places are given to the highest-ranked teams. It makes for a much more exciting playoff series at the end of the regular season.
The committee works on a rotating cycle, with the members getting voted in for around three years at a time. They then get replaced by new members, who have various standings within college football. Some come from military sports, while journalists and coaches are on the panel. The current committee is as follows:
The playoff seeding is relatively simple. The top four conference winners receive the top seed and a first-round bye. Everyone else is seeded based on their ranking. After this, the playoffs run as a round-robin tournament.
Since the committee decides on the rankings, it also effectively chooses the seeds. However, it can’t impact the conference winners, so the first-round bye will always go to the best-performing league winners.
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