By Brett Daniels
The 2025 National Championship between Ohio State and Notre Dame drew an audience of 22.1 million viewers on Monday night, making it one of the least-watched championship games of the Playoff era despite having two of the biggest names in the sport on the field. This marks a 12% decline in viewership over the 2024 contest between Michigan and Washington which averaged 25 million viewers. There was also a marked lack of “buzz” surrounding the championship game on social media and in online publications. If the goal was to keep more of the country engaged later on into the season, and to generate viewership for an extended playoff then the first edition of the 12-team field came up short. What can be done to improve the product and to keep more fans engaged?
Seeding
The biggest problem that most fans have identified with the playoff field is how the teams were seeded and placed into the bracket. Guaranteed first-round byes and top four seeds for conference champions along with the provision that Notre Dame could receive no higher than a fifth seed resulted in a bracket that was unevenly weighted from top to bottom. Eliminating the first-round bye for conference champions would result in a more evenly weighted field, even if the Notre Dame provision was still included. Had this been in place for the 2024 version the matchups and seeding would have been as follows:
1st Round Byes
#1-Oregon
#2-Georgia
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#3-Texas
#4-Penn State
#5 Notre Dame vs #12 Clemson (winner plays #4 Penn State)
#6 Ohio State vs #11 Arizona State (winner plays #3 Texas)
#7 Tennessee vs #10 SMU (winner plays #2 Georgia)
#8 Indiana vs #9 Boise State (winner plays #1 Oregon)
Playing this bracket out using actual results from this year’s playoff and historical evidence would give us #5 Notre Dame winning against #4 Penn State, #6 Ohio State winning against #3 Texas, #2 Georgia winning against #7 Tennessee (Georgia has won eight in a row over the Volunteers), and #1 Oregon winning against #8 Indiana. Semifinals of #1 Oregon vs #5 Notre Dame and #2 Georgia vs #6 Ohio State likely results in the same championship game of #5 Notre Dame vs #6 Ohio State with the Buckeyes hoisting the trophy.
This college football playoff seeding needs fixed for next year.
— C (@ccccc1018) January 1, 2025
First and Second-Round Games on Campus
Holding the first-round games on campus was a stroke of genius on the part of the College Football Playoff committee. The environments in South Bend, Columbus, Happy Valley, and Austin were electric, now imagine the games the following week were in Eugene, Athens, Boise, and Tempe.
Not only would those environments be raucous, it would also give the teams that earned the bye a home-field advantage for their second-round games. It would also not require the fans of the teams that advance to the semifinals and championship game to travel any more than they would have in the four-team format. Having these games on campus would make the later season and championship games much more important.
Condensing the Playoff Timeline
Another popular comment regarding the 12-team playoff format is the total time from start to finish was too long. New Year’s Day has long been the culmination of the College Football Season, before the four-team playoff it marked the last game of the season for everyone. Even with the four-team playoff system, the season was only extended for one more week and generally didn’t have to compete with anything else.
Under the 12-team format the semifinal games were on January 8th and 9th and the championship game was January 20th. Fans of non-competing teams lost interest and even the most hardcore football fan had moved on to either the NFL or other winter sports. Starting the season a week earlier would allow for the playoffs to continue directly after the conference championship games and wrap up the week after New Year’s Day. The old argument of not wanting to interfere with final exams is a moot point since Notre Dame and Indiana players were taking finals the morning of their playoff game with Indiana.
There's never been a College Football Playoff like the one that will kick off three weeks from today.#CFBPlayoff 🏈🏆@ESPN • @ESPNCFB • @ESPNPR • TNTSportsUS pic.twitter.com/FMvYpPAWyv
— College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) November 29, 2024
Eliminating the Playoff “Committee”
Prior to the creation of the four-team playoff, the participants in the BCS National Championship game were determined by a complex series of computer formulas that didn’t always produce the result that made the most sense. As a result, a 13-member committee was formed to oversee the teams selected and how the field would be seeded. In many ways, this is worse than the computer formulas as human biases and conflicts of interest have resulted in some questionable decisions over the years. Using a combination of computer indices will also consider the imbalances between conferences and schedules to produce the best field possible.
Figuring Out how the Conference Championship Games Fit
Conference championship games are cash cows for the bigger conferences and as such, will have a hard time letting them go to fit into the playoff structure. However as constituted, the conference championships only serve to muddy the waters and aren’t a big benefit to teams that are already in the field. Integrating the games into an expanded playoff as first-round games would serve to eliminate a conference’s first or second-place team right off the bat while the third or fourth-place team could get into the field by sitting at home which wouldn’t be a good solution.
