What a 14-team College Football Playoff would have looked like in 2024, assuming new proposals take effect

Ohio State reigned supreme in the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff, defeating Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame on its road to glory.

Like most things in college sports right now, though, the future of the 12-team format is up in the air once the initial 12-year contract runs out in 2026. There has been considerable informed speculation that the playoff will ultimately expand again, likely to a 14-team playoff format that has gotten more traction with the sport’s leaders than 16 teams. 

Should that expansion take place it could come with more automatic qualifiers, a change in conference championship game formats and much more. CBS Sports previously reported there is concern among the sport’s most powerful leaders about whether the current CFP selection process makes sense moving forward. 

With that in mind, CBS Sports is offering up what a hypothetical 14-team playoff would have looked like this season under some of the proposed formats. 

The 4-4-2-2-2 model

In this scenario, the Big Ten and SEC each get four automatic qualifiers, the ACC and Big 12 get two each, the Group of Five gets one and there is one at-large bid. This proposal got shut down a year ago but expect it to come back up in conversation when the College Football Playoff management committee meets again later this year.

Spinning the rankings to this model is simple. The Big Ten already got four teams in, the ACC received two spots, Boise State would remain as the Group of Five option and Notre Dame as the highest-ranked at-large school gets that spot. 

The only real change would be Alabama getting the SEC’s fourth spot and Iowa State, the second-highest ranked Big 12 team, getting that final spot. 

Here’s how the format could have looked if the committee also fixed the seeding problem and paired them solely on how they are ranked:

The Ohio State-Alabama first-round game is juicy, though we thought the same about its actual game against Tennessee and the Buckeyes routed the Vols. Notre Dame-Arizona State would have been fascinating while Indiana-Boise State could have been a lot of fun with an opportunity for each team to claim its first CFP win. Tennessee certainly would appreciate seeing SMU instead of the buzzsaw it got in Ohio State. 

Oregon would face the winner of No. 8 Indiana vs. No. 9 Boise State and Georgia would face the winner of No. 7 Tennessee vs. No. 10 SMU game. 

But if the committee continues to reward conference champions in the seeding, a source of frustration for some this year, the matchups change to:

There’s not much change here from the actual 12-team format as three games stay the same (Penn State-SMU, Notre Dame-Indiana and OSU-Tennessee). However, that Texas-Alabama game jumps right out at you as a monster first-round game. Arizona State-Clemson is intriguing, too. 

You can understand why this is an unappetizing model still, though, as No. 1 Oregon would once again draw Ohio State. 

The 3-3-2-2 model

In this proposed format, the breakdowns is as such: 

• The SEC and Big Ten get three teams each
• The Big 12 and ACC get two teams each
• The Group of Five gets one team
• There are three at-large bids. 

This proposal has lost steam — the SEC and Big Ten are going to want more than three automatic bids if the Big 12 and ACC are also getting multiple — but if it were in effect this past season, the 14 teams included are the exact same in the above 4-4-2-2-2 format. 

Alabama would get the last at-large bid and Iowa State would get the second Big 12 bid. 

The 5 + 9 model

If the CFP expands its current format, it feels increasingly likely, if not a near certainty, it will come with additional automatic bids for the power conferences. But if the CFP kept its five conference champion automatic qualifiers, fixed its seeding situation with only two byes and added two additional teams, the field would have looked like: 

You would again get Ohio State-Alabama in this scenario. The big difference here is Miami, the third-ranked ACC team, gets in over Iowa State if the Big 12 doesn’t have two automatic bids. It would have been a blast seeing Cam Ward against that talented Penn State defense. 

The path here is easier for No. 1 Oregon, too, getting the winner of Indiana-Boise State instead of getting eventual national champion Ohio State in the Rose Bowl like it did in real life.