College Football Playoff schedule unveiled for 12-team field in 2024, 2025
Sam Cooper (Yahoo Sports) — Some key details about the 12-team College Football Playoff were unveiled on Tuesday.
The CFP announced the schedule and bowl game assignments for the first two installments of the expanded format, which is going from four teams to 12 beginning with the 2024 season.
As a reminder, the 12-team playoff will consist of the six highest-ranked conference champions and the six highest-ranked at-large teams as chosen by the CFP selection committee. The top four conference champions will be seeded Nos. 1 through 4 and receive first-round byes. The remaining teams will play first-round games on the campus of the better seeds.
In 2024, those first-round games will take place on Friday, Dec. 20 and Saturday, Dec. 21. One game will be played on Friday night with the other three taking place on Saturday — one in the early afternoon, one in the late afternoon and another in the evening.
Moving ahead, the quarterfinals will be played at bowl sites on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The Fiesta Bowl will be played at night on New Year’s Eve (a Tuesday) with the Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl all being played on New Year’s Day (Wednesday).
From there, the semifinals will be played at the Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025 and Friday, Jan. 10, 2025.
The CFP title game will then be held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 20.
For the 2025 season, the scheduling layout is the same but the bowl assignments are different.
The first-round games on campus will be held on Friday, Dec. 19 and Saturday, Dec. 20 with one game on Friday night and the other three on Saturday. The first quarterfinal game, the Cotton Bowl, will be held on New Year’s Eve before the other three quarterfinals — the Orange Bowl (early afternoon), Rose Bowl (late afternoon) and Sugar Bowl (evening) — are played on New Year’s Day.
The semifinals for the 2025 season will be the Fiesta Bowl (Thursday, Jan. 8) and the Peach Bowl (Friday, Jan. 9) before the national championship at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami on Monday, Jan. 19.
What would a 12-team CFP have looked like in 2022?
Last season, the 12-team College Football Playoff would have looked like this based on the final rankings from the selection committee:
1 Georgia (SEC champion)
2 Michigan (Big Ten champion)
3 Clemson (ACC champion)
4 Utah (Pac-12 champion)
5 TCU (at-large)
6 Ohio State (at-large)
7 Alabama (at-large)
8 Tennessee (at-large)
9 Kansas State (Big 12 champion)
10 USC (at-large)
11 Penn State (at-large)
12 Tulane (highest-ranked Group of Five conference champion)
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