College Football Playoffs Reveal First Look At Format Of 12-Team Bracket

After a decade of the current College Football Playoff format with 4-teams, the playoffs will soon move to a 12-team format in 2024.

Getting more teams into a College Football Playoffs bracket is something universally welcomed by College Football fans. But there has been a lot of uncertainty, until now, about how the 12-team bracket will work and when/where the games will be played.

On Thursday afternoon, Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic shared the public’s first look at a mock bracket for a 12-team College Football Playoff bracket. She also specified when the games would be played in order to ensure they won’t conflict with the NFL Wild Card games in 2014.

Auerbach lays out the first round of games here:

She then clarified that ‘weeknight’ would be Friday:

I asked if “weeknight” could include CFP semifinal games being played on Friday, and Hancock said yes.

— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) April 27, 2023

Auerbach also shared this mock bracket provided by the College Football Playoffs which appears to show how the 12-team playoffs based on last year’s rankings:

This appears to be a lot of extra football for both the teams and fans. The latter of which welcomes this format with open arms. We also know the 12-team playoffs will include 6 conference champions and then the 6 highest-ranked teams behind those conference champs. So now we can see how it all comes together, finally.

In her mentions, people point out there are a lot of College Football teams who never had a shot at playing in the National Championship suddenly just 4 wins away from hoisting up a trophy.

Expanding the College Football Playoffs bracket to 12 teams will open a world of new opportunities to teams that might’ve misstepped earlier in the season and teams that might not have been judged fairly based on their schedules.