The landscape of college football has changed dramatically over the past decade and is considered to be one of the most exclusive playoffs in all sports. This year the college football playoff (CFP) changed to a new 12-team format.

 In 2014, the College Football Championship was changed from a singular game to a four-team playoff. Although the format was changed to this four-team format, this format still came with multiple controversies over the decade.

The first year of the four-team CFP had a major controversy as many fans thought the committee made a huge mistake leaving out TCU. The TCU Horned Frogs finished the season 12-1 with their only loss being a 61-58 loss to the Baylor Bears who shared the same record and were crowned the Co-Big 12 champions. The reason for this was that the Big 12 conference did not hold a championship game in 2014.

Many thought that the No. 4 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes should not have been included in the playoffs over TCU due to the fact that they were on their third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones. Despite that, they went on to win the CFP and were crowned as the 2014 National Champions. 

There were multiple undefeated teams who missed the four-team CFP over the years, but there were two teams who were considered the biggest snubs in CFP history. The 2017 UCF Knights were undefeated and felt that they deserved to make the playoffs. Unfortunately, they were left off the playoffs, but then went on to win each bowl and even hung a banner. 

The final controversy occurred last year, when the Florida State Seminoles became the first Power 5 school to miss out on the playoff, with the one-loss SEC Champion Alabama Crimson Tide making it over them. The main reason the Seminoles missed the playoff was because they were on their third-string quarterback, however, as stated earlier, the Buckeyes went on to win the National Championship with their third-string quarterback.

The first year of this new playoff will come with a lot of changes. It will include the five-highest-ranked conference champions and top-seven teams who were not the champions of their conference while the top-four seeds in the playoff will have a first-round bye. Another big change is that this will be the first year where a team will be hosting a playoff game in their home stadium. 

It’ll be interesting to see how this new format plays out, especially with there being 134 teams in the FBS.

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