College Football Playoff National Championship

The College Football Playoff National Championship is an annual matchup to determine the champion of Division I college football. The game features the two winners of the College Football Playoff semifinals. The game replaced the Bowl Championship Series National Championship, which had decided a champion from 1998 to 2013. The College Football Playoffs debuted after the 2014 season and culminated with Ohio State winning the first championship in January 2015. The location of the national championship game changes each year. The championship not only brings in spectators and tourists but highlights the city and stadium during a nationally televised event.

History

Throughout the history of college football, determining a national champion has been a difficult task. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most intercollegiate athletics were focused on regional competitions. Multiple schools claimed to be national champions, but schools from different parts of the country rarely met on the field.

By the mid-twentieth century, polls and rankings became the measuring stick for college football. The polls run by the Associated Press (AP) and college football coaches were considered the most reliable, but there were several other polls that often confused the issue. If a football team topped the polls when the season concluded, that team was declared national champion. Some seasons ended with one team chosen for the top spot in one poll and another team earning the honor in another poll. In such cases, both teams claimed to be champions.

The bowl system complicated the establishment of a true championship game. Bowls are post-season games, typically played around Christmas and New Year’s Day in warm-weather locations. Bowl games were not designed as a playoff but as entertaining holiday experiences. Most bowls were affiliated with particular athletic conferences. If the top two teams were in conferences that were not affiliated with the same bowl, they had no chance of meeting in a bowl game.

In 1992, several conferences and bowls formed the Bowl Coalition, which agreed to follow pre-existing agreements as closely as possible while arranging for the top-ranked teams to play each other at the end of each season. The system failed largely because it excluded conferences featuring smaller schools, and certain conferences with larger schools refused to join. For example, Penn State and Nebraska both finished the 1994 regular season undefeated but could not meet in a championship game because their conferences were tied to specific bowl games. A reconfigured attempt called the Bowl Alliance followed but failed for similar reasons and was defunct by 1998.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formed in 1998. Unlike its predecessors, it had the cooperation of all conferences and bowls. It used a committee in combination with several polls and computer programs to determine the top-ranked schools in the country. For the first few years, the BCS worked as intended. However, in 2003, Oklahoma, Louisiana State University (LSU), and the University of Southern California (USC) finished the regular season with identical 11-1 records. Oklahoma and LSU met in the BCS championship, and LSU won the game. The AP poll awarded the national championship to USC. Further controversies erupted in 2004 when five teams finished the regular season undefeated. That left three undefeated teams with no opportunity to play for a championship.

Although most polls matched the BCS results for the next several years, there were increasing demands for the playoff system to change or expand. Fans, analysts, and coaches alike pointed to the 2003 and 2004 seasons as examples that there were simply too many competitive teams to allow only two a chance at the national championship.

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In response to the many complaints, the College Football Playoff was formed to begin play at the end of the 2014 season. Under the system, four teams would have a chance to play for a national championship. Two teams would be eliminated in a pair of semifinal games played near New Year’s Day, and the winners would meet in a national championship game about a week later. These teams were selected by a committee of thirteen individuals. The committee mostly consisted of people with football backgrounds, including current and former athletic directors, head coaches, and sports journalists. The committee also included some members with non-football backgrounds, such as former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice sat on the committee until 2016.

The committee was directed to prioritize schools’ strength of schedules. For example, a school that played highly ranked opponents would have a better chance of making the playoffs than a school with the same record that played weaker opponents. Under older systems, many of the strongest schools often scheduled weaker teams to improve their win-loss records. The new playoffs encouraged teams to schedule stronger opponents.

The change from two national championship contenders to four left an immediate impact in the first playoff. The four teams selected were all-conference champions: Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State. Alabama, Oregon, and Florida State were undefeated, and Ohio State had one loss. Ohio State upset Alabama in one semifinal to earn a place in the title game, where they faced Oregon. The first championship game was played on January 12, 2015, at AT&T Park in Arlington, Texas. Ohio State defeated Oregon to win the championship. Under older systems, Ohio State never would have been involved in a championship game.

The following season, Alabama defeated top-ranked Clemson to capture the championship. The two schools had a rematch after the 2016 season, with Clemson knocking off an undefeated Alabama. The growing rivalry between the two schools became one of the most prominent storylines of the early College Football Playoff. The schools met again in the semifinals in 2017, with eventual champion Alabama winning and advancing to the title game against Georgia. The matchup led to some criticism because both teams were members of the Southeastern Conference.

Additional backlash came from the committee’s placement of Central Florida. The school did not belong to one of the stronger conferences and was not a traditional football power, but it was the only team to finish the season undefeated. The committee ranked Central Florida at 12, citing its weaker schedule. Other football analysts said that the school’s schedule was not as weak as it appeared and that it was negatively impacted by its lack of football history.

Alabama and Clemson faced off in the championship game for a third time in four years after the 2018 season. It was the first College Football Playoff National Championship game between unbeaten teams. This time, Clemson routed Alabama. While Clemson returned to the championship game in 2019, they instead faced LSU, losing 42–25.

In 2020, Alabama beat Ohio State. Georgia then claimed back-to-back championships, beating Alabama and TCU in 2022 and 2023, respectively. In 2024, the College Football Playoffs expanded from four teams to twelve, marking the first major change since its inception. The five highest-ranked conference champions receive automatic bids to the playoffs. The four highest-ranked conference champions are seeded one through four and receive first-round byes. Teams seeded five through twelve play each other in the first round, with games held at the higher-ranked team's home field. This new format allows other deserving teams to have an opportunity to win the National Championship.

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