After months of meeting to discuss things to discuss at future meetings, the people in charge of the College Football Playoff actually made a decision on Thursday, and it was one we’ve assumed they’d make for a while. After last year’s 12-team CFP gave byes to the four most highly ranked conference champions, this year’s will not.

Conference commissioners voted to go to a straight seeding format (with five spots still reserved for conference champions) in 2025.

There are still plenty of things to discuss regarding what the CFP will look like in 2026 and beyond — and good lord, don’t even get me started on how much I don’t like where we’re probably headed in that regard — but with the 2025 season starting in less than 100 days, we at least know how things will take shape this fall. Here are a few thoughts regarding these changes.

A 2024 simulation

To see what something might look like in the future, my first step is always to revisit the past. Last year’s 12-teamer, the first-ever genuine tournament at the highest level of college football, indeed handed out byes to conference champions and gave us the weird visual of having two different numbers listed next to the teams in the bracket.

Boise State, for instance, was ranked ninth in the overall CFP rankings, but the Broncos got the No. 3 seed as the third-ranked conference champ. Arizona State was simultaneously 12th and fourth. Granted, the NFL does something similar, giving the top three seeds in each conference to the winners of each individual division (which occasionally gives us odd pairings such as 9-8 Tampa Bay hosting 11-6 Philadelphia in 2023 or the 10-7 Los Angeles Rams hosting 14-3 Minnesota in 2024). But from the start, it was clear there was some dissatisfaction with this approach. And when both BSU and ASU lost in the quarterfinals — all four conference champions did, actually — it became abundantly clear that this was going to change. It just took about five months to actually happen.

Regardless, let’s look at how the 2024 playoff would have taken shape with straight seeding instead of conference-champ byes.

First round

12 Clemson at 5 Notre Dame (SP+ projection: Irish by 13.1, 79.4% win probability)
11 Arizona State at 6 Ohio State (OSU by 24.2*, 93.6% win probability)
10 SMU at 7 Tennessee (Tennessee by 7.0, 66.9% win probability)
9 Boise State at 8 Indiana (Indiana by 12.5, 78.3% win probability)

(* Here’s your reminder that SP+ really didn’t trust Arizona State much last season, primarily because the Sun Devils were a pretty average team early in the season. At 5-2 with a number of close wins and a sketchy-looking loss at Cincinnati without injured quarterback Sam Leavitt, they entered November ranked in the 50s. While they certainly rose during their late-year hot streak, they finished the year only 35th. They were genuinely excellent late in the season — just ask Texas — but they were 6-1 in one-score games heading into the CFP, and they were lucky to reach November with the Big 12 title still within reach.)

In last year’s actual first round, the four home teams (Notre Dame, Ohio State, Penn State and Texas) were projected as favorites by an average of 7.2 points per SP+. The average spread was Home Team -8.9. The results were actually much more lopsided than that, and that probably wouldn’t be any different with the matchups above — here, home teams are projected favorites by an average of 14.2. Changing to straight seeding wouldn’t have made the first round more competitive.

Assuming all four home teams win in this simulation, that gives us the following quarterfinals.

Quarterfinals

Rose Bowl: 1 Oregon vs. 8 Indiana (SP+ projection: Oregon by 5.9, 64.4% win probability)
Fiesta Bowl: 4 Penn State vs. 5 Notre Dame (PSU by 0.7, 51.8% win probability)
Sugar Bowl: 3 Texas vs. 6 Ohio State (OSU by 7.1, 67.1% win probability)
Peach Bowl: 2 Georgia vs. 7 Tennessee (UGA by 2.4, 55.9% win probability)

Interestingly enough, we got two of these four matchups in real life, but they were the two semifinals — Ohio State’s 28-14 win over Texas in the Cotton Bowl and Notre Dame’s late 27-24 win over Penn State in the Orange Bowl. Now these games take place in New Orleans and Glendale, Arizona, respectively. We’ll conveniently project those results to remain the same. Meanwhile, SP+ says there’s only about a 36% chance that the other two projected favorites (Oregon and Georgia) both win, but we’ll roll with that.

Semifinals

Cotton Bowl: 1 Oregon vs. 5 Notre Dame (SP+ projection: Oregon by 2.1, 55.3% win probability)
Orange Bowl: 2 Georgia vs. 6 Ohio State (OSU by 6.8, 66.6% win probability)

With those win probabilities, there’s only about a 37% chance that both projected favorites win, and this time we’ll heed that and project an upset: Conveniently, we’ll say Notre Dame upsets Oregon, giving us the exact same Fighting Irish-Buckeyes title game we got in real life.

Final

5 Notre Dame vs. 6 Ohio State

Again, we saw this one.

Who would have benefited from this change?

In all, using my pre-CFP SP+ projections from December, here’s a comparison of what each team’s national title odds were heading into the tournament versus what they’d have looked like with straight seeding.

Not surprisingly, Arizona State’s and Boise State’s odds would have sunk without receiving a bye, but their title odds were minimal regardless. The teams that actually ended up hurt the most by the change would have been 2-seed Georgia, original 5-seed Texas and original 11-seed SMU. The main reason for the downshift in odds? They’d have all been placed on Ohio State’s side of the bracket. Meanwhile, Ohio State’s and Tennessee’s odds would have benefited from the simple fact that they would no longer be paired with unbeaten No. 1 Oregon in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal. Obviously Ohio State handled that challenge with aplomb, but the Buckeyes still had to ace that test, then win two more games to take the title.

Beyond Ohio State and Tennessee, both Indiana and Oregon would have seen their title odds improve a bit with straight seeding, though for different reasons. Indiana would have gotten a first-round home game instead of having to travel to South Bend, while Oregon would have avoided Ohio State until a potential finals matchup.

Takeaways

Good: The No. 5 seed isn’t quite as uniquely valuable now

We never got to see the 12-team playoff as originally envisioned, with six conference champions earning bids from a universe that featured five power conferences. Instead, between the announced adoption of the 12-team playoff and its actual arrival, the SEC officially added Oklahoma and Texas to its roster while the Big Ten, with help from the Big 12, cannibalized the Pac-12. With only four power conferences remaining, we ended up with only five conference champions guaranteed entry, and with the distribution of power getting further consolidated (we still have four power conferences, but it’s clearly a Power Two and Other Two), that left us with an awkward bracket.

For starters, the new power distribution meant that the No. 5 seed — almost certainly the higher-ranked team between the losers of the Big Ten and SEC championship games — would get an almost unfair advantage. As I wrote back in December, “the odds are pretty good that the teams earning the No. 4 and 12 seeds (aka the two lowest-ranked conference champs) will be the weakest teams in the field …. Texas, the top-ranked non-champion and 5-seed, is indeed pitted against what SP+ thinks are the No. 17 and No. 30 teams in the country and therefore has excellent odds of reaching the semifinals.”

As you see above, Texas actually entered the CFP with better title odds (17.2%) than Georgia (16.6%), a higher-ranked team in SP+ and the team that had just defeated the Longhorns in the SEC title game. In theory, giving a team a bye and asking them to win three games instead of four would be a massive advantage. But in practice Texas’ odds of winning two games (against Clemson and ASU) were better than Georgia’s odds of winning one (Notre Dame). That’s not particularly fair, is it?

Bad: Conference title games mean even less now

Making this change would have indeed given the SEC champion better title odds than the SEC runner-up. That’s good, but it comes with a cost. In the re-simulation above, you’ll notice that both the winners and losers of the SEC and Big Ten title games ended up with byes and top-four seeds. That means there were almost literally no stakes — besides a quest to avoid major injuries like what afflicted Georgia — in either game.

Meanwhile, in the ACC championship, SMU lost to Clemson but barely fell in the CFP rankings (and, more specifically, still got in) because the playoff committee didn’t want to punish the Mustangs for playing a 13th game while others around them in the rankings were already done at 12. Add to that the fact that the straight-seeding approach diminished the above title odds for four of the five conference champions in the field, and it leads you toward a pretty easy question: Why are we even playing these games?

Commissioners of the power conferences have pretty clearly had that in their minds as they’ve discussed a convoluted (and, in my own opinion, patently ridiculous) new playoff structure that hands multiple automatic bids to each of the top four conferences: up to four each for the SEC and Big Ten and likely two each for the ACC and Big 12. With this structure in place, they can drift from title games and toward multiple play-in games within each conference. I absolutely hate this idea — if you want to wreck the integrity of the regular season, nothing would do that faster than a 7-5 or 8-4 Big Ten team potentially stealing a bid from a 10-2 or 11-1 comrade that was vastly superior in the regular season — but you can at least understand why the commissioners themselves, facing a world with diminished conference title games (and always looking for more TV spectacles), would try to get creative in this regard.

Straight seeding doesn’t change all that much. Ohio State was given a harder title path last year than would have existed with straight seeding, but the Buckeyes cruised regardless, winning four games by a combined 70 points. Meanwhile, even with a bye, Boise State and Arizona State weren’t likely to win three games and go all the way. The team that best peaks in December and January will win 2025’s title just like it did in 2024, we’ll enjoy ourselves all the same, and we’ll be facing another change in 2026 no matter what.

The countdown toward 2025 continues.

The 12-team College Football Playoff will move to a straight seeding model this fall, rewarding the selection committee’s top four teams with the top four seeds and a first-round bye, the CFP announced Thursday.

The 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, who constitute the CFP’s management committee, reached the unanimous agreement necessary to make the change during a call Thursday afternoon.

This past season, the four highest-ranked conference champions earned the top four seeds — regardless of where they were ranked. Now, independent Notre Dame is eligible to earn a first-round bye if the Irish are ranked in the top four. All four teams that earned a first-round bye in the inaugural 12-team CFP lost their first game.

The five highest-ranked conference champions will still be guaranteed spots in the 12-team field.

“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP management committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment,” Rich Clark, executive director of the College Football Playoff, said in a statement. “This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season.”

The group agreed to maintain the $8 million financial commitment to the four highest-ranked conference champions — $4 million for reaching the playoff and a $4 million for reaching the quarterfinals.

“That was the commissioners’ way of — at least for this year — holding to the commitment that they have made financially to those teams, those conference champions in particular, that would have been paid those amounts under the former system that we used last year,” Clark told ESPN.

Last year, Mountain West Conference champion Boise State and Big 12 champion Arizona State earned top-four seeds and first-round byes as two of the four highest-ranked conference champions. The Broncos were ranked No. 9 and seeded No. 3, and No. 12-ranked Arizona State earned the fourth seed and final bye. Had a straight seeding model been in place last year, No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 Georgia, No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Penn State would have been the top four seeds.

The CFP’s management committee has been contemplating changing the seeding for this fall for months. While there was overwhelming support in the room to move to a straight seeding format, some commissioners were hoping to tie the discussion into the bigger consideration of format for 2026 and beyond. No decisions were made on the CFP’s future format.

“There’s still lots of discussion,” Clark added. “The commissioners are really putting everything on the table so that everybody knows where each other is coming from, but they’re still in discussions.”

IN CREPT WILLSON CONTRERAS, closer and closer to home plate, to the point that it started alarming his St. Louis Cardinals teammates. Contreras is in his first season as a first baseman, and even if the situation called for him to crash toward the plate — eighth inning, 1-0 lead, runners on first and second with no outs and Kansas City’s Jonathan India squaring to bunt on the first two pitches — Contreras stationed himself 51 feet away, like a bunt scarecrow, as if to invite a swing from someone who routinely hits baseballs more than 100 mph.

“Scoot back a little,” Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado hollered across the diamond. Cardinals coaches urged Contreras to do the same. He did not oblige their requests.

“I was afraid [India] was going to take a swing and kill him,” Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas said.

None of this surprised the Cardinals. Contreras has embodied the team’s defense-first mentality — adopted last year and actualized this season — that flipped the fortunes of a franchise fallen on hard times after decades of unrelenting excellence. St. Louis is 27-23, currently in second place in the National League Central and firmly in the postseason hunt during what was supposed to be a transitional year, thanks to perhaps the best defense in baseball. And Contreras’ positioning, as much as any moment over the first quarter of the season, illustrated who the Cardinals have become.

“I don’t care. I’m not afraid,” Contreras said. “If I’m gonna die, I’ll die right there.”

With Contreras perilously close — the only first baseman in the player-tracking era to stand closer to home on a bunt attempt, according to Statcast, was Contreras’ old Chicago Cubs teammate Anthony Rizzo — India backed away from bunting and took a strike from reliever Kyle Leahy. Contreras didn’t budge. India stared at another pitch to even the count. On the fifth pitch, India hit a one-hopper to second baseman Brendan Donovan, who flipped to shortstop Masyn Winn for the force. Winn then wheeled around, ran toward third and fired to third baseman Nolan Arenado to cut down Drew Waters, turning a perilous situation into two outs.

None of it happens, Cardinals players and coaches said, without Contreras’ daring. “He’s a savage,” left fielder Lars Nootbaar said, and that can be repeated for every Cardinal around the diamond this season, from an infield of Arenado, Winn, Donovan and Contreras to Nootbaar, Victor Scott and Jordan Walker in the outfield to Pedro Pages behind the plate. All have been average or better. Arenado, Winn, Contreras and Scott are among the best in baseball at their positions, according to publicly available metrics as well as the models of three other teams surveyed by ESPN that validated the numbers. And as was the case in the May 17 game that ended with a 1-0 win in Kansas City and plenty more, the Cardinals’ gloves have carried them into contention.

“Guys wanted to take a ton of pride in their defense,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “When we look at what we can control this year, we knew we were going to have our ups and downs, but we can control the effort and being locked in every pitch. And that’s one thing I can say with confidence: We don’t give up a whole lot. Guys are making plays left and right. They’re on point. They’re locked in every pitch.”

COMING INTO SPRING TRAINING, the Cardinals looked scarcely different than the 83-79 team that was outscored by 47 runs a season ago. They signed one free agent: reliever Phil Maton, on a one-year, $2 million contract, in mid-March. They didn’t make any trades. Cardinals fans, among the game’s most die-hard, responded accordingly: attendance at Busch Stadium cratered by more than 7,000 a game to 28,464, the lowest average, outside of the 2021 season played under some pandemic restrictions, since after the strike in 1995.

Fans could not have known what they would be missing. Not even Cardinals players themselves could have foreseen this group into a constant highlight reel of glovework.

“Early on, we didn’t talk about defense,” Arenado said. “It was: ‘We’ve got to score runs. We don’t score runs.’ So that’s all we were talking about. But then as spring went on, we’re like, all right, our defense is actually kind of good. And then as the season has gone on, it’s been like, damn, dude, we’re really good defensively.”

How the Cardinals became arguably the sport’s best defensive team is a story of process and buy-in. For decades, the Cardinal Way — the team’s ethos, codified in an 86-page handbook — was their bible. In a game dominated by objective data, St. Louis’ philosophy grew stale — and the franchise with it. President of baseball operations John Mozeliak is in his last year on the job, with former Boston chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom taking over at season’s end. Clean defense, long a hallmark, bottomed out in 2023, when the Cardinals ranked among the worst in baseball. Their pre-pitch positioning, in particular, lagged severely behind more analytically inclined organizations.

“We kind of as a team knew we weren’t in the right positions in ’23, but you have to go based off of whatever [the positioning suggestions given to players] says,” Nootbaar said. “So we did that last year, and it didn’t feel as bad, but you really felt a stark difference from being where it felt like you were never in opportunistic positions. Now it feels like we’re starting to get there.”

Positioning is just the beginning. With former big leaguers Stubby Clapp coaching the infield and Jon Jay the outfield, players were given specific areas to improve. For Scott, who was taking over in center field from a top-flight defender in Mike Siani, he needed a better first step and direction to complement his high-end speed. Nootbaar planned to work on his jumps. Walker, who was among the game’s worst defenders the past two seasons after moving from third base to right, needed to get better in all facets.

During spring training, Jay set three cones in a triangle, cued players to break toward one and tossed a racquetball at them. The outfielders would then break toward another cone and catch another ball, which required soft hands because of the racquetball’s bounciness. He encouraged outfielders to station themselves low, with knees bent, which ensured their engagement in every pitch, a Marmol must.

“It’s so hard to lock in every single pitch, and you don’t know which one’s going to be the one that is coming your way,” Marmol said. “So your ability to be mentally tough enough to do that usually leads to attention to detail in other areas.”

The new approach has paid off. Scott is near the top of leaderboards in publicly available defensive metrics. Nootbaar, Cardinals players and staff said, is playing the best defense of his career, with his first step a tenth of a second faster than last year, something he attributes to focusing on shagging balls during batting practice. Walker has acquitted himself well enough to earn praise from scouts, who had him pegged as a lost cause in right.

And the improvements go beyond St. Louis’ outfielders. Contreras has similarly surprised evaluators, who were unsure how he would fare at first after starting just four games there in his previous nine major league seasons, the majority of which he spent at catcher. With catching duties going to Pagés and 24-year-old Ivan Herrera, whose bat has been a revelation, Contreras’ shift to first to replace four-time Gold Glove winner Paul Goldschmidt was a risk the Cardinals needed to take. And it has rewarded them handsomely.

“He might be one of the best first basemen I’ve ever seen,” Mikolas said. “I knew he’d be bodying it up, and I knew he’d be picking it, but his range and his arm — he’s doing something special there at first base. I think he’s surprising a lot of people. Probably not himself. He knows how good he is.”

It has been matched throughout the infield. Donovan, a 28-year-old utilityman, has settled into second and leads the NL in hits. Winn, whose weakness going to his backhand side was mitigated by an arm that rates among the best in the game, improved his first step and is getting to more balls than ever. At 34, Arenado — a 10-time Gold Glove winner who is regarded as perhaps the best defensive third baseman ever — is moving better than in recent seasons and looking ageless in the field.

“I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” Arenado said, “but I don’t see a defense that’s better than us — so far that we played against — in the big leagues.”

IN BASEBALL, DEFENSE does not win championships. Sometimes it doesn’t even get a team to the postseason. None of the No. 1 defensive teams this decade has made a World Series, let alone won one. But most of the top units are at the very least successful, and if that trend continues, the Cardinals will face one of the most interesting Julys in the sport.

Coming into the season, the expectation was that St. Louis would be among the most active teams in moving players at the trade deadline. Closer Ryan Helsley is the sort of arm every contender covets. Multiple teams seen as smart with handling pitchers planned to target left-hander Steven Matz, who has excelled out of the bullpen. Right-hander Sonny Gray remains a high-strikeout, low-walk, playoff-caliber arm. Fellow right-handed starter Erick Fedde is solid, even with his lack of strikeouts, and has allowed only three home runs in 52⅓ innings. Maton has a 133 ERA+ this season and has pitched in four of the past five postseasons.

If the Cardinals spend the next two months playing like they have the first seven weeks, the prospect of them shipping off their best arms diminishes greatly. Because if anyone knows how a team can back into October and find magic, it’s the Cardinals, who turned an 83-78 regular season in 2006 into their 10^th championship and a 90-win wild-card campaign into their 11th title five years later.

“I mean, a lot of us are still kind of growing,” Donovan said. “We’ve had the luxury of seeing people do it for a long time with the Cardinals and around the league, so I think it’s guys just kind of learning how to come into their own.”

Marmol has relished the growth. Now in his fourth season as manager, he has amalgamated players around a new identity of focus and structure — tenets that evoke the Cardinal Way, only modernized. Before the Contreras daredevil game, he invited a number of players into his office to give them concrete data on just how much they had improved defensively, the sort of feedback modern players particularly appreciate because of the objective nature. Gone are the bad vibes from a 12-17 start, replaced by a team that found its footing in series wins against the New York Mets, Pittsburgh, Washington, Philadelphia and Kansas City before losing a series of close games against the team with the best record in MLB, Detroit.

“The buy-in has been through the roof,” Marmol said. “And then when they can see the improvement in numbers, however many days in, it just reinforces: don’t let up.”