College Football Playoff National Championship is a playoff designed to determine an official college football national champion each year in the United States. The playoff follows the completion of the regular college football season. The first playoff was held in 2015, following the 2014 regular season. Four teams competed in that playoff and in each of the playoffs that followed the regular seasons of 2015 through 2023. Beginning with the 2024 season, 12 teams will compete in the playoffs.
The championship playoff involves the 10 college conferences that play football, along with selected schools that do not belong to a conference. A special committee selects the 12 teams that compete in the playoff. The committee consists of student athletes, university administrators, journalists, former coaches, and current university athletic directors. The committee bases its selections on such factors as strength of schedule, head-to-head (one team against another) results, results against common opponents, and regular-season conference championships. Strength of schedule refers to the number of games played and the quality of teams played against.
The playoffs consist of the five highest-ranked conference champions and the next seven highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions are seeded (ranked) 1 through 4. The remaining eight teams are seeded 5 through 12. The top 4 seeds receive a bye in the first round. In the first round, the 5th seed hosts (plays at their home stadium) a game against the 12th seed, the 6th seed hosts the 11th seed, the 7th seed hosts the 10th seed, and the 8th seed hosts the 9th seed. In the quarterfinals, the winners of first-round games play the teams that received a first-round bye. The quarterfinals game winners advance to the semifinals. The semifinal game winners meet in the championship game. The quarterfinal and semifinal games are rotated among the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Sugar Bowl. The championship game is played in a different city each year. Cities bid for the right to host the game.
A number of organizations declared unofficial national champions in the years before a championship playoff was established. The Associated Press began naming a national champion in 1936, based on a weekly poll of sportswriters. The champion was the poll leader at the end of the season. Another weekly poll, conducted by football coaches, declared its own champion beginning in 1950. The Football Writers Association of America began naming a champion in 1954. In 1959, the National Football Foundation & College Football Hall of Fame started awarding the MacArthur Bowl trophy, its version of the national championship award.
The first playoff to determine an official national champion was held after the 1992 season and was called the Bowl Coalition. The structure was changed after three seasons, and the name became the Bowl Alliance. That playoff was replaced in 1998 by the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), another two-team playoff that existed until it was replaced by the College Football Playoff National Championship in 2015, following the 2014 regular season.
