The first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff was never going to be perfect, and certain tweaks and changes were bound to be made. However, potentially changing one of the biggest aspects of the playoff could have really helped Indiana in their first-round matchup for their first ever CFP appearance.
As we all know, Indiana fell to Notre Dame in the first round of the College Football Playoff in a game where the final score looked a lot closer than what it really was. The Hoosier offense, which had rolled all season long, was stumped against a suffocating Notre Dame defense that had answers to just about everything Curt Cignetti had to throw at them.
After the loss, a lot of people talked about Indiana not belonging in the playoffs and that, looking at their resume, they were never going to win that matchup. However, if the playoff structure had been different, they might not have ever faced Notre Dame, especially in the first round.
After the first round of the playoff looked incredibly lopsided, with blowout after blowout and each higher-seeded team winning, commissioners of each conference have come out and said there will be "in-depth conversations" about changing the seeding for the 2025 College Football Playoff, according to Brett McMurphy of Action Network.
There will be “in-depth discussions” about not guaranteeing conference champs top 4 @CFBPlayoff seeds in 2025, sources said. Top 5 conference champs still get in but rankings determine seeds. How this year’s playoff would have looked in that format ⤵️https://t.co/MVhukO8BlV pic.twitter.com/2KKUSgtT0D
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 30, 2024
The change these commissioners are talking about is taking away the bye for the top-ranked conference runners. Basically, it would take away byes for the conference champions and give the byes to the four highest-ranked teams, and the rest of the field would be filled out by the ranking of the Top 12.
The five best conference champions would still get in, but they just wouldn't get an automatic bye. So, looking at McMurphy's tweet above, if this had been the case for the playoff in 2024, Indiana would have been facing Boise State in the first round rather than Notre Dame.
The meetings for these discussions are planned for January 2025.