The College Football Playoff will go to a more straightforward way of filling the bracket next season, announcing Thursday that it will place teams strictly on where they are ranked instead of moving pieces around to reward conference champions.

As previously reported by Marcello, discussions about expanding the field to 14 or 16 teams -- with multiple automatic qualifiers reserved for the four power conferences -- have been ongoing for months. The 12-team expanded playoff model's contract ends after the 2025 season.

The College Football Playoff (CFP) management committee agreed to change its seeding format for this season. The new policy will no longer reserve byes for conference champions and instead have the seeds match the committee’s rankings, according to a CFP spokesperson.