College Football Playoff

The College Football Playoff (CFP) is an annual postseason knockout invitational tournament to determine a national champion for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), the highest level of college football competition in the United States. It culminates in the College Football Playoff National Championship game. The inaugural tournament was held at the end of the 2014 NCAA Division I FBS football season under a four-team format. The CFP expands to include twelve teams for the 2024 season.

As the NCAA does not organize or award an official national championship for FBS football (instead merely recognizing the decisions made by any of a number of independent major championship selectors), the CFP's inception in 2014 marked the first time a major national championship selector in college football was able to determine their champion by using a bracket competition. A 13-member committee selects and seeds the teams to take part in the CFP. This system differs from the use of polls or computer rankings that had previously been used to select the participants for the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), the title system used in FBS from 1998 to 2013. The current format is a Plus-One system, an idea which became popular as an alternative to the BCS after the 2003 and 2004 seasons ended in controversy.

The two semifinal games rotate among six major bowl games, referred to as the New Year's Six: the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl, and Sugar Bowl. In addition to the teams selected for the playoff, from 2014 to 2023 the final CFP rankings are used in determining the participants for the four New Year's Six bowls that are not hosting the semifinals that year (from 2024 on those games are a part of the Quarterfinals of the new playoff). If the Rose and Sugar Bowls host the semifinals (which occurs every third year), they are played on New Year's Day (or January 2 should New Year's Day fall on a Sunday). In other years, the semifinals are scheduled on a Friday or Saturday near New Year's Day, with flexibility allowed to ensure that they are not in conflict with other bowl games traditionally held on New Year's Day. Under the original four-team format, the two semifinal games were played on the same day; with the expansion of the CFP in 2024, they will be played on back-to-back days. The College Football Playoff National Championship game is then played on the first Monday that is six or more days after the Semifinals. The venue of the championship game is then selected based on bids submitted by cities, similar to the NCAA Final Four.

The winner of the Championship Game is awarded the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy. Playoff officials commissioned a new trophy that was unconnected with the previous championship systems, such as the AFCA "crystal football" trophy which had been regularly presented after the championship game since the 1990s (as the AFCA was contractually obligated to name the BCS champion as the Coaches Poll champion).