What New College Football Playoff Format Means For Colorado Buffaloes

The College Football Playoff is shifting once more, heavily affecting coach Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes' future in the Big 12 Conference.

Starting this fall, the 12-team CFP will transition to a straight seeding model that rewards the selection committee's top four teams with the top four seeds and a first-round bye.

In other words, the committee will re-seed the 12 eligible teams following conference championship weekend. In the College Football Playoff's first year in a 12-team format, the four highest-ranking conference champs were awarded the No. 1-4 seeds.

NEWS: CFP executives are expected to adopt a straight-seeding model for this season’s College Football Playoff, @RossDellenger reports👀

Here’s how last season would’ve looked⬇️https://t.co/a533hB94GU pic.twitter.com/OJ398uEGSK
— On3 (@On3sports) May 22, 2025

This structure caused much controversy, so many saw this tweak as warranted. The Boise State Broncos were tabbed No. 3 for winning the Mountain West, an inferior conference to many programs ranked No. 5-12. Boise State was also ranked higher than the Big 12's champion, the Arizona State Sun Devils.

The automatic Group of Five conference bid was not removed in the new playoff format, but the re-seeding essentially locks the bid into the No. 12 seed. Programs like Boise State and rising schools in the American Athletic Conference like the Memphis Tigers and Tulane Green Wave still get a shot at the Playoff, but they'd have to face the No. 5 team in the country just to keep playing.

Additionally, it will keep the precedent of awarding an automatic bid to the top four conference champions, keeping the result of Power Four title games significant.

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Colorado controlled its destiny to the Big 12 Championship game in 2024 until disaster struck against the Kansas Jayhawks. Still, the Buffs' 7-2 record in the Big 12 was nearly enough to earn a shot against Arizona State, a team they had not played all season but had the tools to take down.

Instead, the BYU Cougars put the nail in the Buffaloes' coffin with a regular-season finale win over the Houston Cougars and buried them further with an Alamo Bowl beatdown.

The path to the College Football Playoff does not change for Colorado: Win the Big 12. The committee favored the Mountain West over it when seeding the Broncos over the Sun Devils last year, so the Buffs will have to overcome a subpar public perception of their conference.

Dec 28, 2024; San Antonio, TX, USA; Brigham Young Cougars head coach Kalani Sitake and Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders greet on the field after the game at Alamodome. | Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

Colorado will have a crack at every major Big 12 contender from last season and will play many teams predicted to be in the running, starting on Aug. 29 against the ACC's Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

BYU returns plenty of production and lies ahead at home on Sept. 27, then the Iowa State Cyclones and Utah Utes in two and three weeks following it. New West Virginia Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez wants to restore his program's former glory, then ASU under coach Kenny Dillingham and quarterback Avery Johnson's Kansas State Wildcats to close a nip-and-tuck conference schedule.

Colorado must remedy many losses, headlined by quarterback Shedeur Sanders and wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter. To accomplish Coach Prime's vision of a College Football Playoff game on Folsom Field, the Buffaloes must reach their bubbling potential and have the opportunity to conquer a conference needed to get them there.