For the first two years of the 12-team College Football Playoff, the top five-ranked conference champions were guaranteed automatic bids—ensuring at least one Group of 6 program would make an appearance.
Going into 2026, the prevailing understanding was that the fifth slot, reserved for a Group of 6 team, would continue to go to the top conference champion. But a report in The Athletic last week found that for 2026 and beyond, the automatic qualifier designated for the Group of 6 programs would go to the top-ranked Group of 6 team overall, rather than the top-ranked conference champion.
In the wake of that report, Group of 6 conference officials plan to convene to discuss the terms of their one College Football Playoff automatic qualifier bid, sources tell Front Office Sports. Commissioners may discuss whether to change the bid back to the top-ranked conference champion. The meeting could take place as soon as this week.
“Times have changed,” one Group of 6 source said, adding that it may be time to “revisit” the concept.
The Athletic first reported the news.
As part of the 12-team CFP, five slots were reserved for “automatic qualifiers,” while seven were offered as “at-large” bids. Currently, the rule awards the five automatic qualifiers to the five highest-ranked conference champions. The reason: to guarantee at least one conference championship automatic qualifier would go to a Group of 6 team—a team from the American, Sun Belt, Mountain West, Pac-12, MAC, or Conference USA.
Even though the College Football Playoff won’t expand next year, there will be some format changes.
Going forward, the four power conferences are guaranteed one spot each for their conference champion. However, the prevailing understanding was that the fifth slot would go to the conference champion for 2026 and beyond—that is, until The Athletic reported last week that that wasn’t the case.
The fifth spot will go to the highest ranked Group of 6 team overall, whether they are a conference champion or not. The decision was made official in a memorandum of understanding, which conference commissioners signed in 2024.
At the time the MOUs were drafted, Group of 6 commissioners decided to eschew the conference champion concept partially because of what was happening with Liberty football, one source said. During the 2023-24 season, Liberty became the top-ranked conference champion in the Group of 6 with a 13-0 record and Conference USA championship, and would have won that fifth slot had the CFP been at 12 teams that year. Some officials believed the Flames didn’t deserve a CFP slot, however, given what they saw as a weak regular-season schedule. (That year, for example, they had an overall ranking ahead of SMU, at the time a non-power conference program that some thought was more deserving.)
But after two years of the CFP, that situation hasn’t materialized. There did not appear to be controversy over the conference champions Boise State and Tulane and JMUrepresenting the Group of 6 in the 2024 and 2025 CFP, respectively. The 12-team CFP results suggest it may be time to keep the current conference championship.
There’s also a business motivation for switching the Group of 6 bid to the conference champion. When the conference championship matters for a CFP slot, the Group of 6 conference championship games are significantly more valuable for both the leagues and their television partners. Conferences don’t want to devalue their own championship properties by making them potentially obsolete for the purposes of CFP bids.
If Group of 6 conferences do reach a consensus on changing the language of the MOU to award their slot to a conference champion, they can’t do it on their own. They’ll need approval from the Power 4 for any format changes, a CFP source confirmed to FOS. Major format changes, such as whether to expand, must be approved by the commissioners of the Big Ten and SEC.
