College football from the NCAA is the league that has undergone the most transformations in the United States in the last 25 years, but the changes in the 2024 season will be one of the biggest in history, perhaps the most significant.
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Until the 1990s, the champion was not unanimous, and most media outlets used the team that finished first in The Associated Press ranking as a reference. In 1998, a final between the top 1 and 2 of the ranking was finally established, in 2014 the playoffs began with four teams, and in 2024 the playoffs will be expanded to 12 universities.
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That is one of the main changes in college football, but it is not the only one of the new era that will begin to be widely contested nationally starting from Thursday, August 29.
New playoff format
This time, 12 teams will qualify for the national championship playoffs instead of four as it was until 2023.
What remains is that a panel of experts will generate the first ranking at the end of October and will announce the teams that will qualify for the playoffs on Sunday, December 8, the day after the conference finals.
The playoffs of the new era will be played as follows: the five conference champions with the highest ranking will have a guaranteed spot along with seven other teams. The top four seeds will have a bye in the first round, while the universities ranked 5th to 8th will host the teams ranked 9th to 12th in their stadiums on December 20th and 21st.
The quarterfinals will be held on December 31 and January 1, 2025 at the Fiesta Bowl (Phoenix), Peach Bowl (Atlanta), Sugar Bowl (New Orleans), and Rose Bowl (Pasadena). The semifinals will be played at the Orange Bowl (Miami) and Cotton Bowl (Dallas) on January 9 and 10.
The national final is scheduled at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta for January 20th, in what will be the longest season in the history of NCAA college football.
The new conferences
The historic Pacific 12 Conference was virtually destroyed last year and since this season its main teams have aligned with other leagues.
- The most important teams in the Pac-12, UCLA and USC, as well as Oregon and Washington, signed with the Big 10 Conference, which will now have 18 teams.
- Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah joined the Big 12 Conference, which will now have 16 universities starting this year.
- The Atlantic Conference will now reach the Pacific thanks to the additions of Stanford and California (both Pac-12). SMU (formerly American Conference) will also join them.
- The Pac-12 will have only two teams, Washington State and Oregon State, that will play six games each against the Mountain West Conference.
To all these changes generated by the Pac-12 crisis, it is added that two historic teams, such as Texas and Oklahoma, are leaving the Big 12 Conference and will join the increasingly powerful SEC, where Alabama, Georgia, LSU, and Florida are already located.
Goodbye to one of the great coaches in history
After 50 years on the sidelines of college football fields, Nick Saban decided to retire with seven national titles (one with LSU and six with Alabama).
Now Saban, 72 years old, will be a college football analyst for ESPN.
Welcome to technology
Coaches will finally be able to communicate with players, especially the quarterback, through radio devices in the helmets, just like in the NFL. This will put an end to a great tradition in the NCAA: the use of strange signs to call plays in code.
In addition, players and coaches will now be able to use tablets on the bench to review videos of different plays, something that was prohibited because not all universities had access to the same sophisticated technology that is seen every Sunday in the NFL.