The 2024-25 College Football Playoff format looked much different than the four-team bracket used the previous 10 years. Now, there are 12 teams in total, with the five highest ranked conference champions automatically getting a bid; the top four of those champs received a bye.
This led to teams lower in the rankings, such as No. 9 Boise State University and No. 12 Arizona State University, to skip the first round, while No. 3 University of Texas at Austin and No. 4 Penn State had to battle teams in the first round.
Both Arizona State and Boise State got knocked out against Texas and Penn State, respectively, with Boise State getting blown out 31-14. Arizona State put up a fight against Texas, but the Longhorns won in overtime 39-31.
The other two quarterfinal matchups that featured bye teams were snooze fests, as well. No. 2 University of Georgia lost 23-10 to the No. 5 University of Notre Dame in a more defensive battle, while No. 1 ranked Oregon — which was thought to be the best team in the country — got steamrolled in the Rose Bowl to the eventual champion No. 6 Ohio State 41-21. These were not the kind of games the country wants to see.
This season, being a conference champion only secures you a playoff berth, not a bye week. Only the top four teams in the country get a bye.
A champion from a weaker conference like the Atlantic Coast Conference, which only has one team in the top 15 from the Nov. 11 College Football Playoff Rankings, won’t get a bye just for winning its league.
This new format gives Indiana football multiple ways to secure the first-round bye.
The first is to take down Ohio State at the Big Ten Championship on Dec. 6 in Indianapolis, assuming the Hoosiers and Buckeyes don’t get upset in their final games.
The second is where the new rule comes into play. As of now, the Hoosiers are ranked No. 2 in the country behind only the Buckeyes. Because of Indiana’s dominance, if it were to lose in Indianapolis, there are ways for it to still take that bye week and get time off in preparation for the quarterfinal.
The Hoosiers' other main competition involves teams in the Southeastern Conference — No. 3 Texas A&M University, No. 4 University of Alabama and No. 5 Georgia.
All those teams face schedules with winnable games, but if there’s one thing this year that college football has taught us, it’s that anything can happen. One of these teams could easily drop a game before the conference championship, which could favor the Hoosiers.
Indiana, which already has the best point differential in all of college football, does not face another team with a winning record in the regular season and should make the Big Ten Championship. If the Hoosiers get blown out by Ohio State, which is also assumed to make the conference championship, the Hoosiers’ chances of getting a bye are slim. If they were to lose by a close margin and all of those SEC teams win out, they also might not receive a bye.
But if at least one of the SEC teams lose another game and finish the season with two losses, in my eyes, there’s no way the committee could give a 10-2 Georgia a bye over a 12-1 Indiana which only lost in the Big Ten Championship. Thanks to the new format, it likely won’t all come down to the final game leading up to the playoffs.
However, receiving the first-round bye could be a bad sign for Indiana. In the one-year sample we have to go off of, all four teams that received a bye week lost. Two of those four teams, Oregon and Georgia, were the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds when the regular season ended and were projected to make it to the National Championship.
Getting a bye week could cause a team to get off to a slow start in the game, which may be just enough for an upset. Along with that, teams can lose rhythm from the time off and seem discombobulated when the time to play has finally come.
For the Hoosiers, this won’t be the case. I believe if they were to receive the bye, they would take a much-needed week to rest but after that, head coach Curt Cignetti will have the team ready for the moment.
For now, there’s still a lot of work to do for Indiana to put itself into that position, but if the Hoosiers remain on the track they’ve built, nobody is stopping that train. From a squad that was projected to underperform compared to last year's Cinderella run, Indiana has surpassed themselves in a major way and will face uncharted territory for the Hoosiers. Indiana’s sights are set on the first National Championship in program history.
