Explaining College Football 2025 Conference Realignment, 12-Team Playoffs, New Rules

The changes ahead of the 2025 college football season are not as drastic as they were a year ago.

The 12-team College Football Playoff format is still in place, but the seeding of the teams will be different compared to 2024.

There are also a few minor rule tweaks that will go into place as the season begins Saturday in Ireland between Iowa State and Kansas State.

The 12-team CFB Playoff format is still in place, but the format of the playoff is different.

The 12 playoff qualifiers will now be seeded by the selection committee with no first-round byes for power-four conference champions.

That means the top four seeds could all be from the Big Ten and the SEC and that the ACC and Big 12 champions might have to win four playoff games to win a title.

The qualification process is still the same, though, as the power-four conference champions, the best Group of Five team and seven at-large squads will make up the field.

There’s no major conference realignment to talk about (for once) ahead of a new college football season.

Delaware and Missouri State moved up from the FCS to FBS and will play in Conference USA.

But doesn’t mean realignment is over. There’s more to come for the 2026 season with the rebirth of the Pac-12 and a new-look Mountain West.

A few rule tweaks were made for the 2025 season.

Most notably, there are more rules in place to combat the faking of injuries. If a player is injured on the field after the ball is spotted, a timeout will be charged to that team. If that team has no timeouts remaining, a five-yard delay of game penalty will be issued.

A small alteration was made to timeouts in overtime. Teams now have one timeout for the remainder of the game following the second overtime. Teams are still allowed a timeout in the first and second overtimes.