How the College Football Playoff automatic qualifiers work, from byes to seeds

The College Football Playoff’s expansion from four to 12 teams starting with the 2024 season provided teams with more room to break into the CFP.

There’s also new way for teams to secure a spot in the field. That’s right — automatic qualifiers are now part of FBS and the College Football Playoff.

Here’s a quick look at how the CFP automatic qualifiers work:

• There are five automatic qualifiers — the five conference champions ranked highest by the CFP selection committee get in automatically
• NEW IN 2025 — The four highest-ranked champions no longer get byes into the quarterfinals automatically.

Here’s a deeper dive into how AQs work:

Explaining the College Football Playoff automatic qualifiers

Unlike college basketball’s NCAA tournament, automatic bids won’t be given to every conference champion for the CFP. For FBS, automatic spots will be given to the five highest-ranked conference champions — no matter the conference. Those five AQs are dependent on how the CFP selection committee ranks conference champions in the top 25.

If the fifth-highest ranked conference champion is ranked outside of the top-12, it will still make it into the college football playoff.  In other words, even if the fifth-highest-ranked conference champion is ranked No. 18 in the final CFP top 25 rankings, that team will be the No. 12 seed as that last automatic qualifier.

The fifth-highest-ranked conference champion will not host its first round game if it fails to snag a higher seed than its opponent.

Here’s a look at every FBS conference. Five of these conference champions will become automatic qualifiers, based on where they rank in the committee’s top 25.

• ACC
• American 
• Big Ten
• Big 12
• Conference USA
• MAC
• Mountain West
• Sun Belt 
• SEC

CFP Breakdown: How the College Football Playoff works

Does automatic qualification translate to a first-round bye?

While in year one of the 12-team CFP the top-four auto-qualifiers were seeded one through four no matter their ranking, beginning in the 2025, every team will now be seeded directly based on the final ranking of the CFP Selection Committee.

An auto-qualifer can only receive a bye if it is one of the four highest-ranked teams as only the top-four ranked teams (No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4) get byes.

CFP Forecast: Predicting the College Football Playoff rankings, bracket for Week 13

Who isn’t eligible to be an AQ? 

With a conference title required for an automatic bid, FBS independents are ineligible to be an automatic qualifier.