These games, while not a part of the national championship competition, are still a big stage to build toward the future as a program.

Top teams that land just outside of the top-four in the country can make top bowl games such as the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Sugar Bowl, which are part of what is known as the New Year’s Six games. Of course, there is more to aspire to for teams than just the College Football Playoff each year. Behind NFL quarterbacks like Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, and Trevor Lawrence, those schools have set the standard for success in the College Football Playoff era. In the brief history of the event, one or both of those teams have regularly appeared in the playoff, with those two schools winning the championship the majority of the time. Instead, the selection criteria is completely subjective, as teams do not need to win their conference or even play for their conference championship to get in.ĭuring the College Football Playoff era, Clemson and Alabama have dominated the competition. Unlike the NCAA Tournament in basketball, there are no automatic qualifiers based on conference championship wins. The College Football Playoff has been in existence since 2014, with a selection committee choosing the four teams they think are the best in the country to participate each year. Meanwhile, leagues like the Sun Belt, Conference USA, the MAC, Mountain West, and American Athletic Conference put talented teams on the field without those same advantages. The SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12, and Pac-12 have programs that garner more media attention, bring in more money, and are able to recruit better players as a result of those advantages. There are five major conferences among the 10 in college football, which is known as the Power 5. Each year, these schools make it their goal to make it to the College Football Playoff, where the top four teams in the country play in a single-elimination tournament, with the winner claiming the national championship.

There are over 125 schools split into ten conferences at the highest level of college football, which is known as the FBS. Today, college football is played everywhere from California to Florida to Massachusetts and everywhere in between. But the sport of college football has grown to be more popular than the National Football League in some parts of the country thanks to its expansion across America. Back then, there was no College Football Playoff or nationally televised games. College football has been around since the 1800s, with the first game in the history of the sport taking place between Rutgers and what is now known as Princeton in 1869.

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