The College Football Playoff format will not be changing any time soon, at least for now, and CFP executive director told ESPN on Tuesday that the bidding process for the final three years of the original 12-year contract will begin next year.
Thus far, the CFP has largely kept its championship games inside the family, so to speak. The following are title sites through the system’s first six years. Bolded years indicate the host market is already in the semifinal rotation:
2015: North Texas
2016: Arizona
2017: Tampa
2018: Atlanta
2019: Bay Area
2020: New Orleans
So, six years in, all but two of the CFP’s 18 games have been played in Pasadena, Phoenix, Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta or Miami. Looking forward, by 2024, 26 of 30 games will have been played in the same six cities. (Of course, it goes without saying that those six cities happen to be six of the best big-event towns in America.).
2021: Miami
2022: Indianapolis
2023: Los Angeles
2024: Houston
Information on the latest bidding process proved elusive to find, but the time before that, in 2015, four cities submitted bids and did not get chosen for that round or the next: Detroit, Charlotte, San Antonio, and Minneapolis.
There’s no guarantees any of those cities will bid again in 2021, nor that the CFP will choose them. (An outdoor game in Charlotte in January could be dicey, and the Alamodome is a subpar facility by title game standards.) Markets that hosted previously could also jump back in the bidding process as well; Tampa has been aggressive in advertising its plans to jump back in line.
In short, the board is pretty much wide open for the 2025 and ’26 title games, but it would be nice to see the CFP award the games to cities that don’t already have seats on the gravy train.
