College Football Playoff Teams to Provide Injury Reports Starting in 2025-26 Bracket

College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark told Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports on Wednesday that the CFP will now include player availability and injury reports from its participating teams.

The CFP moved to an expanded 12-team format in 2024, with ongoing talks for further expansion to 16 teams.

One of the concerns regarding CFP expansion is the incredibly lengthy season for teams who advance to the championship game. Defending champions Ohio State and runners-up Notre Dame each played 16 games last season, for example, and managing injuries became paramount to both's success.

In turn, understanding who is healthy and who is not is an important part of game-planning for opposing teams, and it's a bit surprising that sharing injury reports wasn't already mandatory in the CFP.

As for future expansion to the playoff format, negotiations between the SEC, Big Ten and the rest of the conferences will ultimately determine how the 16-team format operates once it is adopted:

Last year's model gave an automatic qualifier to the five highest-ranked conference champions in the sport and seven at-large bids from the highest-ranked opponents remaining. The four highest-seeded conference champions received a bye last year, though in 2025, the four highest-ranked teams in the CFP will receive the first-round bye instead.

Going forward, the Big Ten is looking to guarantee itself more automatic qualifiers, much to the chagrin of the other conferences. The SEC initially seemed to be on board with that plan, aggrieved that Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina were left out last season while making the argument that its teams face a far more difficult conference slate and the rankings should reflect as much. Guaranteeing four automatic bids would provide a safeguard for the SEC or Big Ten, though the other conferences obviously aren't pleased that the two powerhouses would be guaranteed at least half of the field in that particular format.

The Big Ten's proposal was four automatic qualifiers each to itself and the SEC, two each to the Big 12 and ACC, one to the top Group of 6 team and the remaining three as at-large bids.

The ACC and Big 12 prefer keeping the model of five automatic berths to the top-ranked conference champions and the remaining at-larges going to the remaining 11 teams with the highest rank, and the SEC seems to be warming to that idea (albeit with the caveat of the selection committee giving more weight to strength of schedule when determining its rankings). The Big Ten has countered that strength of schedule is a subjective mark and one that seems to have an implicit bias toward the SEC.

So around and around they go, though it's obviously possible that the impasse won't be breached in the near future and the 12-team format will persist longer than expected.