Here are all the new changes for the 2025 college football season Nick BrombergAugust 22, 2025 at 9:58 PM A new college football season always brings changes.
- - Here are all the new changes for the 2025 college football season
Nick BrombergAugust 22, 2025 at 9:58 PM
A new college football season always brings changes.
There's not much new around college football ahead of the 2025 season, but there are a few noticeable changes as well as a couple of new teams at the top level of the sport. Here's a quick look at what's different about the 2025 college football season.
College Football Playoff tweaks
As we keep waiting and waiting on the Big Ten, SEC and everyone else to decide what the future of the College Football Playoff will be, there will be only a small change to the 12-team format at the end of the 2025 season.
In last season's inaugural 12-team playoff, the top four conference champions that made the field got the top four seeds and first-round byes. No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Georgia were the top two seeds, while No. 9 Boise State was the No. 3 seed and No. 4 Arizona State was the No. 4 seed. ACC champion Clemson got the No. 12 seed as the fifth-highest ranked conference champion at No. 16 in the rankings.
All four teams that got first-round byes lost in their first playoff games. Oregon and Georgia lost to teams ranked below them, while Boise State lost to a Penn State team that finished No. 4 in the final rankings and ASU lost to Texas. The Longhorns were No. 3 in the last rankings.
This season, the top four teams in the final rankings will get the top four seeds regardless of their status as a conference champion. That means we're likely to see a conference get multiple first-round byes. A year ago, both the Big Ten and SEC would have had two teams with first-round byes.
The playoff also announced some changes to the way it evaluates teams in the 2025 season, though it's unclear how they will affect the way the rankings unfold over the course of the season. The playoff says it'll place even more emphasis on games against strong opponents and reward teams more for wins against a good team and penalize teams less for losses to a better opponent.
NCAA's efforts to curb fake injuries
The NCAA has implemented a significant rule change regarding the way injuries are handled. It's a push to prevent teams from having players go down to slow the tempo of a game and get a free timeout.
Starting this season, a team will be charged a timeout if its athletic training staff has to enter the field to tend to a player who fell to the ground after the ball was spotted. If a player goes down after the ball was spotted and his team doesn't have any timeouts, the team will get a 5-yard delay of game penalty.
Faux injuries were a big talking point during the 2024 season. The NCAA previously told schools that conferences could be notified if it was determined that a player feigned an injury and conferences had the right to penalize a school. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey even sent a memo to teams during the second half of the season to tell them to stop faking injuries.
Welcome to the top level of college football
There are now 136 teams at the top level of college football as Delaware and Missouri State join Conference USA this fall. The Blue Hens and Bears are moving up from the FCS level and Missouri State gets a fun welcome with a season opener at USC.
Delaware plays at Colorado in Week 2. Both teams will be hoping to emulate the quick success that fellow Conference USA teams Jacksonville State and Sam Houston have had when moving up.
A new Rose Bowl start time
Believe it or not, the Rose Bowl is changing its kickoff time.
The Rose Bowl has long clung to its 5 p.m. ET start because the sun would set on the San Gabriel Mountains in the second half of the game. That kickoff time is shifting to 4 p.m. ET thanks to the rest of the College Football Playoff.
With the Rose Bowl stubbornly at 5 p.m. ET, the Sugar Bowl has been forced to start at 8:45 p.m. ET and sometimes even later depending on how long the Rose Bowl took. Now, the Sugar Bowl can start earlier — and ESPN can get more people to stay up and watch — with the Rose Bowl's new start time.
The Dan Lanning rule continues
Remember when Oregon exploited the NCAA rulebook late in its regular-season win over Ohio State? While leading 32-31 ahead of an Ohio State third down with 10 seconds to go, Oregon called a timeout before putting a 12th player on the field.
The Ducks were penalized for the extra man on the field, but five seconds elapsed on the incomplete pass play that Ohio State couldn't get back. Will Howard ultimately slid to the turf trying to get into field-goal range as the clock expired.
Not long after the game, the NCAA said it would start adding time back to the clock if teams mimicked what Oregon did. Under the new rule, not only would Oregon have been penalized 5 yards, the clock would have reset back to 10 seconds.
Multi-overtime games shouldn't take as long
Games stretching beyond two overtimes should no longer be interminable. Before 2024, teams were given a timeout for every overtime period. And since college football games go into a 2-point conversion shootout after the second overtime, games entering fourth and fifth overtimes became hard to watch as teams used their timeouts after seeing an opponent's formation.
The barrage of timeouts often meant that extra overtime periods would feature as many timeouts as play attempts. That won't happen any longer.
Going forward, teams will still get a timeout for each of the first two overtimes. But starting in the third overtime, teams will have just one timeout to use for the rest of the game. If a team uses its timeout during the third overtime of a game, it'll no longer have a timeout to use as long as the game goes on.
Source: "AOL Sports"
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