It is also noteworthy that neither of the championship game participants is unbeaten. Notre Dame had an embarrassing loss to Northern Illinois in Week 2, and then the Irish won 13 games in a row to get here. Ohio State lost to its hated rival to end the regular season but still knew it would qualify for the CFP.

“The new format has allowed our team to grow and build throughout the season,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “As much as losses hurt, they really allow us as coaches and players to take a hard look at the issues and get them addressed, and then it’s about the business of getting them fixed as time goes on.

“I think that’s really been the biggest thing that I’ve learned about this format, which I think has been great for our players. I think it’s great for college football.”

CFP Executive Director Rich Clark agreed that the event had hit its marks.

“We played out the format that we laid out, and that was the commissioner’s intent — for us to execute that as best we could, to get the best teams in it and let them play for the championship,” Clark said. “It went very well.”

There was some fear heading into the fall that the new format would diminish the regular season. Everyone knew that teams didn’t need to be unbeaten to make the bracket, so would games feel less meaningful? Ask Notre Dame fans after the loss to Northern Illinois if it stung any less because they could win out and make the Playoff. Or Ohio State fans after a fourth-straight loss to Michigan, because of course the Buckeyes could still play for a national championship. In both college towns, the world still felt like it was ending. There was still a great deal of meaning, as it turns out.

Clark said he thought the regular season was the best he’s seen in his lifetime.

“When you talk about games of significance, there were lots of them, and it was very exciting,” Clark said. “The Playoff, we believe, was a really good cap off to that strong regular season.”

Clark said that he expects the conference commissioners who oversee the CFP to spend time this offseason examining the selection and seeding processes as well the game sites. It is possible that there could be tweaks ahead of the 2025-26 season, but it is far more likely that substantial changes may not occur until the following season (when decisions will not require unanimity among leadership). The sport’s power brokers expect to examine the value of conference championship games in the future as well — a separate but related topic.

Several pundits have argued that the top four seed lines should not be reserved for conference champions in the future because that requirement caused this year’s bracket to become unbalanced. No. 3 seed Boise State and No. 4 seed Arizona State were ranked ninth and 12th, respectively, by the CFP selection committee. So they should have been seeded lower in the bracket had it matched the actual final rankings. That caused some of the most dangerous at-large teams, such as Notre Dame and Ohio State, to be seeded lower than they should have been. And Oregon, the top overall seed, was knocked out by the Buckeyes in the quarterfinal round.

The seeding issue might have popped up organically regardless, but it was exacerbated by conference realignment in recent years. The initial bracket (and its conference championship requirement) was pitched before Texas and Oklahoma left the Big 12 for the SEC and before the Big Ten added four West Coast schools, including Oregon. The fact that the Big Ten and SEC now gobble up more at-large spots because of the teams they added (and have a bunch of teams ranked in the top 10 in general) affects the relative strength of various conference champions. If at-large teams from two conferences are stronger than conference champions from two or three other leagues, it affects the bracket structure.

Still, the seeding issue was the only glaring problem with the new format. Everything else seemed to work well, particularly the first-round games being played on campus — which received rave reviews, prompting the possibility of moving future quarterfinal games away from bowl sites to campuses as well.

“For the first time out, I don’t think many of us are going to complain about this 12-team Playoff,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said. “I can speak on behalf for us at DKR [Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium], hosting that first-round game was electric. It was a tremendous atmosphere.”

“Playing in two bowl games, from the Peach Bowl to the Cotton Bowl, [was] an amazing opportunity for our players. Is this the exact right formula? I don’t know. There are some other people that are going to have to look at this, but I think we’re off to a good start.”

It’s hard to argue with Sarkisian on that point. It may not be perfect, but college football never is. It’s messy. It’s complicated. And it features more debate than just about any other sport on the planet.

But this is a postseason format that ensures the best teams in the country get to determine who is the actual best team in the country by playing it out on the field. They don’t have to rely on polls or a computer formula to determine the national champion. These teams get to determine it themselves, round after round.

And that is worth celebrating.