We grew up on a college football season that climaxed on New Year's Day. Is there a way back to that while keeping the excitement of the past month?

Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: Expanding the College Football Playoff worked.

The next three sites for the national title game will be at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans (Jan. 24, 2028), AT&T Stadium in Dallas (Jan. 22, 2029) and back to Hard Rock Stadium (Jan. 21, 2030) in Miami. New Orleans will host the CFP title game for the second time after LSU completed a perfect season with a win over Clemson in 2020.

The CFP will never likely surpass the NFL in the attention economy, but the march through the first 12-team Playoff has been a positive one.

Athletic directors from the SEC and Big Ten will meet to discuss major issues in college football and other NCAA sports at a conference on Feb. 19, according to

Only one game remains in what has been the longest college football season in history, which started way back on Aug. 24, 2024, when Georgia Tech upset then-No. 10 Florida State 24-21 in Ireland. That contest in Week 0 certainly set the tone for what would be a wild college football season that will go down in the memory banks.

Plus, more questions on whether the CFP format was a success, next year's rising teams and college football's longest season ever.

The early betting favorite to win next year’s national championship is Ohio State. The question nobody can really answer at this time is what sort of game will the Buckeyes or anyone else return to when they kick it off again seven months from now.

Here are five teams that didn’t make the College Football Playoff this season that should be strong contenders for qualification next season.