With just one game left in the 2024-25 college football season, we've seen enough: The inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff has been an undeniable success.

There are some minor issues that need to be addressed or adjusted, but the overall format change is a positive for the sport. In the final month of the season, more teams than ever are in playoff contention, which means more meaningful games every Saturday. College football remains as fiercely debated as ever over which teams deserve the final spot. There will be 11 CFP games played at the end of the season instead of 3, with 4 of those games being played in an electric campus environment.

Interest in the sport was strong throughout the season, with 11 regular-season games attracting more than 9 million viewers. The CFP first-round games averaged 10.6 million viewers, the quarterly average was 16.9, and the semifinals (played on Thursday and Friday nights) averaged 19.2. On Monday night, Notre Dame and Ohio State will have a national championship showdown between two blue-blooded stars, and the crowd for the championship game is expected to be huge.

It’s also worth noting that none of the championship contestants are undefeated. Notre Dame suffered an embarrassing loss to Northern Illinois in Week 2, and then the Irish won 13 straight games to get here. Ohio State lost to its pesky rival at the end of the regular season but still knows it's eligible for the CFP.

“The new format allows our team to grow and develop throughout the season,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “As much as the losses hurt, they did allow us as coaches and players to take a hard look at the issues and address them and then resolve them over time.

"I think that's really the biggest thing that I've learned from playing this format, and I think it's great for our players. I think it's great for college football."

CFP Executive Director Rich Clark also believed that the event achieved its intended purpose.

"We played the format we had in place and that's what the commissioner intended - let's execute the game to the best of our ability and put the best teams in the game and let them compete for a championship," Clark said. "It's going well."

Entering the fall, some people were worried that the new format would weaken the regular season. Everyone knows that a team doesn't need to go unbeaten to advance, so does the game feel less meaningful? Ask Notre Dame fans if the loss to Northern Illinois will ease some of the pain now that they can win and make the playoffs. Or Ohio State fans after losing to Michigan for the fourth straight time, because the Buckeyes can certainly still contend for the national title. In both college towns, the world still feels like the end of the world is coming. As it turns out, this still makes a lot of sense.

Clark said he thought the regular season was the best he had ever seen in his life.

"When you talk about big games, there are a lot of them, and they're very exciting," Clark said. "We believe the postseason is a great capstone to a strong regular season."

Clark said he hopes the conference commissioner in charge of the CFP will spend time in the offseason examining the selection and seeding process as well as the playing field. There could be some tweaks before the 2025-26 season, but more likely, there won't be major changes until next season (when decisions don't require unanimous leadership). The sport's power brokers also want to study the value of conference championship games in the future — a separate but related topic.

Some experts believe that going forward, the top four seeds should not be reserved for conference champions, as that requirement has led to an imbalance in this year's rankings. No. 3 seed Boise State and No. 4 seed Arizona State were ranked No. 9 and No. 12, respectively, by the CFP selection committee. Therefore, if consistent with the actual final ranking, they should be ranked lower in the group. This has resulted in some of the most dangerous big teams, like Notre Dame and Ohio State, being seeded lower than they should be. Top-seeded Oregon was eliminated by the Buckeyes in the quarterfinals.

Seed issues may arise naturally regardless, but conference changes in recent years have exacerbated the problem. The original bracket (and its conference championship claims) was made before Texas and Oklahoma State left the Big 12 for the SEC and before the Big 10 added four West Coast schools, including Oregon State. The fact that the Big Ten and SEC are now gobbling up more at-large roster spots due to adding teams (and having many teams ranked in the top ten overall) affects the relative strength of the respective conference champions. If the major league teams from two conferences are stronger than the conference championship teams from the other two or three conferences, it will affect the bracket structure.

Still, the seeding issue remains the only obvious issue with the new format. Everything else seemed to be going well, especially the first-round games played on campus, which were met with rave reviews, prompting the possibility of future quarterfinal games being moved from bowl sites to campus as well.

"For the first time, I don't think a lot of us are going to complain about this 12-team playoff," Texans coach Steve Sarkisian said. "I can speak for us at DKR (Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium), it was great to host the first round. It was a great atmosphere."

"Being in two bowl games from the Peach Bowl to the Cotton Bowl is a great opportunity for our guys. Is this the right formula? I don't know. There are some other guys that are going to have to look at that, But I think we're off to a good start."

It's hard to argue with Sarkisian on this point. It may not be perfect, but college football is never perfect. Very messy. it's complicated. It is more controversial than any other sport on the planet.

But this is a playoff format that ensures the best teams in the country determine who is truly the best team in the country by competing on the court. They don't have to rely on polls or computer formulas to determine a national champion. The teams can decide for themselves, round by round.

This is cause for celebration.