College CoD reveal new format for the 2023 season

Ant Stonelake

Ant Stonelake

College CoD is back!

The new season of College CoD is almost upon us. With the release of Modern Warfare 2, the appetite for competitive play is back amongst all of the top players in the game. None more so than the collegiate cohort.

College CoD is the top level of collegiate competition in Call of Duty, with esports programmes across the States fielding teams in events.

New season

College CoD is returning with a fresh format for the 2023 season of competition. The new season will be split into three sections. From now until December will be "Pre-Season", the "Regular Season" will run from January to May. From the conclusion of the Regular Season, the Off-Season runs until August.

The main aim for 2023 will be to keep on improving on the impressive showing from the Vanguard season. College CoD really came into its own last year after partnering with eFuse.

In 2022, we brought the full force of eFuse behind CCL with many landmark improvements for us including: Main & Academy leagues, LAN, and more prizing than ever before across the entire year. In 2023, we’re looking forward to iterating on and improving the CCL in areas like registration, format, rulebook updates, and more.

Registration will open for the 2023 College CoD season on October 31. Teams are allowed to field players playing on any of the systems that Modern Warfare 2 will run on. That includes PC, XBOX and PlayStation gamers.

New format

The new College CoD format starts in February 2023. The season begins with Regional Qualifiers. There will be two qualifiers for each of the three regions.

The regions are:

  • Northeast
  • Southeast
  • West

The top 12 teams in each qualifier will make it through to League Play. The top 12 in the first qualifier will be Division 1 and the top 12 in the second qualifier will be Division 2.

Every team that competes in Division 1 will automatically qualify for Play-offs at the end of the season. The top eight teams in each region will receive first-round byes during the post-season.

The top four teams from each region's second division will also qualify for the play-offs. The other eight teams from the Division 2 regions will all have to play through the Last Chance Qualifier.

Open Events

A new addition to the CCL calendar, regional open tournaments have been brought in for the teams that do not qualify for League Play. In these tournaments, the regions become simply: East and West.

Play-off points are awarded based on performance in these events and the top teams will be able to qualify for the LCQ.

The top 16 teams in the East region will go into the LCQ. The top eight teams based on Play-off Points will go into the LCQ from the West region.

Last Chance Qualifier

The LCQ will be made up of 48 teams altogether. That's 32 from the East and 16 from the West.

The top eight teams from each region will then move onto the Play-offs and join the rest of the teams that have already qualified.

College CoD Play-offs

The East and West will have separate Play-off brackets. These will run separately in order to decide the teams that will make it through to the final event of the season - Championship LAN.

The East will have the top four teams from the Play-offs qualify for LAN. The West will have three representatives from their bracket.

The eighth and final spot will be given to a team that wins a cross-region play-in-style tournament that provides teams with one last chance at qualifying for LAN.

No dates are available for the final LAN event of the season but if it reflects last season's schedule, it will take place in June.

That's all the info on the brand-new College CoD format. Every team will set themselves the goal of being at that very final LAN event. It should be a fantastic season.