College football fans love healthy debate. There was nothing healthy about what happened on Sunday after the College Football Playoff field was unveiled.
The committee created a mess with the Miami-Notre Dame situation. Everyone knew Miami had the head-to-head over Notre Dame all season, but the committee kept the Fighting Irish ahead of the Hurricanes in the rankings — until Sunday.
Fallout from the CFP
The committee flipped them on Sunday, handing the Hurricanes the final at-large bid and leaving the Irish out. Their logic was dumbfounding — they could only compare the head-to-head when the two teams were next to each other in the rankings. That finally happened because BYU lost to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game and dropped one spot, allowing Miami to move directly behind Notre Dame.
Notre Dame was big mad. The Irish pulled out of a bowl game and basically accused the ACC of deep-sixing its chances by being more supportive of Miami.
The committee also destroyed its logic for leaving SMU in the field last year even after it lost to Clemson in the ACC title game. Their reasoning then was that they didn’t want to punish teams for losing conference title games. The assumption was the committee would be consistent.
This year? The committee punished every team that lost a conference title game that was in the final rankings, including Ohio State (Big Ten), BYU (Big 12), Virginia (ACC) and North Texas (American). The only one that was wasn’t punished was Alabama, which was as dog-walked by Georgia in the SEC title game as BYU was by Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game.
It leads one to believe that the only reason Alabama didn’t make last year’s field was that it only won nine games. It also reinforced that there are different rules for different brands.
Meanwhile, ESPN’s Nick Saban basically insinuated that Group of 6 schools don’t belong in the playoff because James Madison got in after Duke beat Virginia in the ACC title game and the Dukes, correctly, moved into the top five conference champions, based on the CFP rules. It also meant that his precious SEC only got five bids. Boo hoo. Other talking heads, especially the SEC ones, spent all day on social media reinforcing the idea that half of FBS doesn’t matter.
It was a disaster of a playoff field unveiling. The ramifications could begin to be felt this week when the conference commissioners meet on playoff expansion. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark still believes in the 5+11 model. But his conference has only gotten one bid in each of the first two 12-playoff field. He’s hungry for more, but he wants his conference, and the others, to “earn it on the field.” That’s the proper direction.
Two years in and the current system looks like a dumpster fire. The playoff is going to expand. The only question is whether it will be 2026 or beyond. The powers-that-be have until late January to decide. The events of Sunday only add fuel to what the SEC and the Big Ten truly want — more guaranteed playoff bids, something the Big 12 and ACC have been fighting against for months but have little leverage to stop.
I’m in favor of expanding the CFP. But I want it expanded the right way. I believe there is a solution. It already exists. And it would solve most of the issues that made Sunday such a nightmare and made me forget to set my fantasy football lineup. It’s time for FBS to expand the playoffs to 24 teams and use the FCS playoff format moving forward.
How the FCS Playoffs Work
I went to an FCS school, and my Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks are playing Montana State on Friday night in the FCS quarterfinals (if you read my stuff, I can’t resist an alma mater name drop). Yes, the FCS playoffs are ALREADY in the quarterfinals. Don’t know how it works? Let’s get into it.
The FCS playoffs use a 24-team field. The top eight teams get a first-round bye and host a second-round home game. The next eight teams host a first-round playoff game. The final eight teams travel for the first round. The playoffs start on Thanksgiving weekend, complete the semifinals before Christmas and play the championship game in early January.
Each conference gets an automatic bid for its champion, save the MEAC and the SWAC. Their champions go to this weekend’s Celebration Bowl. But their other teams are eligible for the playoffs as at-large teams. That’s 11 automatic bids. The other 13 bids are filled by a committee and populated with at-large teams. It’s clean, it’s simple and it’s relatively non-controversial.
It’s like the NCAA basketball tournament — 68 teams with every conference getting an auto bid. Nearly half of the field gets an auto bid. In the FCS playoffs, it’s approximately the same. It works. It’s worked for years.
This is not the Tony Petitti plan in the Big Ten, where his league and the SEC get all sorts of guaranteed bids. Their teams must still earn it, and the reality is their leagues will get several at-large bids. But the same will go for the Big 12 and the SEC. In fact, if you take the final Top 25 from the CFP and use that for seeding, the Big 12 would get five bids. The SEC would get seven. Commissioner Greg Sankey would be thrilled. Yormark would jump all over it.
For this to work at the FBS level a few things would have to change, but it might be better for the sport long term.
How to Make It Happen
First, move opening weekend to Zero week, the weekend before Labor Day. I would take it one step further and have FBS teams play a non-power conference game that weekend. It gives everyone a chance to get a game in before Labor Day, which has become a huge weekend for college football. We’re getting great matchups that weekend, but not great games, because these teams haven’t played anyone for eight months. Ohio State-Texas was a great matchup, but it wasn’t a great game. This set-up would help. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire is already behind a full zero week slate. I suspect many other coaches are, too.
Second, eliminate the conference championship games. Yormark just cringed. He likes the revenue and remains committed to the game. But the committee has shown they don’t respect the results of these games. Not dropping Alabama but dropping everyone else that lost a title game this weekend proved it is not willing to hold to the precedent it set last year. Get rid of these games and just determine the conference champions with a nine-game slate and use the tiebreakers. We also need to eliminate the games to get the playoff started earlier. The leagues will make the money back with an expanded CFP.
Third — and this is the part that the power leagues would have to swallow — give each conference an automatic bid. Yes, that Group of 6 that Saban and others think are unworthy should have a place at the table. If you want a fair and equitable playoff — and it’s debatable that the power leagues even want that — this is the way. A couple of stipulations. Seeding should not be based on conference titles. Use the current seeding system. Second, cap the auto bids at 10 and remove the temptation for a group of teams to create another conference to get in on the action.
I’ve been writing about this type of playoff since I started writing about sports 30 years ago. I’d like to see it at FBS because I’ve seen it work at FCS without a hitch. It even allows the CFP to use the New Year’s Six bowl games for the quarterfinals and semifinals and have a neutral-site championship game.
TV partners would eat this up. CFP would have immense competition, with Fox and even TNT trying to get in on the action. That drives up the revenue for everyone. Fans would eat it up, too. Admit it — you love the 12-team playoff. You’ll love a 24-team playoff, too, especially one that doesn’t drag into the third week of January.
So, how would it look if we applied it to this year’s CFP rankings and conference champions? It might look like this. To make it clean, any conference champions that were not ranked in the final Top 25 are the last seeds:
Top 8 seeds (first-round byes)
1. Indiana (Big Ten champion)
2. Ohio State
3. Georgia (SEC champion)
4. Texas Tech (Big 12 champion)
5. Oregon
6. Ole Miss
7. Texas A&M
8. Oklahoma
Next 8 Seeds (host first-round games)
9. Alabama
10. Miami
11. Notre Dame
12. BYU
13. Texas
14. Vanderbilt
15. Utah
16. USC
Final 8 seeds (travel for first-round games)
17. Arizona
18. Duke (ACC champion)
19. Tulane (American champion, CFP ranking)
21. Western Michigan (MAC champion)
22. Kennesaw State (C-USA champion)
23. Boise State (Mountain West champion)
24. Washington State (Pac-12 champion)
24. James Madison (Sun Belt champion, CFP rankings)
Would this really be so bad? The conference champions get in, so the regular season still matters. There are enough at-large bids to satisfy the power conferences. The Group of 6 get a seat at the table and a chance to prove they belong. Some creative calendar work and the title game can get back to that first week in January, like it’s supposed to be.
We need debate. That’s healthy. But we don’t need what happened on Sunday. That was nearly toxic. We need an entertaining playoff that is open to all and as fair as possible. This would achieve it.
Do I think it’s going to happen? Of course not. I’m not naïve. Is it nice to dream? Yep. After Sunday, this dream needs to become reality.
