The four-team college football playoff is great and wonderful, but it is also unsustainable.
As a college football fan, the fact we have a true national champion after decades of “mythical” national champions is worth celebrating. Still, there’s a lingering feeling that the system could still be better.
The most pressing concern is the simple fact that five does not fit into four, which means a Power Five conference is left out. Compound that by the inclusion of Notre Dame and the complete impossibility for an undefeated Group of Five team (hi UCF) to make the playoff renders the entire exercise a bit absurd.
How can teams be compared if Notre Dame plays a different schedule than everyone else? What’s the point for Group of Five conference teams, who are essentially eliminated every year before a single game is played?
The recent discussion on expanding the playoff have focused on “fixes” that would make the problem worse. Moving to six teams or eight teams creates more problems than it solves.
So what’s the answer? For years, I have been a proponent of a 16-team playoff. Developments in recent years have only strengthened my belief that’s the future of college football because it would be very, very easy to get there and very, very financially beneficial to all involved.
Without further ado, let’s visit the utopian future of college football.
No Conference Championship Games
Since its creation in 1992, the conference championship game has been a money grab. It’s not crowing a “true” champion in any sense of the word. In 2016, Ohio State gladly missed the Big Ten Championship Game and cruised into the playoff, while Penn State beat Ohio State, won the conference title, and missed the playoff. In the Big 12, a round-robin season is mitigated by an extra game in the championship game that will always be a rematch.
Let’s end the charade. The conference championship game is officially meaningless and needs to go. Don’t worry, conferences will be rewarded handsomely for doing so.
Everyone Plays 13 Games
One of the biggest problems with the college football playoff is the difference between every team’s schedules. Some play 12 games, others play 13. Some play 8 conference games, others play 9. The Pac-12 plays good teams in the non-conference, while the SEC beats up on the Sun Belt. This lack of uniformity makes an already difficult decision for the selection committee even harder because they are comparing resumes that don’t abide by the same structure.
Without a conference championship game, this solution is solved immediately by allowing every team to play 13 games. Before you complain that it’s too many games, let’s remember that many schools already play 13 regular season games, due to either playing a road game at Hawaii or making a conference championship game. If 25 schools can play 13 games, then they all can.
Also, by moving to 13 games, we can develop a uniform rule for conferences, as every conference must play 9 conference games. The decision on how to schedule these conference games would be up to the individual conferences, as well as how to determine a champion if two teams have the same conference record but didn’t play in the regular season.
College Football Is Still Undervalued
You must be scratching your head. ESPN and Fox and NBC and CBS fork over hundreds of millions of dollars per year to air college football. This is correct. But it should be billions.
The problem with college football is that so few games matter once you get past the mid-point of the season. Sure, Ohio State/Michigan will draw 10+ million viewers, but the rest of the Big Ten’s slate that week will get test pattern ratings. The playoff is the draw so if the playoff isn’t at stake, most fans aren’t going to care.
By moving to a 16-team playoff, more conferences have more games that matters. That’s what ESPN wants! Furthermore, a 16-team playoff gives college football 15 (!!) playoff games to sell on the open market instead of 3. I don’t think you need a business degree to figure out that would lead to a whole lot of zeros at the end of TV checks.
16 Team Playoff – 10 Auto-Bids; 6 At-Large
I’ve written about this at length before, so I will reiterate how this plan only works if all 10 FBS conferences get an invite. This has the dual effect of dramatically increase the profile and stature of Group of Five teams, while also providing a significant benefit to be a top-ranked team.
If you’re #1 or #2 in a four-team playoff, there is currently very, very little difference in who you play in the playoff. However, that changes dramatically in a 16-team playoff if the bottom four teams are winners of “mid-major” conferences, just like in college basketball. You get an easier path a title than a #5 or #8 seed. The NFL has shown us that regular season football can still matter even if it’s just to play for seeding.
As part of my plan and the success of the current playoff on New Year’s Day, the semifinals would be played in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl every year.
Regular Season & Postseason Value Goes Up
As mentioned, the regular season will matter in November for so many more teams than currently in a four-team playoff. Come the last half of November, there are now a half-dozen to maybe 10 teams with realistic hopes of competing for a national title.
Under this plan, you can easily increase that number to 30 or 40, by including Group of Five teams playing for conference titles and Power Five teams with rankings in the 10s or 20s, who can still make a late run at an at-large berth.
Bowl Games Can Still Happen
I love bowl games as much as anyone on the planet. But I would much rather see playoff games than bowl games. And guess what? Bowl games can still happen! There are going to be 43 bowl games starting next year and 41 of them will mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. How would a playoff affect that?
In my scenario, the bowl games stay because even with 16 teams in the playoff, there would still be roughly 60-65 teams with 6+ wins that would like to play in a bowl game. Instead of pretending these games matter, bowls can embrace the exhibition aspect and just provide quality entertainment over the Christmas to New Year’s holiday break.
How It Would’ve Worked in 2018:
Here’s how I would set up a 16-team playoff
To round it out, let’s look at what the other New Year’s Six bowls would look like under my plan, which would be assigned by the selection committee to reward these teams for good season and place them in geographically appropriate locations to maximize ticket sales. All the bowls below these can fight for the scraps and put together any matchup they’d like, provided teams have 6 wins, to create compelling content for TV and ticket sales.
Fiesta Bowl - Afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 29
#13 Washington State (10-2) vs #15 Texas (9-4)
Orange Bowl - Primetime of Saturday, Dec. 29
#14 Kentucky (9-3) vs #16 West Virginia (8-3)
Peach Bowl - New Year’s eve, primetime
#18 Mississippi State (8-4) vs #20 Syracuse (9-3)
Cotton Bowl - January 1, before playoff games
#19 Texas A&M (8-4) vs #17 Utah (9-4)
Except for Texas and Kentucky, these are much better bowl games and matchups for these teams. Texas A&M goes from playing an unranked NC State team in an empty Gator Bowl to a Top 20 opponent in its home state. Syracuse and West Virginia don’t have to sell out the old Citrus Bowl by themselves, instead they compete against SEC teams that should pull their weight for ticket sales.
Are these bowl games perfect? Of course not. But that’s the point, they don’t have to be. The 16-team playoff would be perfect, and that’s what college football needs.
What do you think? Am I stupid? What does your college football utopia look like? Let me know @stholeary
The most pressing concern is the simple fact that five does not fit into four, which means a Power Five conference is left out. Compound that by the inclusion of Notre Dame and the complete impossibility for an undefeated Group of Five team (hi UCF) to make the playoff renders the entire exercise a bit absurd.
How can teams be compared if Notre Dame plays a different schedule than everyone else? What’s the point for Group of Five conference teams, who are essentially eliminated every year before a single game is played?
The recent discussion on expanding the playoff have focused on “fixes” that would make the problem worse. Moving to six teams or eight teams creates more problems than it solves.
So what’s the answer? For years, I have been a proponent of a 16-team playoff. Developments in recent years have only strengthened my belief that’s the future of college football because it would be very, very easy to get there and very, very financially beneficial to all involved.
Without further ado, let’s visit the utopian future of college football.
No Conference Championship Games
Since its creation in 1992, the conference championship game has been a money grab. It’s not crowing a “true” champion in any sense of the word. In 2016, Ohio State gladly missed the Big Ten Championship Game and cruised into the playoff, while Penn State beat Ohio State, won the conference title, and missed the playoff. In the Big 12, a round-robin season is mitigated by an extra game in the championship game that will always be a rematch.
Let’s end the charade. The conference championship game is officially meaningless and needs to go. Don’t worry, conferences will be rewarded handsomely for doing so.
Everyone Plays 13 Games
One of the biggest problems with the college football playoff is the difference between every team’s schedules. Some play 12 games, others play 13. Some play 8 conference games, others play 9. The Pac-12 plays good teams in the non-conference, while the SEC beats up on the Sun Belt. This lack of uniformity makes an already difficult decision for the selection committee even harder because they are comparing resumes that don’t abide by the same structure.
Without a conference championship game, this solution is solved immediately by allowing every team to play 13 games. Before you complain that it’s too many games, let’s remember that many schools already play 13 regular season games, due to either playing a road game at Hawaii or making a conference championship game. If 25 schools can play 13 games, then they all can.
Also, by moving to 13 games, we can develop a uniform rule for conferences, as every conference must play 9 conference games. The decision on how to schedule these conference games would be up to the individual conferences, as well as how to determine a champion if two teams have the same conference record but didn’t play in the regular season.
College Football Is Still Undervalued
You must be scratching your head. ESPN and Fox and NBC and CBS fork over hundreds of millions of dollars per year to air college football. This is correct. But it should be billions.
The problem with college football is that so few games matter once you get past the mid-point of the season. Sure, Ohio State/Michigan will draw 10+ million viewers, but the rest of the Big Ten’s slate that week will get test pattern ratings. The playoff is the draw so if the playoff isn’t at stake, most fans aren’t going to care.
By moving to a 16-team playoff, more conferences have more games that matters. That’s what ESPN wants! Furthermore, a 16-team playoff gives college football 15 (!!) playoff games to sell on the open market instead of 3. I don’t think you need a business degree to figure out that would lead to a whole lot of zeros at the end of TV checks.
16 Team Playoff – 10 Auto-Bids; 6 At-Large
I’ve written about this at length before, so I will reiterate how this plan only works if all 10 FBS conferences get an invite. This has the dual effect of dramatically increase the profile and stature of Group of Five teams, while also providing a significant benefit to be a top-ranked team.
As part of my plan and the success of the current playoff on New Year’s Day, the semifinals would be played in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl every year.
Regular Season & Postseason Value Goes Up
As mentioned, the regular season will matter in November for so many more teams than currently in a four-team playoff. Come the last half of November, there are now a half-dozen to maybe 10 teams with realistic hopes of competing for a national title.
Under this plan, you can easily increase that number to 30 or 40, by including Group of Five teams playing for conference titles and Power Five teams with rankings in the 10s or 20s, who can still make a late run at an at-large berth.
Bowl Games Can Still Happen
I love bowl games as much as anyone on the planet. But I would much rather see playoff games than bowl games. And guess what? Bowl games can still happen! There are going to be 43 bowl games starting next year and 41 of them will mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. How would a playoff affect that?
In my scenario, the bowl games stay because even with 16 teams in the playoff, there would still be roughly 60-65 teams with 6+ wins that would like to play in a bowl game. Instead of pretending these games matter, bowls can embrace the exhibition aspect and just provide quality entertainment over the Christmas to New Year’s holiday break.
How It Would’ve Worked in 2018:
Here’s how I would set up a 16-team playoff
- First- and second-round games are played on-campus, at the higher ranked school
- The semifinals take place on New Year’s Day in the Rose and Sugar Bowls
- The championship game rotates between the other four New Year’s Six sites (Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix & Miami) with a fifth year that incorporates other cities (Tampa, Indianapolis, etc)
- Northern Illinois (8-5) at #1 Alabama (13-0)
- #9 Washington (10-3) at #8 UCF (13-0)
- #12 Penn State (9-3) at #5 Georgia (11-2)
- #21 Fresno St (11-2) at #4 Oklahoma (12-1)
- Appalachian State (10-2) at #3 Notre Dame (12-0)
- #11 LSU (9-3) at #6 Ohio State (12-1)
- #10 Florida (9-3) at #7 Michigan (10-2)
- UAB (10-3) at #2 Clemson (13-0)
To round it out, let’s look at what the other New Year’s Six bowls would look like under my plan, which would be assigned by the selection committee to reward these teams for good season and place them in geographically appropriate locations to maximize ticket sales. All the bowls below these can fight for the scraps and put together any matchup they’d like, provided teams have 6 wins, to create compelling content for TV and ticket sales.
Fiesta Bowl - Afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 29
#13 Washington State (10-2) vs #15 Texas (9-4)
Orange Bowl - Primetime of Saturday, Dec. 29
#14 Kentucky (9-3) vs #16 West Virginia (8-3)
Peach Bowl - New Year’s eve, primetime
#18 Mississippi State (8-4) vs #20 Syracuse (9-3)
Cotton Bowl - January 1, before playoff games
#19 Texas A&M (8-4) vs #17 Utah (9-4)
Except for Texas and Kentucky, these are much better bowl games and matchups for these teams. Texas A&M goes from playing an unranked NC State team in an empty Gator Bowl to a Top 20 opponent in its home state. Syracuse and West Virginia don’t have to sell out the old Citrus Bowl by themselves, instead they compete against SEC teams that should pull their weight for ticket sales.
Are these bowl games perfect? Of course not. But that’s the point, they don’t have to be. The 16-team playoff would be perfect, and that’s what college football needs.
What do you think? Am I stupid? What does your college football utopia look like? Let me know @stholeary
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