Credit to college football for coming up with a plan that might bring some solidarity to our community at a critical time for the United States.
Whether you support a program representing the Big Ten, the SEC or any of the eight conferences subject to the whims of the Power Two, everyone can agree that expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 teams is a terrible idea.
The use of the term everyone is rhetorical in this context; no idea is ever universally praised or universally reviled. However, it’s impossible to argue that the 24-team bracket doesn’t explain why fans want the Playoff system to begin.
Fan outcry for the postseason tournament grew out of a desire to see the sport deny the traditions of matchups in the more distant past, such as Washington-Miami to end the 1991 season. The BCS offered a slight upgrade, giving us matchups like Texas-USC in the iconic 2006 Rose Bowl Game.
More BCS seasons ended in championship contention. LSU and USC shared the BCS and Associated Press titles in 2003, undefeated Auburn was skipped after a year, and Utah was never considered for a championship in 2004 or 2008.
Utah runs as the only undefeated team in the entire Div. In 2008, I was the main catalyst for the realization of the football playoffs. The threat of antitrust lawsuits didn’t win Boise State a national championship in 2009 or TCU in 2009 or 2010, but the resulting pressure helped make the College Football Playoff happen.
The system never got the formula right, and the expansion to 24 entrants is still the worst change.
The original, four-team bracket proved to be a half measure; appealing to both traditionalists who accept the display of the bowl system and fans looking for a more concrete way to crown a champion.
The elimination of Big 12 Conference champion Baylor and TCU in the first year of the four-team Playoff set an ominous tone.
Ohio State and Alabama are in the bracket without qualifying for their respective conference title games in 2016 and 2017; UCF is coming off consecutive undefeated regular seasons; Cincinnati is only ranked in 2021, two regular seasons without losing a game and one of the more chaotic campaigns the Bearcats have been around; As a means to determine the most legitimate champion, much evidence has emerged that four teams will not make the cut.
Everyone concluded that the solution was to triple the size of the field, and now, just four years later, it has doubled it.
The 12-team playoff has had glaring problems from the start, with first-round games largely one-sided snoozers — a direct byproduct of no college football season producing 12 teams capable of winning or worthy of contending for a national championship.
A more subjective argument against a 12-team playoff is its diminished importance of regular season games. The October 17 slate is the best example.
Week 7, one of the most remarkable Saturdays in recent memory, would mark the end of some brand name programs’ national title aspirations from years past. In the case of a matchup like Ohio State’s 19-14 win at Indiana, the nail-biting finale could have been the first chapter in a streak that would end in the Big Ten Championship Game.
However, due to conference bloat, a direct result of leagues looking to secure as many Playoff bids as possible, the Hoosiers now trail undefeated UCLA. The Bruins are having a great season under first-year coach Bob Chesney — but they’re also losing to both the Hoosiers and Buckeyes in the regular season.
Again, this position is more subjective. Arguably, more opportunities to make the 12-team playoffs creates higher-stakes regular-season games involving more teams.
Extend that philosophy to 24 teams and the meaning of what constitutes high stakes diminishes. This is the system the NCAA uses for the Football Championship Subdivision Playoffs, especially if the 24-bid Playoff excludes all conference champions as automatic berths.
Using the current format with four autonomous conferences and automatic bids for the designated Group of Six, the playoffs for the 2025 season would be as follows:
- Alabama vs. James Madison will face number 8
- Miami and Iowa will face No. 7 Texas A&M
- Notre Dame vs. Georgia Tech will face No. 6 Ole Miss
- BYU vs. Houston vs. No. 5 Oregon
- Texas vs. Tulane will face No. 4 Texas Tech
- Vanderbilt and Virginia will face No. 3 Georgia
- Utah and Michigan will face No. 2 Ohio State
- USC and Arizona will face No. 1 Indiana
The above includes Iowa State, a team that lost four regular-season games — one-third of its schedule. The top eight must win four games instead of three to win the title, which would require them to play another third of a season.
Compare that to March Madness, which requires six wins for the title. That’s only 20 percent or less of a basketball team’s schedule going to the NCAA Tournament.
Meanwhile, the playoffs have grown without experimenting with eight-team brackets. Including eight teams would include some of the most complicated BCS seasons, such as 2008, when Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Utah, Texas, Texas Tech and even Boise State needed to play in the title game.
For posterity’s sake, an eight-team playoff in 2025 without automatic bids and based solely on the committee’s final regular-season rankings would look like this:
- Indiana vs. Oklahoma
- Georgia vs. Texas A&M
- Ohio State vs. Ole Miss
- Texas Tech vs. Oregon
The above scenario may not be ideal, but it will certainly be less consensus than the upcoming 24-team assortment.