New College Football Playoff Format Will Only Add to the Chaos
Though next year’s 12-team format will get more teams involved, the ramifications of an expanded field could dilute some of the sport’s most compelling aspects.
For decades, college football’s playoff lobbyists screamed that they just wanted an undisputed national champion determined on the field. The College Football Playoff is about to do that once again, while mostly preserving the integrity of the best regular season in sports. Naturally, the CFP will expand to 12 teams next year anyway, to chase two American obsessions: massive playoffs and revenue.
You would think that after roughly a century of people screaming for a nice big playoff, college football would be ready. It is not. Next year’s format is going to cause a lot more screaming than people realize, because the system is built around the money grab known as conference championship games.
Let’s start here with an obvious point: With a 12-team Playoff, last week’s Michigan–Ohio State game and this weekend’s Oregon-Washington Pac-12 title game would be for Playoff positioning rather than likely Playoff elimination. That would dilute the meaning of rivalry games; the only question is by how much.
The 12-team CFP addressed this proactively by promising that the top four Playoff seeds (and accompanying byes) will go to conference champions, which was smart. But that was before the latest wave of realignment radically changed the structure and purpose of conferences.
Next year, the Big Ten and SEC will no longer be collections of the best teams from a region. They will be 18- and 16-team conglomerates. There are many ramifications to that, but the one that is relevant to the CFP is that when leagues are that large and the season is this short, it is very hard to create an equitable format for producing a conference champion.
The Big Ten and SEC have chosen rotating schedules with certain fixed games to preserve rivalries. There will be no divisions. The top two teams in each conference will play in the conference championship games.
It all sounds good. But look at the 2024 schedules. LSU will not have to play Georgia or Texas, and its four road games will be against three teams that finished sub.-500 this year (Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas) and another (Texas A&M) that fired its coach. Meanwhile, Georgia has road games against Alabama, Texas and Ole Miss.
In its first Big Ten season, UCLA won’t play Michigan or Ohio State. Wisconsin won’t play Michigan, Ohio State or Washington.
In 2025, Iowa will not play Michigan, Ohio State or Washington. USC will not play Ohio State, Washington or Penn State.
Of course some schedules that look easy now will end up being brutal and vice versa. But when leagues are this large, scheduling imbalance is inevitable. That means that the third- or fourth-best teams in the Big Ten and SEC will make the conference championship games fairly regularly. This happens now, too—Iowa will play Michigan on Saturday, after all—but it will mean a lot more next year, because there will be automatic byes at stake.
Relying on conference “championship games” when teams face only half their league is a lousy way to set a playoff bracket. The NFL also rewards division champions, and the strength of NFL schedules vary—but one of the biggest complaints about the league’s playoff format is that division champions automatically get top-four seeds, and, anyway, each team in a division plays the others twice.
There are other problems with next season’s CFP. If the 2024 format had been in place this year, Michigan and Ohio State would have clinched a rematch in the Big Ten championship game
before playing each other in Ann Arbor. Winning the conference title game would guarantee a top-four seed. Losing The Game and the conference championship game would lead to a spot in the Playoff. If Ohio State had beaten Michigan by four touchdowns in Ann Arbor, then lost to Michigan in overtime on a neutral field, Michigan would get the better Playoff seed and the bye.
Suggesting that Michigan and Ohio State rest their starters against each other sounds like heresy. But sitting out the Rose Bowl was unthinkable once, too, and now players do it all the time. What happens when the system also rewards
teams for resting starters?
Historically, Michigan and Ohio State have rarely been undefeated when they face each other. But what happens when Alabama clinches a conference-title game spot before the Iron Bowl?
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Entire article:
https://www.si.com/college/2023/11/29/new-college-football-playoff-format-12-teams-add-to-chaos
