Fixing College Football – It’s time for expansion
College Football instituted its four team Playoff format in 2015, but it is time for an expansion; which could help Penn State Football in the future.
What makes college football great, and different from every other sport, is that every game matters.
For die-hard fans of potential College Football Playoff contenders, the season is 12 games of agony, sitting on every snap, hoping to survive and advance to the next week.
When the College Football Playoff was born in 2015 with a four team playoff format, many wondered if that would water down the regular season.
It hasn’t.
The Playoff has only enhanced the regular season, giving more teams a chance to compete for the ultimate prize.
However, with the emphasis that is now put on who will be selected for the College Football Playoff, we are losing the essence of college football, dismissing big rivalry games, storylines and non-traditional blue bloods having really good seasons.
We have tossed non-playoff bowl games to the side like used trash, everything that is not playoff related is deemed “irrelevant.” Just ask the scores of players who have opted out of Bowl games to prepare for the NFL Draft in recent seasons.
From the time the season kicks off on Labor Day Weekend until selection Sunday of the four playoff teams, pundits and analysts alike throughout the sport are worried about how the season will ultimately wind down to those four teams.
The debates over who should be the top-four, the big November games with playoff implications, a committee who can use the eyeball test have all made college football better.
However, it is time the sport takes the next step and expands the playoff to eight teams, getting us the perfect format to properly decide a National Champion.
We have seen blowout games in semi-finals matchups and even in the Nation Championship games, like this year with Alabama’s 52-24. As a matter of fact, the average margin of victory in playoff semi-finals games is 21, while the average margin of victory in championship games is 15. We have seen some instant classics though however, Oklahoma-Georgia, Alabama-Georgia and Ohio State-Clemson most notably.
The expansion to an eight team playoff, though, is not about the playoff games themselves, it is about the journey there. It is about a two loss Penn State Football team not being left on the outside looking in, it is about a 9-2 Oklahoma team that’s rolled off seven straight victories and is a conference champion not even sniffing an opportunity to compete for a title under the current system.
It feels currently like that by mid-October, we have written off eighty percent of college football and we are down to six or seven teams that legitimately have a chance.
So, my question is, why would we not want to keep more teams in the mix for a longer period of time?
Last season was wonky, but let’s use a few examples of where an eight team playoff would have improved the sport.
Conference championship week, No. 10 Oklahoma beat No. 6 Iowa State 27-21 in the B12 championship game, but nobody cared. They both had two losses and the winner, yes would declare a conference title and secure a birth in a New Year’s Six game, but for the most part it went unnoticed.
An undefeated Cincinnati team out of the AAC NEVER had a shot. How is that good for the sport? Yes, the Bearcats play a lower level of competition at the Group of 5 level, however, you now have an invitational instead of a playoff when you are eliminating half of the FBS teams before they even get started.
Instead of debating only who the top four are, bringing 5-6 teams into the mix, we would debate who the top eight are, which would involve now 10-12 teams, creating more drama on selection Sunday and giving us more relevant games in November, which any fan should want.
Penn State Football is a team that would directly benefit from this.
Having to play Ohio State every year is going to consistently hinder the Nittany Lions‘ chances of making the Playoff, because how it stands right now, unless they beat the Buckeyes and win the B10, they have almost no chance of being in that top four.
In 2017, they went to Columbus and lost by one point, does that mean they weren’t one of the best four teams in the nation? Maybe, but I think the sport would have been better with Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley competing for a championship than playing in what some would call a “consolation prize” in the Fiesta Bowl.
It would not water down the colossal meetings of Penn State Football and Ohio State either, which is what people against expansion will say. They would still be just as big, we would still have 110,000 inside Beaver Stadium when the Buckeyes come to town.
This season, Penn State Football will host Auburn at home, Ohio State will host Oregon, and Michigan will host Washington. These are tremendous non-conference matchups that make the sport better. For me, a really good unusual non-conference game might be the best watch in college football.
If we expand the Playoff to eight teams, we will see more of these big time meetings scheduled.
Right now, it is such a risk to schedule that type of game.
Let’s use the 2016 Nittany Lions as an example … Penn State went 11-2 and were B10 conference champs. They finished fifth in the committee’s final rankings, why? Because they lost a non-conference game to Pittsburgh at Heinz Field that year. If Penn State Football would have just played a tune-up game against Akron that week, they would have been 12-1 and would have traveled to the peach bowl to take on Alabama in a National Semi-Final.
You think a few eyeballs might have tuned in for that?
On the contrast, Washington, who finished fourth in 2016, played two FCS opponents in the non-conference that schedule. Idaho and Portland State who they beat by a combined score of 100-17. Is that how we should be differentiating between teams come December?
Let’s take a look at what an eight team playoff would look like and we will use last year’s teams and rankings to create our hypothetical matchup’s:
College Football Playoff – Quarterfinals
There are six College Football Playoff-New Year’s Six bowls – Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl.
Every year they rotate in pairs of two, getting playoff games while the other four get New Year’s Six games.
For example, in 2020, the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl were playoff locations, while in 2021 it will be the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl. In 2022, it will be the Fiesta and Cotton Bowl who play host the the semi-finals.
With an eight team playoff, we will have five automatic bids from conference champions, a Group of 5 bid, caveated with the fact that G5 team must be ranked in the top 10, and “at-large” bids, meaning the two teams the committee ranked inside the top eight who did not win their conference championships. If the Group of 5 team is not ranked in the top 10, we will go with a third at-large team.
Going with an automatic bid conference champion will force conferences to get rid of the silly divisions, like how in the B10 there is an East and West. This will do away with that because conferences will not want to run the risk of a 8-4 Northwestern team beating Ohio State and stealing a bid and then going on to misrepresent the conference in the playoffs.
We will play No.1 vs No.8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6 and 4 vs 5. If there is an upset, we will re-seed after the quarterfinals, so the top remaining seed will play the lowest seed remaining.
Say, for example the #7 seed wins, they would play the #1 seed should they win their game.
The two bowls who are scheduled to host as Playoff locations can still do that, however they will just host the final four teams in the semi-finals.