The College Football Playoff Desperately Needs Change

When a certain team has back to back undefeated seasons, they should be able to play for their sports championship. Unfortunately, that is not that case in college football, as the University of Central Florida (UCF) has won 25 consecutive games, and it is not competing in this month’s college football playoff. The reason for the being is the 13 people on the selection committee decided they did not deserve an invitation to the exclusive four team event. As long as this sport has been around, titles have been won and decided by the media, computers and a committee, it is time for the championships to be won the field.  

The current championship format is 13 people sit in a room and decide who are the best four teams in the country. Those teams get put into a four-team bracket and they play a three-game tournament to decide the national championship. The system is better than the disgraced BCS, but there are some serious flaws. First, the committee encourages teams to play The Citadel instead Michigan State, West Virginia, etc. When this new format came out, the committee said strength of schedule will be used heavily in the selection process. The SEC, and the ACC are the only two major conferences that play eight conference games. The others play nine. The SEC and the ACC fill up their remaining games by playing schools such as The Citadel and Mercer on the penultimate week of the season, while the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 play conference games that weekend. It is a significant advantage for the SEC and ACC, and the committee should punish them for playing weaker schedules. They just simply do not. The ACC champion and the SEC champion have never missed the playoff, the SEC even got two teams in last year, while less than half of the champions of the nine game  leagues got selected to participate in the tournament. Scheduling clearly does not matter for the committee, and it blatantly obvious.  

There is though one exception. The committee plays the schedule card for how it deals with UCF, ranking the Knights eighth in their final rankings. Regardless of how an individual feels on the topic, they can not deny that UCF has won 25 consecutive games, and has not lost a game in over 700 days. The committee says they do not play a good schedule because they are from the American, and they are right. According to S&P+, an advanced statistical analysis system, UCF has the 83rd toughest schedule in the country. But, Clemson, a team that made the playoff, also went undefeated, but they had the 76th hardest schedule. That does not make any sense. The reason UCF continually does not have a great SOS (strength of schedule) is because they play in the American Athletic Conference. It is a not considered one of the major conferences. The committee says that the Knights need to play somebody out of conference. They apparently do not know that very few good power five programs would never agree to play UCF, because it just would not make any sense for them. They blame UCF instead for something they cannot control. This can be explained by the fact all of the members of the committee come from programs within the major conferences, none come from the other conferences, like the American. That is just not American at all. Clearly, only the 65 programs that make up the major conferences have a chance to win the sports ultimate prize, that national championship, meaning that the 65 teams that make up the FBS are competing for nothing. That is 50% of programs who will never win a national title in this format. 

Clearly the format needs reform. Many have suggested the field should be expanded to eight. Six would work, but eight, under the right circumstances, makes too much sense. In an eight-team format, the five champions of the major conferences would each get an automatic bid to the playoff as well as the best team from the other (Group of five, G5) conferences as selected by a separate committee. The same committee would then select two more at large teams, under the condition that both at large bids must come from different conferences. Once the eight are selected they are seeded and put into an eight-team bracket. #1 plays #8, #2 plays #7, #3 plays #6, and #4 plays #5. All of these games would take place at campus sites with the higher seeds playing at home. The winners would advance to the semifinals around New Years and play at neutral sites, just like the current format.  

A problem with this system is that teams would be playing as many as 16 games a year. That is too many for college kids, as it is a full NFL schedule. To reduce the load by a game, all conferences should play nine conference games, and get rid of conference title games. Conference titles should be decided by looking at the conference standings. Getting rid of conference title games, would also eliminate divisions and balance conference schedules quite a bit. The best thing about college football is that mostly every game matters. One slip up and your season could be over. An eight-team playoff would not diminish that at all, because only the top four can host a game, and the higher the seed, the easier matchup any team gets. Conferences also like money, whatever money they lost from loosing a conference title game, would easily be made up with eight teams. More people will watch a college football playoff quarterfinal than conference title game. Plus, this year for example, the Pac-12 race would be meaningful nationally because the winner would make the eight team field, unlike this year.  

The first weekend of December this year featured conference title games that were total mismatches and one that simply did not matter. Ohio State-Northwestern, and Clemson-Pitt were mismatches, the Pac-12 game did not matter nationally and only two were actually competitive and were not meaningless. In the new format those weak slate of games would be replaced with much better games. Using the final rankings by the committee, these would be the quarterfinals this year: 

#8 Washington (Pac-12) at #1 Alabama (SEC), #7 UCF (G5) at #2 Clemson (ACC), #6 Ohio State (Big Ten) at #3 Notre Dame (at large), and #5 Georgia (at large) at #4 Oklahoma (Big 12). The winners meet around New Years and play for the right to play for the national title.  

That would be obviously an epic day of football, and clearly it is better to let titles be decided on the field.