Less than one year since his conference and, more specifically, his own Baylor Bears were excluded as participants in the inaugural College Football Playoff, Baylor Athletics Director Ian McCaw has voiced the hope and belief that the current four-team national championship format will expand to eight teams within the next five years. McCaw’s comments bring again to the foreground the situation that the College Football Playoff selection committee fortunately was able to downplay with Ohio State’s run to the championship a year ago. We all can recall the furor over omission of both of the Big 12’s co-champions from the CFP’s first ever Big Dance. It was only with Ohio State’s dominant march to the title that those loud critics of the selection process were quieted, at least temporarily. A very fortuitous outcome for the CFP, its founders and the selection committee.
College Football Playoff Overhaul Already in Focus
Obviously still feeling the sting of last year’s rejection, McCaw is now simply rekindling the earlier call of Arizona State’s Coach Todd Graham and others for a near term overhaul of the CFP system lest we find ourselves with lingering BCS-like dissatisfaction over the next several years. To Graham’s credit, he had urged a different approach well before this past season’s Big 12-Ohio State selection dustup ever materialized.
And why now should a revamp be considered with the obvious success of the first ever CFP? Simply stated, in any given season by any objective measure, there will be more than four qualified teams who should have the opportunity to play for a national title. And in short, what is Coach Graham’s proposal?
Expand the playoffs to eight teams to include five automatic qualifiers in the form of the Power Five Conference Champions (however those conferences choose to determine them), plus three at large selections.
Why is this a better, more equitable, and wiser solution?
Aside from the obvious financial bonanza generated from an expanded slate of critical playoff games, and in absolute contradiction to the unfounded concern of many, this eight-team format preceded by the conference championship games would enhance the importance of the regular season across the country. How? More schools would be in the playoff hunt much later into the regular season. Every game down the stretch involving teams in the top 20 or 25 would likely have implications for a berth in the conference championship games and/or to determine an at large playoff spot.
The outcomes of the conference championship games, which now are often meaningless in determining who plays for the national title, would always be of paramount importance. These games would in effect become the preliminary round of the tournament to determine college football’s national champion.
Subjectivity in the selection process, which currently is at the core of the whole system, would be substantially limited. The CFP committee would still play a significant role in the seeding and in the at large selections, but would not be applying primarily subjective criteria in determining who has the opportunity to participate (other than filling the at large berths).
To counter the often raised, yet rarely justified arguments to such an expanded, or more appropriately, right-sized, playoff format:
1) NO, there would not be an issue regarding schools’ fan bases attending the games because of time and travel concerns. Simply have the quarterfinal games hosted by the top four seeded teams. The semifinal and final games would continue to be held at the pre-designated bowl sites as designed under the current system where, apparently, fan, student, and alumni attendance is not a cause for concern.
2) YES, a two or three loss team could conceivably make it into the final eight, likely as an upset conference champion. But, who is to say that that team is less deserving than any given one (or two) loss team as determined by a committee of informed, yet ultimately human, individuals who are struggling to apply a whole range of subjective criteria in different ways? A conference champion is a conference champion. Only in the FBS division of NCAA college football does that not currently have any value. As a further benefit, contrary to the current system, every Power Five conference would rightfully have a representative with a seat at the national championship playoff table. No more Baylor or TCU exclusions.
3) NO, this revised format is not somehow a slippery slope leading to an ever expanding playoff system a la basketball’s March Madness. Making conference championship games an integral part of the qualifying process expands the field of participants to those vying for those conference titles and should satisfy any need for further expansion of the field to include less deserving schools.
4) Finally, NO, the revamped system would not threaten either the academic integrity or physical well being of the participating student-athletes. At most, the expanded field would add one additional game for the two participating schools that ultimately make it to the national title game compared to the existing system. For reassurance, playoff organizers can look to the long history of playoff football conducted at the NCAA – Division I FCS, Division II, and Division III levels for the last several decades. It is difficult to understand how these tried and tested playoff models used at every other level of college football have not been used to guide those charged with devising a sound approach to determining a true national champion at the highest level of the college game.
Coach Graham and A.D. McCaw should be commended for using their platforms to say what many fans have been thinking. Hopefully, their message will impress some smart, receptive decision-makers who are less interested in preserving their own personal empires than doing the right thing for the college game, its student-athletes, and its fans.
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