The Case For Expanding The College Football Playoff
It is undeniable that the NCAA’s revamped football postseason has been a huge success, but it can be better. Much, much better.
Major college football is entering its third season with a playoff system, and it has been nothing short of a huge success. On top of the lucrative television contract ($7.3 billion!) ESPN gave the NCAA to broadcast the College Football Playoff, it has done wonders for the sport itself.
Way more teams now have actual hope of playing for a national title. A one-loss conference champion is close to guaranteed a playoff berth, whereas in the old BCS system, as many as five major-conference champions could be left out so we could have an Alabama-LSU rematch in the title game. It has also given us more high-quality non-conference games than ever before (thank you, football gods!).
Still, there is still room for improvement with the playoff system. Having four berths available with five power conferences never seemed to make any sense, and it’s caused us to realize just how pointless the other bowl games are.
The solution is to expand the playoff. And not just to an eight-team format. Let’s follow the FCS format and go with a 24-team playoff (Gasp!). Sounds drastic, I know, but it would be worth it. Here’s how and why this system would work in the FBS ranks:
We know college football has become big business and that money drives everything in the sport. It’s the whole reason why conference realignment is a thing. That’s the biggest reason why an expanded system works — there’s EVEN MORE MONEY TO BE HAD.
ESPN paid $125 million annually under the BCS system to broadcast the four BCS bowls (Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta) and the national championship game in the years leading up to the induction of the playoff. Now, they’re paying an average of over $608 million a year to broadcast those same games — over a 400 percent increase. Expand the playoff even more, and that television contract will go for well over $1 billion a year.
An expanded playoff would also create more competitive balance across the entire Football Bowl Subdivision (which would need a new name) instead of just among Power 5 conferences. Having 24 slots would allow for all 10 conference champions to earn automatic bids (like every other college sport), leaving room for 14 at-large berths. This would open up the possibility for Group of 5 conferences to get more seats at the big-money table. Instead of having just one team guaranteed to get one of the 12 New Year’s Six bowl berths, they would have at least five of the playoff’s 24.
There’s an obvious money difference between Power 5 schools and Group of 5 schools (which is why there’s a distinction between the two), and the current system is only making that gap worse. A conference gets a huge cut of the playoff money for the games they’re in, and with no Group of 5 team having a plausible shot, all of that revenue is going to the Power 5 conferences. In a 24-team playoff, the smaller conferences would get a piece of that pie. Competitive balance is a good thing, and this would create more of it.
Why would those Power 5 schools want to give smaller schools more seats at the proverbial table? Because they get exponentially more seats as well. Yes, five smaller schools are in by winning their conferences, but there is only a small chance a Group of 5 team will get an at-large bid. That means almost all of those 14 bids will go to Power 5 schools, along with the five conference champions, every season. That would give the major conferences as many as 19 teams in the playoff system, nearly double the 11 they currently get in the “New Year’s Six” bowls. They’re gaining just as much from this system as Group of 5 schools, if not more.
Proponents of the current bowl system advocate that it makes “every game matter,” something they think will be lost in an expanded playoff system. However, that’s simply not the case. Every game TCU played after losing to Baylor in 2014 apparently didn’t matter, since the Horned Frogs won them all and still didn’t make the College Football Playoff. The same can be said for that 2014 Baylor team. Heck, that’s the case for every single Group of 5 team. Even if Houston went undefeated last season — in an abnormally good AAC last year — the committee said they wouldn’t have gotten in. So what are they playing for?
Every game a team plays after losing just one game doesn’t matter for a lot of teams. As we’ve seen, they can win them all, yet are denied a chance to play for a national championship in favor of a team in the exact same situation. More bids in the College Football Playoff means more games matter (especially late in the season), and that’s also a very good thing.
A 24-team playoff doesn’t mean bowl games will completely go away. There were 41 bowl games last year — turn 23 of those games into playoff games (like we have with the current system), there can still be 18 other bowl games that follow the current bowl format.
New Era would almost certainly spend and make more money by sponsoring the “New Era First-Round Playoff Game” between Oklahoma and Houston than their regular “New Era Pinstripe Bowl,” in which Duke beat Indiana this past year. Meanwhile, non-playoff bowl games could be played in the middle of the week, giving college football fans something to chew on every night in December in between playoff rounds, while allowing those bowl games to keep their money.
Wouldn’t that be a lot of travel for these teams, going from bowl game to bowl game? Yes it would, but there are two solutions:
1. Follow the FCS model where the higher seed hosts the game, but then rotate the Final Four at three different locations, just like the current four-team model
Not only would this cut down on travel costs (one team traveling instead of two), but it would give even more meaning to doing well in the regular season. Could you imagine Florida State having to go play Alabama in Tuscaloosa in the quarterfinals? Electric. All you’d have to do is put a New Era Bowl logo on the field in a few places and boom, you have millions in sponsorship money while still playing a home game.
It would also provide a boost to local economies. Instead of New York City getting the influx of revenue that comes from fans of two teams traveling to their city for the Pinstripe Bowl, that money suddenly goes to the areas these schools are actually located in.
In order to make the change in location worth it for bowl operators, have them split ticket and concession sales with the school. The Pinstripe Bowl people would still get the same cut of television money, and with a major boost in the TV contract, they could make more money than they have in the past — making up for the inconvenience of moving the game.
2. Have the bowl games pay for travel
Want to make it more simple? Have those playoff bowl games use that extra TV money to pay for each team’s travel. Many schools actually lose money by playing in bowl games, but having the bowls pay for it would eliminate those losses.
This makes the most realistic sense. Bowl executives still get to keep their high salaries by bringing two of the country’s top teams to town, they wouldn’t have to move their games, and they still get to make more money than they would in a non-playoff system.
Now that the logistics are laid out, wouldn’t this have college teams playing too many games? Well, not exactly. High school football teams often play a max of 16 games from the season opener to the championship game. In the NFL, the max number is 20.
With the current college formula, the max a team can play is 15 games — 12 regular season, one conference championship game, and two playoff games. If you keep that formula, the max number goes up to 18 games —right in the middle of high school and the NFL.
You could cut down on the non-conference schedule to lessen the number of games played, but that also cuts down on the revenue each team receives from those early-season games — and they’re not going to give that money up.
Without the fear of one loss keeping you out of the playoff, teams have shown a willingness to schedule more non-conference games against better competition, which is great for the sport. However, with a concern about more games, there would likely have to be a more uniform scheduling format enacted.
Like, you can have everyone play an eight-game conference schedule, and for Power 5 schools, you have to play a minimum of one non-conference game against another major conference team, a minimum of two games against Group of 5 teams, and (the option of) one game against a FCS team. For Group of 5 teams, they would play two Power 5 teams and at least one other Group of 5 team, along with the FCS game if they want it. Playing FCS opponents, which most college teams do already, usually serve as glorified scrimmages for FBS teams. Sure, there’s the occasional upset, but those games are often blowouts where starters don’t play much, therefore lessening the blow of the longer schedule.
The season also wouldn’t be made longer with the 24-team playoff. Even though there are more games being played, the season would still end around the same time. It takes five weeks to go from the original eight play-in games to the national championship game. Last season, conference title games were held on Dec. 5, with the national championship being held on Jan. 11 — a five-week time period.
Hopefully by now, you think the 24-team playoff is a good idea, so how would it look? Taking the 10 conference champions and 14 at-large bids, all seeded by last season’s playoff selection committee’s rankings, this is the field you’d get:
#1 seed: Clemson vs.
[winner of #16 Oklahoma State vs. #17 Baylor]
#8 seed: Notre Dame vs.
[winner of #9 Florida State vs. #24 Arkansas State]
#4 seed: Oklahoma vs.
[winner of #13 Northwestern vs. #20 LSU]
#5 seed: Iowa vs.
[winner of #12 Ole Miss vs. #21 Western Kentucky]
#3 seed: Michigan State vs.
[winner of #14 Michigan vs. #19 Florida]
#6 seed: Stanford vs.
[winner of #11 TCU vs. #22 San Diego State]
#2 seed: Alabama vs.
[winner of #15 Oregon vs. #18 Houston]
#7 seed: Ohio State vs.
[winner of #10 North Carolina vs. #23 Bowling Green]
How much fun would this be?!?
Unfortunately, this radical of a change isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but an eight-team playoff is likely to happen sooner rather than later, which is a step in the right direction. And as we’ve seen with the NCAA Basketball Tournament, expansion only leads to more money, which leads to more expansion, and so on.
The four-team playoff in place now is glorious — especially when you remember the horrors of that Alabama-LSU championship game the BCS produced. But a 24-team playoff would be the best thing for the sport.
