photo courtesy: berkeleybeacom.com/Kellyn Taylor
Absolutely, the College Football Playoff needs fixing. It wasn’t that long ago that the NCAA had the BCS, or, as college football fans call it, the BS system.
There once was a time when the AP Top 25 poll decided that only the two highest-ranked teams would play for the National Championship.
Bowls did matter more back then. But the problem with this system was that other top-tier college football teams were denied the opportunity to show they could challenge Nick Saban and his mighty Alabama Crimson Tide dynasty.
Additionally, this was the only sport without a playoff to determine the champion. The NCAA needed to come up with a better postseason.
The Birth of the CFP
In 2014, the College Football Playoff ushered in a new era of college football. Gone was the outdated two-best-team format, and in was a real playoff to determine a national champion.
The playoff began with the top four teams ranked by the CFP computer rankings. The first one was special as it saw Ohio State and Oregon knock off their opponents in the semifinals.
This set up the inaugural championship game, where Ohio State defeated Oregon. This started the college football playoff era with a bang. Nevertheless, the last four-team CFP was controversial.
Florida State Snub (2023)
While the four-team playoff system was pretty good, there were still obvious flaws. Led by quarterback Jordan Travis, the Seminoles were rolling all regular season long.
They looked to be a lock for the fourth and final playoff spot over the No. 5-ranked Alabama. Sadly, in the ACC Championship game, Travis was injured and replaced by backup Tate Rodemaker and third-stringer Brock Glenn.
Florida State did win. But Alabama upset No. 1 Georgia in the SEC Championship game, and so the political games began. The committee had to decide whether to put Florida State in with a backup quarterback or Alabama, with Jalen Milroe healthy and starting.
Because of the so-called SEC bias and the fact that Florida State would have had to play with the backup in their first-round playoff game, Alabama made it in as the last team.
12-Team Playoff (2024)
The 12-team playoff format began in 2024, in hopes that another Florida State situation wouldn’t happen again. Now, instead of having the four best teams fight for a title, there are 12.
The 2024 format went like this: the top four teams that won their conference championship games would receive first-round byes to the second round. Meanwhile, teams seeded five through 12 would play in the first round at the higher-seeded home campus field.
This initially sounded fair. But the caveat was that Notre Dame would be seeded no higher than 5th. The team would get to host a game, but never get a bye as an independent school.
The strangest thing then occurred: the higher seeds won their first-round games. But then the four teams that earned a first-round bye were all eliminated in their second-round matchups.
The first 12-team National Championship game saw the No. 7 seed Notre Dame face the No. 8 seed Ohio State. Ohio State won 34-23.
Notre Dame Snub (2025)
Here we go again, folks. In only the second year of the supposed-to-be mistake-free 12-team playoff, we have another team excluded after being in for the previous weeks. After the CFP committee had the Irish as the 10th seed, they were snubbed by the Miami Hurricanes and the Alabama Crimson Tide.
As a result, Notre Dame elected not to play in their bowl game against BYU. Notre Dame did the right thing by not appeasing the people who didn’t invite them in the first place.
Should the 12-team playoff be fixed?
As mentioned earlier, the college football playoff system should absolutely get a mechanical repair. For starters, the committee should not punish a team at the very last minute after telling them for weeks that they would be in. Luckily, Notre Dame tried to convince the NCAA to give them a sweetheart deal by putting them in as an automatic 12-team lock for 2026.
Also, only one group of five teams should be allowed into the field. Why did the committee feel that, because Duke won the ACC championship over Virginia, they needed to have two groups of five teams, in which one of them, James Madison, is projected to lose by 21 to Oregon?
We can’t wait to see the ratings for that game.
Also, if Miami got in because they won the head-to-head vs. Notre Dame, and they only have a 38% chance to win against Texas A&M, which is a team they lost to by just one at home, how does that analytically make any sense?
Anyway, as a true college football fan, I will still be watching these CFP games because I really like the 12-team format, but that doesn’t mean it’s a totally flawless system that will probably never occur.
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Great job