Leave it be. Enjoy the show. Let a good thing be a good thing. This 12-team College Football Playoff format works beautifully.
Byes should continue to be reserved for conference champions. What’s so wrong with that?
Twelve teams for playoff is plenty. No need for 14.
The 12-team College Football Playoff works. I don’t mean it works like an old tube television that turns on if you bang on it in just the right spot. This format requires no pounding or modification. It works like a new 72-inch mounted flat screen TV that displays a crisp picture with the click of a button.
Leave it be. Enjoy the show. Let a good thing be a good thing.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and his Big Ten counterpart Tony Petitti vowed they’d closely monitor this expanded playoff’s debut as they evaluated whether to pursue tweaks to the format.
“This just has to go incredibly well,” Sankey said in October. “This has to be a successful launch.”
Whether this playoff goes down as “a successful launch” probably depends on who’s evaluating the launch pattern. If you ask me, here’s a list of what I’d change, post haste, about the playoff format:
Nothing.
That’s right, I wouldn’t change the format a bit.
When Ohio State or Notre Dame celebrates on Monday in Atlanta, a deserving champion that proved itself throughout four playoff games will be crowned. We won’t wonder whether the selection committee omitted the nation’s best team. Every team rejected from this bracket presented a flawed résumé and squandered opportunities.
Should College Football Playoff adjust seeding, byes? Nope.
The most common grievance about this playoff format is that the four byes are reserved for conference champions. That unlocks the possibility of some funny-looking differences between a team’s CFP ranking and its bracket seeding. Consider, Arizona State ranked No. 12 in the final CFP rankings, but, as the fourth-best conference champion, the Sun Devils were seeded No. 4.
This bothered many observers. ESPN blowhard Rece Davis used the network’s weekly rankings show as his personal pulpit to demand that seeding be reworked so that the four byes are awarded to the top four teams in the CFP rankings.
Why is that necessary? Why shouldn’t conference champions be rewarded with byes?
Arizona State would have been seeded 12th, if teams were seeded based off rankings. Texas and Penn State, a pair of conference runners-up, would have received byes, replacing the Sun Devils and Boise State.
But, when Arizona State and Texas played in the quarterfinals, the Sun Devils performed a lot more like a No. 4 seed than a No. 12 seed.
In one of the playoff’s most thrilling games, Texas won in double overtime. The Longhorns converted a fourth-and-13 play in the first overtime to extend the game. So, tell me again, what was so wrong about Arizona State receiving a bye? And, what Texas achievement made it so worthy of a bye?
As for Boise State, it’s not the Broncos’ fault the ACC stunk, creating an avenue for a Group of Five conference champion to claim a bye.
No. 1 Oregon and No. 2 Georgia also lost in the quarterfinals, so Arizona State and Boise State gained company in failing to win as the better-seeded team.
If teams are seeded based off CFP rankings, college football would become America’s only major sport in which wild-card teams are eligible for first-round byes.
In the NFL, byes are reserved to the top team from each conference. The MLB’s byes are reserved for the top two division winners from each league.
Reserving byes for conference champions appropriately rewards regular-season results and conference standings. Then, postseason games can get to work on sorting out who’s really the best team.
Other reasons to keep byes exclusive to conference champions:
∎ Conference championship games would become more irrelevant if byes are available to at-large teams. Based off CFP rankings, the four teams that competed in this season’s SEC and Big Ten championship games would have received byes, rendering those “Super Two” conference championship results mostly irrelevant.
∎ Change the format so that byes are awarded based off ranking, and Notre Dame would be eligible for a first-round bye. Combine that with Notre Dame being off on conference championship weekend, and the Irish could cash in on what amounts to a double bye, gaining an unfair advantage as an independent. Likewise, a third- or fourth-place team from a power conference would become eligible for a bye, which also seems unfair, as compared to teams that earn byes through their conference championship performance.
∎ The current format protects conference champions from subjective rankings that might unfairly punish a good team from a conference that’s not appropriately valued by the committee.
The biggest issue with this playoff had nothing to do with byes. The committee positioned No. 1 Oregon to face No. 8 Ohio State, the best at-large team, in the quarterfinals. Don’t blame the format. Fault the committee for not seeding Ohio State appropriately at No. 5, a spot the Buckeyes had earned with their résumé that included wins against two playoff qualifiers, Penn State and Indiana.
Should the playoff expand to 14 teams? That’s unnecessary
Alabama and Miami would have been the additional at-large qualifiers in a 14-team playoff. This playoff didn’t miss them. Twelve is plenty. Having a playoff this big means an at-large team or two will qualify with blemished credentials (see SMU). Expanding the playoff would invite more of those teams.
A 12-team playoff provides room for the teams most capable of contending or a national championship, without being so big as to render the regular season irrelevant.
In the CFP selection committee we trust?
Look, we can debate the committee’s selection of Indiana or SMU. The Mustangs, especially, failed to vindicate the committee’s selection with their pitiful first-round showing against Penn State. But, who’s to say Alabama or Miami would have produced a different result?
I viewed Mississippi or Brigham Young as a stronger choice than SMU, but those teams squandered opportunities in the regular season, and the rejection of either didn’t amount to a travesty that warrants benching the committee in favor of a computer system or some sort of funky metric inspired by ESPN’s Football Power Index.
The committee whiffed on Ohio State’s seeding, but, it mostly supplied fair-minded work.
So, what will happen to 12-team playoff?
Changing the playoff format for next season would require unanimous support from the 10 conferences, plus Notre Dame. That call for unanimity makes drastic overhauls unlikely for 2025, although perhaps the bye or seeding structure will be tweaked.
For 2026, all bets are off. Starting that year, the SEC and Big Ten gain additional power to restructure the playoff. Will Sankey and Petitti hatch a format better, fairer and more compelling than this one? I retain doubts.
After years of banging our fist on an outdated postseason product, this 12-team playoff looks picture-perfect. Enjoy it while you can.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.