College Football Playoff: Will All-SEC final force expansion?

The College Football Playoff was born three years after LSU and Alabama played for the BCS title. How soon will the field go to eight after another SEC title game?

Six years ago, the BCS still had a grip on what we consider a legitimate national championship. During a period of SEC dominance in the sport, Alabama met LSU in a rematch of their divisional rivalry showdown earlier in the year. In that game, the Tigers won a forgettable affair 9-6 in Tuscaloosa over the Crimson Tide. LSU went on to win the SEC title game over Georgia and earned the No. 1 rank heading into the BCS championship game.

Just like this year, Alabama’s only loss came against a top-shelf SEC West rival. Also in common is the fact that the Tide were ranked No. 1 in the country heading into their lone defeat. It is hard to argue on pure numbers that either of these Nick Saban teams should have been kept out of a shot at the title.

The first time two teams from the same conference played for the national title, the conference commissioners that drive the course of 21st-century college football agreed to playoff expansion. During the BCS era at least four major conferences were guaranteed to miss out on even a shot at the title. Making a fifth conference miss the party, ultimately, provided the spark that torched the BCS and led to expansion talks.

Within three years, the College Football Playoff came into existence.

The expansion to four teams was always going to leave at least one team disappointed per season. With five major conferences, one team was always going to end up on the outside looking in. It doesn’t matter how great a season that team might have enjoyed.

And don’t even begin to ask about getting a mid-major team into the equation. The current composition of the College Football Playoff system has evenly split the field into haves and have-nots. Aptly, the two sides are the Power Five and the Group of Five, a milquetoast generic name basically designed to keep those teams from collectively being called the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The past two years offered a pair of No. 1 versus No. 2 showdowns in the College Football Playoff National Championship. But that only served to obfuscate the reality that there are usually far more than two teams that have a legitimate chance to run the table in a playoff and win the national title.

Once the lever-pullers of the sport introduced a plus-one system into the traditional bowl picture, they opened a Pandora’s box that cannot be latched back up. Two Power Five conference champions were left out of the Playoff picture, as USC and Ohio State were relegated to facing one another.

They didn’t even get to play at the venerable Rose Bowl as is usually the right of the Pac-12 and Big Ten champions. Instead, they were shunted off to the Cotton Bowl, which isn’t even played at the Cotton Bowl anymore. Tradition, it seems, only goes so far.

Expansion won’t be just about the SEC vs. SEC title game

Just as in January 2012, as Alabama prepared to face LSU, the conference showdown in the title game won’t be the sole reason why the field expands. But it will be a factor in moving up the timetable for such a move. The field will move, whether to six or to eight, far sooner than its currently contracted completion date at the end the 2025-2026 season.

But it won’t be the only reason for such a move. The new system raised eyebrows immediately when it shuffled off TCU and Baylor in favor of Ohio State in 2014. When the Buckeyes landed a spot in last year’s four-team field instead of Big Ten champion Penn State, that also drew plenty of blowback. This was a factor that the BCS suffered with as well, as one conference winner or more missed out on a legitimately deserved shot at playing for a national championship.

It had already led to a split national championship in 2003, when the AP split ranks and voted for USC rather than LSU. The following year, Auburn went undefeated as the SEC champion but missed out on a spot in the two-team game.

That led paradoxically to the creation of a separate national championship game separate from the bowl sites that host it. But there was no play-in requirement into that game save the final BCS rankings at the end of the regular season. Every four years, one of those sites would gain an additional big-ticket opportunity to host the title game. There were more money-making opportunities, but no additional chances to reach the biggest one.

That was never going to be a workable solution

Once LSU lost out on an entire share of the national title eight years later, to a team that they had already beaten on the road, expansion became inevitable. That was supposed to be the panacea that cured the systemic issues. But for two out of the four years of the College Football Playoff’s existence, the No. 4 team in their estimation came through to play for the trophy.

Ohio State won in 2014. Alabama could very well do so this year. In the case of the Buckeyes, they are not unworthy nor illegitimate champions. And if the Crimson Tide prevail in the interdivisional SEC battle against Georgia, they too will be worthy and legitimate champions.

An expanded field would not delegitimize a championship if a No. 8 seed came through to win it all. After all, it hasn’t done so yet for the College Football Playoff. The mere selection of teams like Alabama this year and Ohio State helps push forward the conversation. When they experience success, it only adds fuel to the fire.

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The Alabama-Georgia duel for the national championship won’t by itself force the expansion of the College Football Playoff. Catalysts by themselves do not effect change. But they do accelerate the course of history, and we won’t be waiting until 2026 for a three-round playoff to form.