College Football Playoff: 2018 season another reason for expansion

The College Football Playoff limits opportunities for league champions in the interest of subjectivity. What might an expanded playoff look like in 2018?

Now that the final games of the 2018 regular season are all in the books (save the annual Army-Navy Game on Heisman Saturday), it is time for reflection on what will likely transpire on Selection Sunday. The College Football Playoff is setting up to release its final Top 25 of the 2018 season at noon Eastern, and we will finally learn how the selection committee opted to sort out the conference champions and the other top teams in their rankings throughout the season.

The system is manufactured for maximum drama, something that broadcast partner ESPN certainly knows how to generate with skill and verve. Winnowing down a list of the Power Five champions and other assorted top teams, the committee arrives at a list of four anointed teams and 21 disappointed rejects. Some of the forgotten majority will earn a spot in one of the affiliated consolation bowls, though most will find themselves twice disappointed in the end. A bowl game will still await, but the big prize will continue to be out of reach.

The history of college football has been one of trying to increase the odds of definitively determining the best team in the country in a given year. Polls began in the 1930s as a way to generate further interest in and content for the sports pages of newspapers across the United States. That system was sometimes satisfactory, sometimes disappointing, but in a disjointed college football landscape it was the best thing available for crowning a champion

Then the Bowl Coalition launched in 1992, followed by the Bowl Alliance in 1995, respectively sought to bring together the No. 1 and No. 2 team in the country for an annual showdown to crown a national champion. Without all of the I-A conferences on board with the plan, however, the two efforts fizzled out after three years apiece of existence.

That all changed with the Bowl Championship Series, which incorporated the six most well-known FBS conferences within its purview. That, of course, still left five of the conferences within the subdivision unrepresented and without a voice in the system. While the stated purpose of the BCS was to bring together the top two teams for a championship, it essentially said that half the I-A subdivision was effectively barred from ever being considered a top-two program.

Once an idea gets rolling, however, it inevitably snowballs into a concept bigger than the original idea could possibly conceive. Long before it finally ceded ground to an expanded field of teams, there was clamor to increase the number of programs that might have a chance to walk away with the national title.

Finally, the College Football Playoff came online in 2014, doubling the chances for top teams to play their way to the crown in a given year. But while smaller schools were provided an opportunity to earn a major bowl appearance, they were still effectively barred from consideration for the bigger prize. As we have seen over time, though, access begets further access as the idea of expanded fields of opportunity normalize in the public consciousness.

In that spirit, let’s evaluate how this year’s field of teams might come together in an eight-team playoff. This is no pie-in-the-sky dream, either. Even taking smaller schools out of the equation, the system as it is currently designed provides outsized power to a group of around a dozen or so selectors who subjectively sit in judgment and choose who gets the nod and who gets left out based on a set of moving goalposts that remain hidden from public view.

As this process is utilized to shut out increasing numbers of power-conference teams, their gripes about diminished accessibility will begin to mirror the current Group of Five mid-major conferences within the FBS family.

In this week’s Sunday Morning Quarterback, we will take two steps along the way toward evaluating the logic of growing the playoff from four to eight. First, we will look at why an expanded playoff is a normal process that is inevitably going to transpire sooner or later. Then, we will offer a counterfactual as to how the postseason might play out in 2018 with another doubling of the access points into the championship picture

The precedent of FCS football on how playoffs can grow organically

The FBS doesn’t have to look far to see how playoffs can operate within the structure of intercollegiate sports. There are football playoffs held at all three tiers of the NCAA divisional structure, as well as at levels not affiliated with the NCAA itself.

At the FCS level of Division I college football, the second round of the 24-team playoff transpired over the weekend. But it did not grow to 24 teams overnight. That was a process that evolved over the span of four decades, beginning with… a four-team playoff that launched in 1978 with the separation of Division I into two groups.

While the large state schools and private powerhouses clung to the extant model, smaller programs dropping to the lower subdivision within Division I opted to try out what was then a radical new method for crowning a national champion.

Like conference championship games, there had to be some semblance of a start. And like conference championships, the instant popularity demanded a proliferation within a short time frame. By year four of the Division I playoffs, the field expanded from four teams to eight. A year later, the 1982 playoff welcomed 12 teams into the fold, with the top four seeds getting a bye through the first round.

Before the first decade of its existence was complete, the I-AA playoffs grew from their original four-team format to a 16-team playoff by 1986. Over the next two-dozen years through 2009, this was the format that held as the standard. But as more conferences sought automatic bids for their champions, the FCS opted to expand to 20 teams in 2010 and then to 24 teams in 2013. There it currently holds form, with the top eight teams getting byes through the first round.

As the timeline at the FCS level illustrates, accessibility can be naturally increased to reward teams with conferences deserving landing a champion automatically in a field of contenders for the national title. There is no inherent reason why it cannot work at the highest level of college football. In fact, the shift from the BCS to the College Football Playoff proves that it is already at work at the FBS level.

Can FBS generate viewership numbers to support an expanded playoff?

In a sport where judicious scheduling can effectively guarantee a high viewership, there is no reason why an eight-team playoff would place a burden on schools in terms of lack of interest. Even Group of Five non-conference matchups like the Week 4 contest featuring FAU and UCF have the potential to draw more than one million viewers. And a game like South Florida against Tulsa, featuring a pair of American Athletic Conference squads with limited national appeal, can do the same when placed in prime time on a night other than Saturday.

Fans are already tuning in for games on Thursdays, Fridays, and now even Tuesdays and Wednesdays. FBS football has already permeated every inch of calendar space in the fall not already occupied by the NFL — and, in the case of Thursdays, they already compete directly with the NFL for viewers.

The viewer ratings, for instance, show that there is a group of more than six million people who tune in consistently on Saturday for the early slate of noontime games. No matter who is playing, the mere fact that football is playing invites those individuals to flip over and begin watching.

And there is no need to compromise the current system of bowl games if FBS teams so desire to maintain that series of exhibitions as a reward for teams that had solid seasons but did not reach the playoff itself. The current six-win threshold could easily remain in place for those games without having any impact whatsoever on a playoff’s functionality.

And if there are worries about playoff games diluting interest in other bowls, the simple solution would be to schedule the playoff over three weeks with games on Thursday and Friday evenings in prime time. That would then leave Saturdays free over the same three weeks for teams to schedule and play bowl games over the course of the full day.

What would doubling the field to eight teams look like in terms of access?

Any playoff model that goes beyond the current four-team formula would in part be an effort to restore some semblance of relevance to conference affiliation and the determination of champions within those conferences. It would also offer an opportunity to apply relevant metrics for communicating what constitutes “best teams” in the context of playoff worthiness.

As it currently stands, the College Football Playoff has no criteria that articulate what defines the best teams. Conference affiliations ostensibly do not matter, though the division into Power Five schools (and Notre Dame) and Group of Five programs (and the other schools clinging to independence, regardless of whether it is by choice or necessity) effectively eliminates approximately half of the subdivision before the season even starts.

What we have now is an artificial scarcity of opportunity without any methodology for earning the opportunities that are available. There is no legitimate reason to cap the field at four, especially when considering the ready-made processes in place for winnowing down the field that conferences provide.

By creating opportunities for conference champions to earn automatic bids, it takes much of the selection process out of the hands of a small group making decisions in a process that lacks transparency or a clear calculus for determining merit and places it back on the field itself.

Just like in the FCS playoffs, not all conferences would automatically be guaranteed a bid. The delineation already in place offers a logical starting point that can be adjusted over time. Each Power Five conference would receive a bid for its champion, however each league elects to determine their respective top teams. And the Group of Five would also be granted one bid to be given to the top champion from among the quintet of conferences, effectively shifting the current access point into a New Year’s Six bowl toward a playoff proper.

That leaves two wild-card bids that would be up for grabs each year. Scuttle the selection committee and instead go with a BCS-style formula for choosing the last three teams in (including the top Group of Five champ).

While there were definite issues with the BCS formula, in terms of the shifting methodology for calculating the rankings and the desire to place it more firmly in human hands, they did offer benefits as well over the College Football Playoff process. Locking down an algorithm that is transparent, replicable, and consistent over time would at least provide clear metrics for teams trying to get a shot at the national title.

Over time, if more leagues such as the American Athletic Conference or the Mountain West merited an automatic bid, or if the number of wildcards proves too limited, the opportunity for further expansion to 12 or 16 teams has already been mapped out by those subdivisions that came before.

And if the desire was to preserve competitive integrity, set a minimum threshold for qualification. For wild-card bids, one possible stipulation would be that teams with three or more losses would not be considered until all teams with two or fewer losses were considered. Another stipulation could potentially be that any undefeated team at the end of the regular season must be offered a spot in the playoff regardless of conference affiliation.

So what would an eight-team playoff look like this year?

Without any clear idea as to how the system might select and seed its teams, let’s first look at the Power Five conference champions that would be up for a spot in the playoffs:

• SEC: Alabama (13-0)
• ACC: Clemson (13-0)
• Big Ten: Ohio State (12-1)
• Big 12: Oklahoma (12-1)
• Pac-12: Washington (10-3)

Those spots would be non-negotiable. The conferences set their parameters for determining their season champion, and whoever emerges out of that process would get the bid. In effect, this replaces the traditional bowl affiliations such as the Pac-12 and Big Ten champions meeting up in the Rose Bowl.

(It is worth noting that the BCS effectively killed this tradition anyway. For instance, the two decades between 1998 and 2017, the Big Ten and Pac-10/Pac-12 champions have met only 10 out of 20 possible times in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. Fluidity rather than rigidity was always the main goal of the efforts to crown a national champion, dating back to the Bowl Coalition.)

And then there are the five Group of Five champions to consider as well for the sixth spot in the playoff:

• AAC: UCF (12-0)
• MWC: Fresno State (11-2)
• Sun Belt: Appalachian State (10-2)
• C-USA: UAB (10-3)
• MAC: Northern Illinois (8-5)

By any measure and any metric, UCF would undoubtedly win the big in 2018. In other years, however, the selection might not be this clear, which is why those metrics would need to be established in advance instead of the current method of reverse-engineering justifications for whatever the selection committee wants to justify.

That would then leave two spots left. Here is a list of the contenders with two or fewer losses that would be up for consideration for that spot:

• Notre Dame (12-0 independent)
• Georgia (11-2 SEC East champion)
• Michigan (10-2 Big Ten East runner-up)
• Washington State (10-2 Pac-12 North runner-up)
• Fresno State (11-2 MWC champion)
• Appalachian State (10-2 Sun Belt champion)

One of those spots would almost certainly go to Notre Dame, given their standing as one of four undefeated teams in the country. Then it comes down to a slew of two-loss teams and parsing out such considerations as strength of schedule, quality wins, and quality of losses. The likeliest outcome would be Fresno State and Appalachian State falling out of the running, with the final decision coming down to the Bulldogs, Wolverines, and Cougars. Winning a division crown would tip the scales in Georgia’s favor, setting the field as follows:

• No. 1 Alabama (13-0) vs. No. 8 Washington (10-3)
• No. 2 Clemson (13-0) vs. No. 7 Georgia (11-2)
• No. 3 Notre Dame (12-0) vs. No. 6 UCF (12-0)
• No. 4 Oklahoma (12-1) vs. No. 5 Ohio State (12-1)

The positions and pairings might obviously change some, depending on what the member schools of the FBS collectively decide to privilege and weigh more heavily in the calculations for playoff seeding. But no matter what permutation one chooses, any combination of contests featuring these eight teams would be absolutely electric.

Just like the BCS and the College Football Playoff, this new eight-team playoff would still have teams that end the year disappointed. Michigan, for instance, would be left wondering what they did to get passed over. And because there were clear guidelines in place that determine the selection process, they would be able to pinpoint the rationale instead of continuing to wonder without ever learning the logic of the matter.

What stands in the way of making this a possibility. Simply, all it would take at any point is the collective will of the major conferences that govern college football. If we see more instances like last year, where two Power Five conferences were shut out in favor of a non-champion, or this year’s possibility of seeing three Power Five champions being passed over for an independent and a losing conference finalist.

Access is the key determinant that will ultimately lead to playoff expansion in the future. That has been the case at every other level of the sport, and it will ultimately be true for the FBS as well. The question is less about if it will happen than when the field will expand.