College Football Playoff Already Needs a Refresh
The resident college football expert offers 5 quick fixes to the current playoff system
Today, John Crimella offers a counterpoint to Brian Lennon’s argument that the First Round of the College Football Playoff worked as intended.
Let me start by saying the College Football Playoff Committee got it right! By the rules they were given.
But this year’s playoff does not include this season’s Top 12 teams.
What we saw this weekend was an indictment for including so many teams. The last four “road” teams didn’t even belong on the field with the home teams.
It wasn’t even entertaining. It was snooze-inducing.
So many things need to change after the 2025 season, when the current model expires, that expanding to more teams seems like an even worse idea at this point.
This isn’t an argument about who should have or shouldn’t have been in this year’s playoff. That ship has sailed. What we need to figure out is how to move forward.
There will never be a perfect model. But if the idea is to have the best teams face-off with each other, then we have to figure out how to best determine those teams.
My Recommendations:
1. The first step is no preseason or early season rankings.
We cannot presuppose because a team was good last season, or they look good on paper, that they are a “good” team. FSU is the obvious example from this past season. They were ranked No. 10 in the preseason poll and finished the year 2-10.
Indiana and Arizona State, meanwhile, are the complete opposite of that.Arizona State was picked to finish last in the Big XII and won it.
Neither were ranked or thought of as being relevant CFP contenders. Yet they both won eight more games than the previous season. Strength of Schedule/Record shouldn’t be determined until the third or fourth week of the season.
How do we really know how good that year's team will be until we actually see them play a few games?
2. Wins and losses should still matter, but who you play, who you beat and who you lose too, should also matter as well.
Losing to Top 25 teams versus unranked teams should mean something. We just saw what beating a mediocre schedule will do for you against better opponents.
We can see that in the next round as well, as three of the teams that had a bye are underdogs against teams that had to win a First Round game.
The Committee is going to need help with this, so we may need to figure out a plan for a BCS computer-type component to this as well. In the new world of AI, this should be achievable, and in conjunction with the human element, it should be more balanced.
3. No more home games.
I don’t have anything against them, but if you want this to be a true representation of the best teams playing each other, no more campus games after next year.
Let Ohio State play in the Cleveland Brown’s stadium, or a regionally located neutral site for being a higher ranked team.
4. No more auto-qualified conference champions.
All conference champions are not created equal.
The teams should be ranked from top to bottom on merit. Winning your conference championship shouldn’t warrant a team losing a spot because your conference had a down year. The ACC just showed that it may not have warranted a team in the playoffs at all.
5. There has to be a built-in injury component.
Florida State suffered last year because of the loss of Jordan Travis.
This year, Georgia did not, even with the possible loss of quarterback Carson Beck for the remainder of the season.
There has to be a model in place to take injuries into account.
If Georgia, with back-up Gunnar Stockton, goes out and can’t move the ball against Notre Dame next week, then the argument against Florida State to be left out last season is valid.
If the Bulldogs beat Notre Dame with no problems, then FSU was truly and rightly screwed.
Losing a starter like that with three games to go (like Florida State in 2023) or in a conference championship game (like Georgia in 2024) is different and the committee needs to have those type of scenarios considered and planned out on a fair basis.
There’s a Million Other Changes…
There’s probably a million other things that need to be considered; this is just what came to my head after my first attempt at this.
We argue about this — for or against — because we all love college football. We want the best for everyone involved.
There will never be a perfect answer, but we need to be open to seeking a way to make the best that it can be.
In addition to recruiting and portal changes, we can see a path forward.
Coaches need to continue to preach the message that they can’t be expected to prepare for a playoff while continuing to recruit the next crop of players, fight to retain current players, and all while navigating NIL deals for players.
No one will ever be completely happy at the end of the day, but if there are ways to correct it, and make it the best product that it can be, we owe that to the universities, players and fans across the country.
I’m interested to see how the Quarterfinal round plays out, because if it is like the First Round, there was never a need to expand in the first place.
Let’s hear from our readers! Share your thoughts on John’s proposals:
I don't think the answer is less teams. If you had to pick 8 teams this season, which one are you leaving out? A 1-loss Indiana? Let's stop letting subjective opinion dominate college football. Let the team's play and answer definitively and objectively, who are the best teams. Notice there's not chatter from Indiana, SMU, Clemson or Tennessee?