Fans have been clamoring for a college football playoff for years.  The BCS did a poor job of giving teams a chance at a true national championship.  The 4-team playoff has not done much better.  It has routinely excluded conference champions, excluded many really good football teams, and ultimately has become system that employs beauty pagent criteria to get access.  If you are not a blue-blood program without any flaws, you have no chance to win it on the field.  Lose an early game…you are out.  Suffer a critical injury at a core position, you might be left out even if you are playing amazing football by the end of the season.

Ultimately, in the current system, teams outside of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State are routinely left out despite an incredible season.  The effects of this can be seen around the country as teams with a realistic playoff aspiration are seeing significant drop offs in fan interest after they suffer a first loss, and recognize they have zero chance with two losses.

Look at these five reasons to expand to 8 teams, you will see how important this move will be for college football.

1. Schedules are set too far in advance.
2. Conference Championships really only thing a team controls year-to-year.
3. Injuries can keep out deserving teams.
4. Flukely plays and/or bad officiating could keep a team out.
5. Home Field is an enormous benefit.
6. More teams in the running in November.
7. Criteria are inconsistently applied

1. Schedules are set too far in advance.

Non-Conference games played in 2019 were likely scheduled sometime between 2006 and 2012.  Are the power programs today the same as they were in those years?  Can you predict how good a Power 5 team will be 7 to 13 years (or more) in advance.  Judging a program’s success by the strength of that Non-Conference schedule makes little logical sense, because it is not like the school could predict the “strength” at the time it was schedule.

• Conference Championships really only thing a team controls year-to-year.

The only item in the control of a team each year is to win its games.  Ultimately, for every team, in every conference, one of their main goals each season is to win their conference.  That accomplishment alone should be sufficient to get a Power 5 team into the CFP.  The beauty pagent conversations of the CPF Committee (which we discuss further below) should not be allowed to override a conference championship.

• Injuries can keep out deserving teams.

Take a look at Tua’s recent injury.  If Alabama had lost a close game which was missed by their star QB, shouldn’t they still have an opportunity to be considered if he was healthy come playoff time? Under the current format, there would be little chance to that to occur.

• Flukey plays and/or bad officiating could keep a team out.

Do we really want a team left out of the CFP with a bad call or a flukey play?  Yes, I recognize that this could occur at any level, no matter how many teams we put into the CFP.  However, an expansion to 8 teams would give an aggrieved team the opportunity to overcome a hiccup, something that does not exist in the current format.

• Home Field is an enormous benefit.

A common complaint against expanding the playoff, is that it would make games less meaningful.  To the contrary, I think it would make the games MORE meaningful.  Teams would be battling for home field in the Quarterfinals all the way through the conference championship games.  We have seen situations where it has been clear that a team may be in the CFP, even with a loss in the championship (or conversely, eliminated even with a close loss).  The distinction between playing at home or traveling across the country to another power school would keep the stakes high.

• More teams in the running in November.

A team with two losses currently has no chance to get into the CFP.  For some of the reasons set forth above, you can see that could unfairly penalize a team.  If you look at the Top 25 right now, there are probably a dozen teams who could reasonably have a chance to make an 8 team playoff that would have zero chance to make a 4 team playoff.  As currently situated today, there are really only about 8 teams with a chance:  Ohio State, Clemson, LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Oregon, Utah and Oklahoma.  You might be able to make arguments for a few others, but it would take a lot of upsets. In an 8 team playoff, you would still see a path to the playoff for: Baylor, Penn State, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Notre Dame and Auburn.  This basically doubles the pool of candidates and sets up critical games down the stretch as we head to rivalry week.  The importance of this breadth and diversity cannot be overstated since it will allow many programs to see a viable route to the program even when they understand that likelihood of finishing in the Top 4 is not a realistic goal.

• Conference Championship games frequently lack energy

So now let’s look at the actual selection process.  My proposal is for 8 teams, rewarding all 5 Power Conference Champions with a bid.  This ensures that all Conference Championships mean something.  On the rare occasion that a truly “undeserving” team wins the championship, so what? They become an underdog and a darling and maybe they make a run!  The Group of 5 teams would have a spot reserved for them as long as the highest ranked team in that group is in the Top 12 (or Top 15).  I don’t think anyone minds seeing a Central Florida take a spot in the tournament, but nobody wants to see a three loss Group of 5 team ranked 20^th or worse taking up a valuable spot.

• Criteria are inconsistently applied.

When you look at the way the committee approaches the conversation, you essentially see three distinct conversations:

• Body of Work—Your body of work can only be as good as your schedule.  So these all relate to each other, but sometimes a school just wins and wins and wins, but may not look as impressive.  Does that team deserved to be excluded because they do not blow out every opponent?  Put them on the field and they will just win games…and they should get that chance.

• Best Win—another function of the schedule. Not only your schedule, but the schedule of an opponent.  Beat a really good team who has beaten nobody else and you will get little credit, no matter how good that team is.  Beat a mediocre team that has a win over another mediocre team  (i.e. overrated in preseason polls) and you will jump up the charts.

• Worst Loss—If multiple teams have one loss, is the primary consideration who they lost to?  Or who else they have beaten?  This year, Georgia has a terrible, home loss to South Carolina.   Alabama has a close home loss to LSU.  Georgia’s loss is clearly worse, but they are rated higher due to wins over Florida, Notre Dame and Auburn.  The committee flip flops every year on how they apply this criteria.

• Strength of Schedule—Subject to the same problem noted above based on how far the games are scheduled in advance.

Ultimately, the expansion to 8 will be great for college football.  What used to be the best college sports season out there, has now largely been reduced to watching which team between Alabama, Ohio State or Clemson can run up the score the highest.  That is not a sustainable model.

Most fans think they are smarter than the football coaches of the team that they cheer for.  They curse, stomp their feet, throw things at the wall (or the TV) and tweet up a storm.  Coaches are in a no win situation.  If a play fails (regardless of reason), the talking heads on TV and sports talk radio will join in the cacophony and support the fans who were outraged by the decision to run/pass.  Perhaps no play in NFL history symbolizes this phenomenon better than Pete Carroll’s decision to allow Russell Wilson to throw from the 2 yard line with the game on the line.  Malcolm Butler makes a play for the ages and forces his way inside to pick off the pass and the Patriots are the ones that are raising the Lombardi Trophy.

“What are you thinking?” was the theme of the outrage.  “How can you not hand off the ball to Marshawn Lynch?”  Lynch was certainly having a great game.  But would that play have worked?  None of us know that answer.  Wilson’s pass could easily have resulted in a TD and the masses would have jumped on board and said “Great decision to fool them and NOT hand the ball off to Marshawn!”  On the flip side, had they handed the ball off to Lynch and he was stopped by the Patriots defense, the critics would have howled “How could you call such a predictable play?” 

Though I am certainly guilty of that at times as well, when you truly think about it, we do not watch as much tape as the coaches. We do not know the health of the players. We do not know the feel of the game in terms of what is working.  That doesn’t mean we can’t express our frustrations and that we cannot believe a different decision would not have created a better result.

Each time I find myself going down that rabbit hole, I try to come back to this theme—Second guessing play calls is like second guessing decisions in a game of rock, paper, scissors (RPS).   Actually, it is probably worse.  Nobody spends 50+ hours a week studying rock, paper, scissors film (at least I hope not).  Therefore, you really cannot tell someone’s tendencies.  In addition, unlike RPS, which has only three options, a football play has hundreds of options on each the offensive and defensive side of the ball.  No call is inherently good or bad.  It only becomes so based on the combination of several factors:

• Offensive play call
• Defensive play call
• Offensive execution
• Defensive execution
• Player mistakes (beyond fundamental execution, things like slipping on a pass route or dropping a well thrown ball)
• Officiating mistakes

We have all seen plenty of well blocked screens where a RB drops a ball, or a WR slips.   Or a well defended pass that deflects up in the air and gets caught for a first down.  When a play works, it looks artful. When it doesn’t work, it looks pathetic.  As frustrated as we might get, try to remember this next time you are tempted to attack your favorite team’s coaching staff. 

Instead, go track down your friends and ask them why they threw Scissors when they clearly should have known that your other buddy was going to throw a Rock.  See their reaction when you throw a tantrum at their decision and you will get the sense of what coaches think when you do the same thing.

The critique of college football coaches (really, all football coaches) has become worse in recent years. Alabama fans have apparently become even more unreasonable given Nick Saban’s historic success.  But if you look more closely, are they really different from any other group of fans.

Listening to a sport talk radio show after a college or NFL loses can be highly entertaining.  The entire program is falling apart, the head coach needs to go, the backup QB is better than the starter, both coordinators are atrocious and the recruiting has dropped off. 

It seems that the Twitter age has made fans even more unreasonable and has given them an easy and widely distributed platform to voice their anger/frustration/knowledge. 

The intensity of every game and the importance in the standings has made each week a do-or-die mentality for the fans.  Patience is not an option.  Contentment with mediocre results is not an option.  Lose a game and the “Coach must go” tweets start, regardless of how well the team has done in the past.    You might expect to see that in schools that are struggling to breakthrough to the next level and feel that they just lost their opportunity due to a “bad” or “disappointing” loss. 

The quick trigger finger has not served many organizations well.  Look at how frequently Nebraska has changed coaches since it ran off Bo Pelini wih a winning record.  9-3 was not good enough.  You would think that winning 5 Nationals Championships would buy you a little bit of leeway, but as soon as Alabama lost a tight home game to LSU, the calls for his replacement started.  Sentiments like “too old”, “the game has passed him by” or “he is not interested” littered the Twitterverse.

Be careful what you wish you Bama fans. You might not remember the lean years (i.e. Pre-Saban) where the Tide were little more than an afterthought to college football’s elite.  Historically, the most successful programs have had a lot of stability at the top.  Once you starting changing, it takes a new coach 2 to 3 years to truly get everything the way that they want it.  Most schools don’t have that patience.