College Football Playoff Thoughts

The college football playoff selection committee made their final decision on Sunday, selecting which four teams will be competing for this season's championship, but it wasn't without some controversy once again. Alabama was chosen to participate in the playoff, despite not winning their conference or even playing in the conference title game. Was this year's Alabama team good enough to deserve to be in the playoff? Maybe, but there were other teams that were more deserving according to the committee's criteria.

The committee claims that the criteria used to select the participants are strength of schedule, conference championships, and overall record, but in reality, this isn't the case. They tend to weigh overall record as the most important criteria, as all 16 teams selected in the 4-year history of the playoff have had 1 loss or fewer, and for the second year in a row that has come at the expense of a conference champion with 2 losses.

As far as strength of schedule goes, they claim to consider it, but do not have a set metric to determine how strong a team's schedule is, so what they are actually doing is measuring a team's perceived strength of schedule. Because of the SEC's prolonged success over the past 15 years or so, it is often assumed that SEC teams play a more difficult schedule than teams from other conferences, but that isn't usually the case, for several reasons.

There are three factors that affect strength of schedule that are often overlooked, and have led to less deserving teams being selected. One of these is the size of the conference. The more teams a conference has, the more subpar opponents a top team has the potential to see on its conference schedule. When a conference has 14 teams, nearly half of the teams in the conference will not appear on each other's schedule, meaning the top teams in the conference will not always play each other, especially when playing an 8-game conference schedule.

The length of the conference schedule is the second factor. The more games played on a conference schedule, the more losses that are guaranteed to come to members of that conference, which makes it more difficult for a team to maintain a record with 1 loss or fewer, and extremely difficult to have two such teams from a conference.

The third factor is the scheduling of FCS opponents. A game against an FCS opponent is almost a guaranteed win, especially for teams from the power conferences, so they give teams almost a full game advantage over teams that play actual opponents during those weeks, which helps them immensely with the committee, which still uses wins and losses as their main criteria. It is also greatly advantageous to schedule an FCS opponent in the final month of the season, because the majority of teams are playing conference opponents at this point, putting them at greater danger of losing a game. The committee acts very similarly to the national polls, in which a team that loses will drop, with the magnitude of the drop depending on the details of the loss (strength of opponent, margin of loss, etc.), while the teams that did not lose that week each move up, with no thought given to the details of the victory.

When looking at the five major conferences, it's easy to see that the ones who take advantage of these factors have had the most success convincing the committee to select them for the playoff. The conference that takes the most advantage of these factors is the SEC, which has the largest conference (14 teams), plays the shortest schedule (8 games), has an FCS opponent on the schedule every year, and in Alabama's case, schedules that opponent near the end of the season every year. The SEC's overall strength this year was worst of the 5 major conferences, but it still became the first conference to ever have 2 teams selected to the playoff.

The ACC follows a similar pattern to the SEC. They have 14 teams, play the shorter schedule, and always schedule an FCS opponent, and this season's Clemson Tigers moved that game to the final month of the season, instead of the first month as they had previously. It appears that the ACC has figured out the SEC's tricks and is mirroring them, which has resulted in them having a representative in the playoff every year so far.

The Big 10 has had 3 participants in 4 seasons, but were left out this year despite having 3 worthy teams. The Big 10 does have a 14 team league, but does not schedule FCS opponents at all, and last season decided to extend their conference schedule from 8 to 9 games, which has resulted in their conference champ finishing with 2 losses in each of the last 2 seasons and being left out of the playoff. They clearly made a mistake in assuming that by improving the conference's strength of schedule that they would be more likely to have a team in the playoff.

The Pac 12 has had 2 teams reach the playoff in 4 years. The two that have made it did play an early-season FCS opponent, but the Pac 12 suffers from having a smaller conference (12 teams) and from playing a 9-game schedule, meaning that each team plays all but two of their conference opponents, making it very unlikely that any team would not play each of the top 2 possible opponents.

The conference with the biggest disadvantage is the Big 12, which does not schedule FCS opponents, has the smallest league (10 teams), and plays a full 9-game schedule, and are the only conference in FBS where every team plays every other team during the regular season. They added a conference title game this season, which along with Oklahoma running their conference schedule allowed them to have a team in the playoff for only the second time.

What this teaches us is that if conferences want to see more teams in the playoff under the current format, they need to weaken their strength of schedule through conference expansion and replacing one conference game with an FCS game. Of the 16 teams selected in the 4 seasons of the playoff, 12 have come from 14-team conferences, 11 have played 8-game conference schedules, and 11 have played an FCS opponent (including 5 late-season games). The committee claims to value strength of schedule, but it is clear that they do not understand what constitutes a strong schedule.

The biggest argument made for Alabama's inclusion this season was that they lost only once, late in the season, and to a strong opponent. While all of that was true, the same can be said of the team that was ranked #6 in the final ranking, the Wisconsin Badgers. Each lost just once, to a team that finished in the top 10, and each loss came in the final game of the season, but Wisconsin's loss came in a conference title game, while Alabama's came in a regular season game. Alabama also lost by a larger margin to a team with more losses that ended up lower in the final rankings. The Badgers had a better overall record (12-1 over 11-1), did not play an FCS opponent, reached their conference title game, had the exact same record against the top 15 (0-1), and played a more difficult overall schedule (#30 vs #60 for Alabama). By every criteria the committee claims to value, Wisconsin was more deserving than Alabama.

This does not mean that I would have selected the Badgers to make the playoff. I would have picked the team they lost to in their conference title game, the Ohio State Buckeyes. Ohio State played a tougher schedule (#8 nationally), had a 3-1 record against the top 15, and won their conference championship. They were held out due to their record (a cringe-inducing 2 losses), and the fact that one loss came against Iowa, which was not ranked in the final committee rankings (although I have them ranked #14). If having a bad loss on your record is enough to keep a team out of the playoff, then how do they explain #1 Clemson, which lost to Syracuse, which won only 4 games all year, including just the one against a team with a winning record? The fact is that if Ohio State had not played Oklahoma this season, they would most likely be playing in games that matter in the next month, but because they lost to the #2 team in the country, they ended up with 2 losses, which is a deal-breaker for the committee.

This doesn't mean that I feel Alabama is not a great team that deserves to play for the championship, just not in the current format. The 4-team format, which better than the previous 2-team mess, is still fundamentally flawed, in that there are 5 power conferences, plus usually at least one team from the other five conferences that is undefeated, but only 4 slots for teams to play for the title. I have been a proponent of expansion to a 16-team field for a long time now, and this would have been a great year to implement it.

In my 16-team format, I would include all 10 conference champions, which would make the regular season actually matter, which is currently doesn't, no matter what the NCAA tries to claim. UCF finished the season 12-0, yet was not even discussed as a possible participant in the playoff due to their strength of schedule, which was admittedly worse due to playing in a weaker overall conference. If the regular season really mattered, the Knights perfect record would mean that they get to play for something, rather than going to a meaningless bowl game. I would also limit each conference to only 2 participants, to avoid having one conference load down the playoff by weakening their schedule even more. Here is what my 16-team playoff would look like, using the committee's final rankings to seed most of the teams:

(1) Clemson - ACC champ
(2) Oklahoma - Big 12 champ
(3) Georgia - SEC champ
(4) Alabama - SEC wild card
(5) Ohio State - Big 10 champ
(6) Wisconsin - Big 10 wild card
(7) USC - Pac 12 champ
(8) Miami - ACC wild card
(9) Washington - Pac 12 wild card
(10) UCF - AAC champ
(11) Notre Dame - wild card
(12) TCU - Big 12 wild card
(13) Boise State - MWC champ
(14) Toledo - MAC champ
(15) Florida Atlantic - CUSA champ
(16) Troy - Sun Belt champ

All 15 games would be played using current bowl game locations, which would be accomplished by requiring teams to win 6 (or possibly 7) games against FBS teams in order to play in a bowl game, rather than the current format, which has occasionally allowed a 5-7 team to play in a bowl with only 4 FBS wins. With all games at neutral sites, here is how I project such a playoff would go:

Round One

(1) Clemson over (16) Troy
(2) Oklahoma over (15) FAU
(3) Georgia over (14) Toledo
(4) Alabama over (13) Boise State
(5) Ohio State over (12) TCU
(6) Wisconsin over (11) Notre Dame
(10) UCF over (7) USC
(9) Washington over (8) Miami

Second Round

(1) Clemson over (9) Washington
(2) Oklahoma over (10) UCF
(6) Wisconsin over (3) Georgia
(5) Ohio State over (4) Alabama

Semifinals

(1) Clemson over (5) Ohio State
(6) Wisconsin over (2) Oklahoma

Championship

(1) Clemson over (6) Wisconsin

Overall, I feel that 12 of these 15 games would be competitive, and the overall excitement of college football throughout December would be greatly increased, as there would be a lot more meaningful games, instead of the one pointless game your team may be playing in this year. It would also make the regular season more exciting for everyone, since teams fighting for their conference titles would actually mean something, and teams jockeying to be #2 in the conference in hopes of being selected as a wild card would give hope to more teams and their fan bases. For now it may be just a dream, but a few short years ago the 4-team format was not yet a reality either.