Revamping the College Football Playoffs

 

Tonight (January 20, 2025) Ohio State plays Notre Dame for college football's national championship.

I'm not a fan of tradition for tradition's sake, but until the late 1990s, the national championship was usually decided on New Year's night. Starting with the BCS Era of the late 1990s, it was played within a few days after New Year's. During the 4-team Playoff Era, it was played a week or more after New Year's Day. Now, it's almost three weeks after.

The New Year's bowl games and the national championship game were a nice cap on the Christmas season, after which we started thinking about the NFL playoffs. That's the thing: I care about the NFL playoffs even when I don't have a rooting interest, but my interest in college football wanes the further we go into January; college football is no longer must-see TV for me. 

There is a lot of chaos in college football, and the date of the national championship game isn't at the top of the list of problems. The game may get a decent television rating because of the high-profile schools involved. But we can still have a playoff while returning the championship to New Year's Day.

Here's a plan that should be as lucrative for the conferences as the system we have now:

1. Divide the 134 FBS teams into divisions of 8-9 teams. Each division's champion is determined by round-robin.

2. Each division can keep the same conference affiliation. For instance, the 18 teams of the Big Ten could be in two divisions (called, for instance, Big Ten I and Big Ten II). Also, the divisions within each conference can be shuffled from year to year so that each team is in the same division with every other conference member at least once every 2-3 years. 

3. Instead of conference championship games, the first Saturday of December will showcase the first week of the 16-team playoff, composed of the eight highest-ranked division champions against the next eight highest-ranked teams, whether they are independents, 2nd-place division finishers, or additional division champions. 

4. Round-robin play makes it easier to judge everyone's strength of schedule and the overall strength of each division. This will help in determining seeding.

5. All games will be on the home field of the higher-seeded team. Although the eight highest-ranked conference champions automatically qualify, they won't necessarily be the eight highest-seeded teams if other teams have better records and strengths of schedule. The highest seed will always play the lowest seed. This will also be true for quarterfinal games (2nd Saturday of December) and semifinal games (3rd Saturday).

6. In bowl games, the first-round losers will face the eight best teams left out of the playoffs. Each quarterfinal loser will play another quarterfinal loser, and the semifinal losers will play each other.

7. The two bowls between quarterfinal losers, the bowl between semifinal losers, and the national championship bowl will be played on New Year's Day.     

This will have the advantage of saving fan bases the expense of multiple road trips to watch playoff games. It will create greater uniformity in assessing schedule strength and make seeding fairer. And, it will be more fun to watch the national championship be decided while the Christmas decorations are still up.

Just as it should be.

  

James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! Contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work at jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.