How to Fix the College Football Playoff

The College Football Playoff in its short existence has been scrutinized by many fans. The selection process is flawed in multiple ways. Not having teams that clearly should be in over certain teams *cough* Ohio State being in over Penn State *cough* has hurt the credibility of the selection process. To me and many other fans, the way they go about picking the teams should be changed. There is one way that stands out to countless NCAA football fans, and that is to expand it to eight teams.

The first year of the Playoff was probably the best selections made for the top four. 1. Alabama, 2. Oregon, 3. Florida State, and 4. Ohio State.  Alabama was Alabama, and at the time looked like the best team in the country, with only one loss to the then #11 Ole Miss in a true road game in Oxford. Oregon had the clear cut Heisman winner Marcus Mariota. Florida State had run the table in the ACC going undefeated and Ohio State had an early season loss to Virginia Tech, that at the time looked like it knocked them out of the Playoff , but they fought back to run the BIG 10 and win it.

The teams sitting outside were no slouch teams though. Baylor and TCU sitting outside as Co-Big 12 Champions followed by Mississippi State and Michigan State.  TCU’s lone loss was to Baylor, and Baylor lost to West Virginia on the road. Michigan State lost to powerhouse Oregon and BIG 10 champion Ohio State. The thing with the teams sitting on the outside was they did not have a true conference championship to their resume. The BIG 12 did not have a championship game until this season.

Looking to the next year, the College Football Playoff featured all champions again, if you count Oklahoma winning the BIG 12 regular season championship. Clemson won the ACC, Alabama the SEC, and Michigan State the BIG 10. Sitting outside was Iowa who lost in the BIG 10 title game , the two loss PAC-12 champs Stanford , Ohio State, and Notre Dame.  But if Stanford won the PAC-12 why are they not in ?

It gets even worse the next year.  At 1, 2, and 4 respectively are the SEC, ACC, and PAC-12 champions of Alabama, Clemson and Washington. At 3 was none other than 2nd in the BIG 10 East Ohio State, while the BIG 10 champion, Penn State, was sitting at 5. This was a huge outrage across the nation when the news broke. I am an Ohio State fan and even I was shocked! Let’s not forget who Ohio State lost to that season … oh yeah it was Penn State. If we wanted to go further, Michigan was at 6 while BIG 12 champion (regular season) Oklahoma was at 7.

People do not like the fact that their team can achieve a lot and still not get into the playoff, especially in the case of Penn State last year. They beat Ohio State head to head and win arguably the toughest conference in the nation. The only knock against PSU was that their out of conference schedule was weak and they got blown out by Michigan, which is ultimately what the committee looked at. But beating Ohio State and destroying Wisconsin in the BIG 10 championship game should have been enough to get them in. In my opinion, the NCAA just wants the money and puts the bigger teams in. Like I said before, I support Ohio State and they got in off pure bias last year.

So an idea I came up with is to have all the power 5 Champions in no matter what. As bad of a loss they have, they should be in. Then the committee can pick the other 3 Wild Card teams based off  their resume from that season season. The conference champions get the 1-5 seeds based off their strength of schedule and the rest of the resume. With 6-8 consisting of the three Wild Card teams. Then the classic 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc. with the remaining highest seed teams playing the lowest seeded teams. This way the programs who earn their conference championships are rewarded and the teams who do not accomplish this feat are put at a disadvantage with the rest of the field to choose from, and the NCAA can still make their money by having more playoff games, more big market teams, and more viewers. I do not see a change coming in the near future with them making the move to that system only 4 years ago, but I feel like all sides would be happy with this system.

Written by Mason Wilkins