Lessons from the First 12-Team CFP Selection

College football’s first 12-team playoff (CFP) will kick off this week after the 12 lucky teams were inked into the postseason bracket last weekend. The most open and inclusive format to date that college football has adopted was not without fanfare and debate in its inaugural season. It left Alabama out of the postseason in their first season without Nick Saban in favor of the resurgent SMU Mustangs for the final at-large bid. It wasn’t the bottom of the bracket that had everybody talking, though.

Throughout Selection Sunday, the structure of the first-round byes was almost universally condemned. When Mountain West champion Boise State and Big 12 champion Arizona State received the third and fourth seeds, respectively, it created much harder paths to Atlanta for the higher-ranked yet lower-seeded teams like Texas and Penn State.

The first iteration of this new format had many of the same ills that the previous system did and in no way quieted the voices clamoring for change. In all likelihood, there will be more rapid changes like there have been for the last decade. Some of these changes were exemplified by Selection Sunday, and some are already in motion. Either way, there is much to learn from the first 12-team CFP before any games kick-off.

Controversy Remains in College Football After CFP Selection

After conference championship games wrapped up on Saturday night, the debate heading into Sunday morning was whether SMU or Alabama should receive the final at-large bid into the 12-team CFP. Like clockwork, fans shilled for their teams and conferences, and everyone looked hard at the committee to see what they valued more. Why do they value certain things more, how have they voted all year, and how do they think it should turn out?

This type of commotion has been a mainstay in college football during the CFP era and will likely continue into the future. This year, however, the changes to the postseason format introduce a new wrinkle to the proceedings and create new discussions about the landscape of college football.

The final rankings were revealed just before 1 pm EST, and the field was set for the CFP. The Big Ten champion Oregon Ducks and SEC champion Georgia Bulldogs received the top two seeds, and a slew of other teams from their conferences filled the rest of the at-large pool, with the exception of Notre Dame and the controversial SMU Mustangs. The first year of this system leaves different parties with different responses to the field.

The SEC is not as overwhelming as it portended to be before the season and up until the final weeks of the regular season. Losses by top-ranked teams against inferior opponents dragged some potential playoff teams out of consideration and caused headaches for others. Regardless, the SEC did not get its way, with Alabama being left out in favor of an 11-win SMU.

Selection Sunday for First 12-Team CFP

When SMU received the final spot, the debate wasn’t over. It merely shifted towards a new conversation about the structure of the college football postseason in general. The 12-team playoff was supposed to ward off the problems college football has been facing for years. The Alabama-SMU conversation, while not as intense as the one 12 months ago with the Crimson Tide and Florida State, proved that the new format did not eliminate that aspect of the postseason. This new system was supposed to alleviate other issues as well.

There aren’t enough games that matter, there aren’t enough teams capable of competing, and the conferences are ruining the playoff.  This iteration of the CFP was intended to make heaps of money for the sport and respond to the other changes that had been developing. Teams are leaning heavily into the NIL and transfer portal space and the drastic conference realignment, which has altered the landscape almost beyond recognition, making the college football enterprise cloudier and unclear.

This has not been the result for the CFP. The changes that are happening have such rapid ramifications that these responses to the changing climate often miss their target. Even with this being the first season of the new CFP, its design was formulated when the PAC-12 was still a major player. That’s how fast things are moving in college football these days. There are some lessons to take away from the actual rankings and lessons for what is coming down the pike.

Lessons from Selection Sunday

With the first group of teams set to take the field and the first committee tasked with devising a 12-team playoff in the rearview mirror, we can take some things away from the process. Conference championship games are extra. Committee chair Warde Manuel repeatedly said that conference championship games were merely “another data point to evaluate’ for teams playing the day before the final rankings.

Texas and Penn State lost but remained in the top four, and SMU stayed ahead of an idle Alabama after losing on a last-second field goal to Clemson. With plenty of murmuring about the importance and relevance of conference championship games, this committee showed that they still have value as an emblem of achievement for a great regular season.

The lines between the ‘Power 4’ conferences and ‘Group of 5’ conferences are becoming more blurred. One of the positives about the transfer portal and NIL is that more talent is on the field now than ever before. The ACC champion Clemson is the last seed in the field, and the Mountain West champion Boise State is sitting pretty in the third slot after only losing one game all year, which was by three points to the number one team in the country, the Oregon Ducks.

The inclusion of more teams from more backgrounds is good for the sport’s fanbases, and the treatment of these lesser-known teams was a healthy symptom of the new format. This means that the bigger brands and fan bases do not have as much of an advantage as some feared leading up to this postseason.

Looking Ahead

These big brands and large fan bases will not take this lying down, though. The NCAA’s fragile standing and its hold on intercollegiate athletics in general in recent years have opened the door for sweeping changes, and if the state of college football looks different now, just wait a couple more years. The SEC and Big Ten have seven teams in this year’s field.

Soon, it will be all of them. With NIL and the professionalization of college football, the sport will look more like the NFL and pro football. In the short term, the CFP will expand to 14 teams and make the SEC and Big Ten champions the top two seeds and the only teams with a first-round bye. The byes for the other conference champions will be eradicated. Boise State and Arizona State having byes is cute this year, but the people who are pulling the strings in college football will not put up with it again.

Eventually, the CFP will look exactly like the NFL postseason, and even then, it won’t be enough to stave off the most massive change to date. The SEC and the Big Ten will break away from the rest of college football and have their own entity. The incentives for a power conference breakaway are just too enticing, and the volatility of the current system is too unpredictable to keep the conferences happy with the status quo.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti will fast-track this idea and make it a reality before we know it. It may sound far-fetched now, but this will become one of the more important conversations in the sport over the next couple of years, and it has already begun in public this week.

When the North Carolina Tar Heels signed Bill Belichick as their next head coach, this idea was front and center in their reasoning. North Carolina football has been an afterthought for a long time, but as the landscape shifts, the university’s top decision-makers are starting to see where the athletics programs have to go.

University trustee Dave Boliek commented publicly on UNC’s reasoning for the hire and what they want to see happen with their standing in college athletics: “It’s not something you can change with the snap of a finger. It’s something we’ve got to be cognizant of. We can’t sit back and cross our fingers and pray for pennies from heaven and think everything is going to work out. We have to actively pursue what’s in the best interests of Carolina athletics.”

The first CFP is slated to start in a couple of days, and for fans everywhere, it should be a very entertaining month of college football. It is the first of its kind and may be closer to being the last than we would like to admit. Wholesale changes will continue to be made, so do not get attached to anything you are accustomed to or things you thought you knew about the sport. The new format is a shake-up to the system that will grab headlines along the road to Atlanta as these 12 teams compete for a national championship. But the bigger story is what is looming in the distance.

Final Thoughts

I never agreed with the 12-team format. The fact that college football was different from the NFL was never a bug to me but a feature. I was a fan of expanding the playoff from four teams, but only to six. Look at the graphics since the inception of the CFP in 2014. Four teams in the playoff, and two teams are eliminated immediately? Just flip the graphic and have the top two teams get a bye, with a pair of two-game college football weekends to determine the teams who will play in the National Championship game.

As it is, I believe the CFP is looking at two changes instantly and perhaps wholesale changes in the long run. They will go full NFL postseason with 14 teams and two byes, almost assuredly reserved for the Big Ten and SEC champions. And they will eliminate the preferential treatment for conference champions not from those conferences. So, the likes of Boise State and Arizona State will be lower in the field in future years.

That is, until the wholesale changes come down the tracks. The SEC and the Big Ten will split from the weakened rule of the NCAA and form their version of college football. With the advent of NIL and the transfer portal, these conferences are basically professional football organizations already, and I believe they will lean into that heavily sooner rather than later. Teams like Clemson, Notre Dame, Florida State, and even North Carolina will join their respective power conference and break from the rest of college football to have their own entity.

70 years after the AFL and NFL, college football will look eerily similar to the Big Ten and SEC. This could’ve been avoided if people in power had more foresight. But I believe it to be as good as done. No 12-team CFP will put a band-aid on the wounds that ail the changing college football landscape.