How to fix College Football’s Playoff Problem

Post date: Feb 13, 2018 3:56:7 PM

Published 2/13/18

By Will Fitton

JOHNTEX/ WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Texas Longhorns make their entrance onto the field on opening day. As the college championship season came to a close, the dynamic of the teams drastically changed.

On Monday, Jan. 8, the Alabama Crimson Tide defeated the Georgia Bulldogs in the annual College Football Playoff National Championship Game. As the name suggests, this game was the largest, most important college football game of the season. It was the culmination of a long year of football, with teams all around the country competing for a spot in the four team College Football Playoff.

But there is a problem with this system. Unless your team is a top five school, churning out win after dominant win throughout the season, you have no chance of rooting for your hometown college in the playoffs. But that isn’t too bad. After all, shouldn’t only the best of the best be able to compete for a title? To answer that, let’s take a look at the University of Central Florida.

The UCF Golden Knights went 13-0 this season, winning their conference and upsetting #7 ranked Auburn in the Peach Bowl. However, before taking part in the Peach Bowl at the end of the regular season, the Golden Knights were not even close to being in contention for the national championship. UCF fans and Floridians alike were outraged that the team was stripped of a chance to compete for the title, to the point that Florida Governor Rick Scott declared them National Champions.

This isn’t the first time a team has claimed a national title they didn’t officially win. Claiming disputed titles has been a tradition of college football for a long time, as the sport had no official title certification for 130 years. There is no rule against it; UCF will face no fine or punishment from the NCAA.

UCF’s championship claim should be taken with a grain of salt, but their example is one that serves as evidence in the ongoing “court case” of college football’s playoff system. The system, by all measures, is broken. It’s time college football tried something different.

In every major U.S. professional sport, the playoffs are determined by team’s records throughout the season. That system won’t work for college football. There are too many teams which don’t play each other. Right now, college football teams are ranked based on their overall performance, taking into account the strength of their opponents, as well as whether a game is on the road or at home. However, teams are admitted into the Playoff purely based on ranking (#1 gets the first seed, and so on until the fourth seed) which differs from basketball.

In basketball, a committee selects teams’ seeds, which take into account not only a team’s end of season rank, but also their overall performance throughout the year. As any basketball fan knows, March Madness has four divisions in their bracket with four “1 seeds”, four “2 seeds” and so on until the four 16 seeds. Under basketball’s selection system, the team ranked #5 could be awarded a 1 seed, and the #4 team a two seed. Applying this to football would mean the #4 team, which this year was Alabama, could be given the third seed out of four total.

Though this would help college football create a more balanced playoff, the number one thing that must be done is to expand the playoff to eight teams. An eight-team playoff would give a chance for a team ranked #9 who beat team #8 during the season to get in the playoff. For example, Penn State is ranked #9 at the end of the season after a late loss to a smaller school. But #8 is Texas, a team whom Penn State beat during the season. Using a selection system would allow Penn State to compete in the playoff because they defeated the team ranked above them, a situation that is common in college basketball.

In addition to opening the field to more schools, giving eight, or even ten teams a shot would create more games and more revenue for the NCAA. Plus, more football. Everyone wins .

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