Step aside, "They ain't played nobody." Say hello to, "They ain't played enough."
Florida's loss to the worst LSU team of the century perhaps took some of the bite out of the upcoming yelling, but as ESPN's Heather Dinich wrote on Saturday night, we are embarking on a week of politicking. A chunk of college football's power brokers will lobby against the inclusion of a potentially unbeaten Ohio State in the College Football Playoff, not because the Buckeyes aren't top-four worthy on the field, but because they'll get to the finish line having played only six games at most.
We know Ohio State's good enough. One can pretty much guarantee that oddsmakers would make the Buckeyes marginal favorites over Notre Dame, healthy favorites over either Florida, Texas A&M, or any of the other teams just below them in the CFP rankings, and about a pick 'em at worst against Clemson. Plus, looking at last week's CFP rankings, they have as many wins against top-15 teams -- one, over Indiana -- as Clemson, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Florida or Iowa State do.
No, the case against Ohio State is derived solely from quantity. The Big Ten canceled its fall season in August because of the spread of the coronavirus, under the assumption that the rest of the Power 5 conferences would eventually follow suit. When that didn't happen, the league patched together a delayed eight-week sprint with none of the margin for error boasted by conferences that had started in September. Ohio State had to cancel one game (against Illinois) for COVID-19 reasons, and two opponents (Maryland and Michigan) had to cancel others, so the Buckeyes have played only five games.
We probably wouldn't have learned a single damn thing from those contests, mind you. Opening lines had the Buckeyes favored by at least 25 points in all three games, and at most there would have been about a 10% chance of the Buckeyes finishing anything worse than 3-0 in these games. But when SEC and ACC power brokers suggest that more games mean more opportunities to lose, they are technically correct. Ohio State's spot in the CFP top four -- following a Saturday win over Northwestern, that is -- isn't as open-and-shut as it could or should be.
This scenario is, of course, exactly what many foresaw months ago.
In a frustrating, shrunken season played in the middle of the most deadly pandemic in a century, with constant rescheduling, cancellations and problematic depth charts, the thought that we potentially wouldn't be able to figure out the four teams most deserving* of a title shot was a strong one. Amid calls for a temporary expansion of the field, those in charge of the College Football Playoff said, essentially, "We'll think about it. No."
(*Here's your periodic reminder that no matter how many times the committee uses the word "best," it is choosing the most deserving teams. Punishing Ohio State for its sample size would prove that as much as anything ever could.)
Those who run the CFP likely suspect what we all believe: As soon as the public gets a taste of an eight-team playoff, it's going to be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. No matter what kind of "OK, but only this once!" disclaimer was applied, the event would be even more of a rousing success than the current iteration. Despite harrumphs from traditionalists, public reaction to such an event would be overwhelmingly positive. In most industries, that would be considered a good thing.
I am a traditionalist in plenty of ways. I love tailgating and missed it dearly this fall. I love the extra weight that a big game carries compared to other sports. I love every single bowl game and wish we had 65 of them. I love the rivalry games that have defined the sport through the years, especially now that we know what it's like to miss out on some of them.
Despite this, the claims about how an expanded playoff -- especially one expanded to only eight teams -- would ruin the integrity of the season, would dampen the "every game matters" ethos that we all pretend this sport projects, have never rung true to me.
"Every game matters" has always felt more true than it actually is. For one thing, we've always given out mulligans. Of the past 50 seasons, almost half (23) have featured a national champion or co-champion with a blemish on its record. In the four-team playoff era, only nine of the 24 teams involved were unbeaten. Those blemishes didn't end up "mattering" in the end -- the teams that suffered them got a mulligan and took advantage.
Beyond that, for half of the entire Football Bowl Subdivision -- Group of 5 teams -- no games matter. This is one of the only sports in the world in which half of the teams begin the year with no path to a national title shot. Field the best team in your school's history, dominate and go unbeaten, basically becoming the football version of the Butler team that nearly won the NCAA basketball tournament a few years ago? Congratulations on your Fiesta Bowl bid against the No. 11 team in the country.
(That's as long as another G5 didn't also go unbeaten against a better schedule, anyway. Coastal Carolina, the darling of 2020, will need some breaks to earn a big bowl, and it would probably come at the expense of fellow G5 Cincinnati.)
One more thing: The doomsday scenario that expansion detractors always have in their heads -- "If you do that, some three-loss team is going to win the national title!!!" -- would almost never come anywhere close to fruition.
Let's pretend that, instead of the four-teamer the CFP instituted in 2014, we had an eight-teamer with five power conference champions, a Group of 5 representative and two at-large bids (and quarterfinal games at home stadiums). Here are the fields such a playoff would have produced.
2014: 8 Boise State (11-2) at 1 Alabama (12-1), 5 Baylor (11-1) at 4 Ohio State (12-1), 6 TCU (11-1) at 3 Florida State (13-0), 7 Mississippi State (10-2) at 2 Oregon (12-1)
2015: 8 Houston (12-1) at 1 Clemson (13-0), 5 Iowa (12-1) at 4 Oklahoma (11-1), 6 Stanford (11-2) at 3 Michigan State (12-1), 7 Ohio State (11-1) at 2 Alabama (12-1)
2016: 8 WMU (13-0) at 1 Alabama (13-0), 5 Penn State (11-2) at 4 Washington (12-1), 6 Michigan (10-2) at 3 Ohio State (11-1), 7 Oklahoma (10-2) at 2 Clemson (12-1)
2017: 8 UCF (12-0) at 1 Clemson (12-1), 5 Ohio State (11-2) at 4 Alabama (11-1), 6 Wisconsin (12-1) at 3 Georgia (12-1), 7 USC (11-2) at 2 Oklahoma (12-1)
2018: 8 Washington (10-3) at 1 Alabama (13-0), 5 Georgia (11-2) at 4 Oklahoma (12-1), 6 Ohio State (12-1) at 3 Notre Dame (12-0), 7 UCF (12-0) at 2 Clemson (13-0)
2019: 8 Memphis (12-1) at 1 LSU (13-0), 5 Georgia (11-2) at 4 Oklahoma (12-1), 6 Oregon (11-2) at 3 Clemson (13-0), 7 Baylor (11-2) at 2 Ohio State (13-0)
Average losses per team in the current four-team format: 0.6.
Average losses per team in an eight-team format: 1.0.
Three-loss teams making the field in six years: one. And that team would have drawn Bama in the quarterfinals.
With an eight-teamer, we hand out a couple of more mulligans per year and we provide a path to a national title for a much larger subsection of this subdivision. (We evidently create a permanent Georgia-Oklahoma rivalry, too, which is an added bonus.) And if we choose, we can keep the bowl structure as is -- the semifinals could still be held in the current bowl rotation, and the quarterfinal losers could fill slots in New Year's Six bowls. Bowls were, after all, originally designed as exhibitions to celebrate excellent seasons, and serving as a quarterfinal consolation round certainly qualifies.
Tradition is incredible, and college football has plenty of it. But evolution is also good. An eight-team playoff would make more games matter, create a level of fairness this sport has never even pretended to aspire to and add four extra "top-10 vs. top-10" matchups in which to revel in mid-December.
And in the case of a pandemic that wrecks all schedules and creates the most discombobulated season we've ever seen, it could give us a bit more margin for error in determining that the teams deserving of a title shot actually get into the field.
If this feels like too big a move, let's reframe the conversation a bit.
An expanded 2020 College Football Playoff
In politics, the "Overton window" is a term that describes the range of policies that are regarded as publicly acceptable. Over time, the window can shift based on cultural changes or the work of politicians and others to reframe what is deemed acceptable.
I should probably thank the ACC Network's Mark Richt, then, for doing his part to shift the conversation in such a way that an eight-team playoff seems all the more acceptable.
The Mark Richt plan
Here is a thought! 32 Team FBS Playoff. Every game is a bowl. 31 games in all. Makes all bowls meaningful. Makes all post season games meaningful. Allows Group of 5 schools to have a shot! Less opting out. Share revenue with all schools and the student athletes.
— Mark Richt (@MarkRicht) December 10, 2020
Never mind a small expansion, the former Georgia and Miami coach says, let's blaze our way straight to 32 teams!
Based on my rough guess of how the CFP rankings might turn out (and who might win conference title games), we would end up with something like this for such an event:
32 Marshall (Conference USA champ) at 1 Alabama (SEC champ)
17 Miami at 16 Iowa
24 Buffalo (MAC champ) at 9 Iowa State
25 Tulsa at 8 Georgia
21 NC State at 12 Indiana
28 Liberty at 5 Texas A&M
20 Oklahoma State at 13 Coastal Carolina (Sun Belt champ)
29 Oregon at 4 Notre Dame
22 Auburn at 11 USC (Pac-12 champ)
27 Colorado at 6 Oklahoma (Big 12 champ)
19 Texas at 14 North Carolina
30 Missouri at 3 Ohio State (Big Ten champ)
23 Louisiana at 10 Florida
26 Washington at 7 Cincinnati (AAC champ)
18 BYU at 15 Northwestern
31 Boise State (MWC champ) at 2 Clemson (ACC champ)
In one way, this is an unexpectedly elegant idea -- why worry about years and years of bracket creep when you can just blow it out to the max in one fell swoop?
You can, however, find just a few teams on that list that maybe, kind of, sort of haven't earned a shot at a national title.
A half-Richt
Now that Richt has sent the Overton window flying off a cliff, let's scale it back a bit. How would you feel about a 16-team playoff? Perhaps one that allows for any conference champion ranked in the top 24 to make the field?
16 Buffalo at 1 Alabama
9 Iowa State at 8 Georgia
12 Indiana at 5 Texas A&M
13 Coastal Carolina at 4 Notre Dame
11 USC at 6 Oklahoma
14 North Carolina at 3 Ohio State
10 Florida at 7 Cincinnati
15 Northwestern at 2 Clemson
Jaret Patterson gets a showcase game against Bama, Sam Howell and UNC test the hell out of a potentially vulnerable Ohio State secondary, Coastal Carolina and Notre Dame run the ball a combined 80 times, and Florida's loss to LSU means a trip to Nippert Stadium.
This seems a little more under control, but we're still adding up to four games to the docket for the eventual champion (two more than the current system), however, which, even in a non-pandemic year, seems like a lot*. But with the window shifted, eight seems downright conservative and reasonable.
(*Before any permanent CFP expansion happens, we absolutely must come up with satisfactory athlete-related issues like fair name, image and likeness legislation, a plan for long-term athlete health care, etc. Asking them to play 16-17 games in a season with the current structure of benefits is a non-starter.)
The eight-teamer
Going by what SP+ projects for this coming week's results -- Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma and USC winning their conference championships, respectively, and Texas A&M winning at Tennessee -- and assuming all games actually get played, here's what an eight-team playoff format would probably produce in 2020:
8 USC (6-0) at 1 Alabama (11-0)
5 Texas A&M (8-1) at 4 Notre Dame (10-1)
6 Oklahoma (8-2) at 3 Ohio State (6-0)
7 Cincinnati (9-0) at 2 Clemson (10-1)
Every P5 unbeaten team is accounted for. We get the USC-Bama game we were supposed to get on Labor Day weekend. We get Notre Dame hosting what amounts to Notre Dame Lite this year in a run-heavy, field-position reliant game. We get a smoking hot Oklahoma, with its resurgent defense, taking on an Ohio State team with as much soon-to-be NFL talent on its roster as anyone. We get a dominant-to-date Cincy team testing itself against one of college football's standard bearers.
Even if the top four seeds all win, we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're the four most deserving teams. And then we go about our business -- Alabama vs. Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, Ohio State vs. Clemson in the Rose and, if my consolation games idea takes hold, something like USC vs. Cincinnati in the Fiesta Bowl and Oklahoma vs. A&M in the Peach.
In a time of unprecedented financial strain and scheduling uncertainty, amid a growing sense that the haves are spacing themselves further and further away from the have-nots, college football had in its capacity a way to address these issues while assuring the most palatable championship path in this particularly strained season. It chose not to. I hope it won't wait too much longer. A sport that proudly, defiantly resists progress as much as humanly possible could stand to evolve a little more quickly.