The 12-Team College Football Playoff Could Hardly Have Asked for a Better Debut Season
Despite a season of upheaval, the selection process may come together (relatively) smoothly for the College Football Playoff committee.
This hasn’t exactly been the most predictable of college football seasons. Between down years from the likes of Florida State and Michigan1 to unexpectedly great years from SMU, Indiana and UNLV, the top of the polls looks like a scramble of the usual blue bloods and some interesting party-crashers.
But what was looking like a logjam a month ago might end up having sorted itself out perfectly in the new 12-team College Football Playoff’s first test.
To judge this, let’s turn our attention back to the tiers of performance we used to categorize teams earlier this season, based on what traditionally (since 1998)2 earned you a ranking among the Top 12 in the final pre-bowl AP or CFP rankings before the playoff expanded:
As we can see, there is a clear preference to make the Top 12 for undefeated and 1-loss teams from power conferences, followed by undefeated teams from non-power conferences and 2-loss teams from power conferences — all categories that send teams to the Top 12 more than 79 percent of the time. The rest are traditionally on the outside looking in, barring seasons of particular chaos or other strange circumstances.
This season, we currently have exactly one Tier 1 team (undefeated Oregon), five Tier 2 teams (one-loss Texas, Penn State, SMU, Notre Dame and Indiana), zero Tier 3 teams (no minor-conference teams are undefeated), seven Tier 4 teams (two-loss Georgia, Arizona State, Iowa State, Tennessee, Ohio State, Miami and BYU), eight Tier 5 teams (three-loss Clemson, Alabama, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri and Syracuse) and a couple of Tier 6 teams (Boise State and Army).
Again, we currently count 13 teams in the zone that usually gets a team into what is now playoff territory. But of course, not all of those teams can win next week, which means teams will be further separated into categories by Sunday. For instance, the Arizona State-Iowa State loser will drop to Tier 5, as will potentially Georgia if the Dawgs lose the SEC title to Texas. Most likely, we will have just 11 teams in Tiers 1-4 by Sunday — there’s a 57 percent chance of it, in fact, based on the Vegas lines for each of the Championship Week contests.
Crucially, one other huge factor to consider is the fifth guaranteed playoff spot for the top non-power conference champion, which would almost certainly be Boise State if the Broncos beat UNLV for the Mountain West title (but could be the Rebels if they win — or maybe even Army, though that’s less likely). While it would be from a tier that traditionally does not make the Top 12 in a crowded field like 2024’s, that team will leapfrog everyone in the tiers above them to be guaranteed a playoff spot because of the new CFP format rules.
If there are 11 teams in Tiers 1-4, however, adding a single non-power champ to the mix would still seem to resolve most of the potential controversies for the CFP committee. The only wild-card would be Georgia, who would be a 3-loss Power team if they lose the SEC title… but who currently rank No. 5 in the AP poll and have a 99.4 percent playoff probability per ESPN. So it may be fair to assume the Bulldogs would violate the tier system and become one of those 16.8 percent of Tier 5 teams who make the final Top 12, even if they lose the SEC.
Now, if Georgia wins, we would have 12 teams in Tiers 1-4, definitely leaving a 2-loss Power team out in the cold — most likely either BYU or Miami — though again, that dilemma may happen anyway based on our UGA logic above. Perhaps the more chaotic situation also sees Clemson win the ACC over SMU, guaranteeing another playoff spot for a Tier 5 team (as well as opening up the question of the Mustangs’ fate as a 2-loss Power team). Penn State losing the Big Ten and becoming a 2-loss Power school also tosses them into the blender of Tier 4 teams that might be cut out to make room for UGA, however unlikely their exclusion might be.
And the playoff being the playoff, there is always the chance that the committee goes rogue and votes in an additional 3-loss SEC team in spite of the tiers, just because. (Don’t look now, but both Alabama and South Carolina have greater than 20 percent playoff odds in ESPN’s forecast model.) But that would open up another layer of headaches that I’m not sure they want to invite if they can help it.
Because I am sadistic, I love CFP chaos and write about the scenarios that help unleash it every year. But this year appears to have fewer options to create that crazy uncertainty than in many seasons of the four-team playoff era.
It may be a stroke of beginner’s luck that the traditional tier-based way of looking at college football teams yields almost exactly 12 clear playoff choices — granted, with some controversy still likely to happen around seeding or at the margin of the Top 12, especially after factoring in that fifth conference-title autobid. But 12 teams also seems to be squarely in a sweet spot of sorts for the typical college football season.
The average season from 1998-20233 contained 12.1 teams in Tiers 1-4, which aligns almost perfectly with a 12-team playoff system that minimizes false negatives — deserving teams that are left out of the bracket. Additionally, previous research by myself and others found that a 12-team playoff is right in the zone of balance between including the best team and not overburdening the best team with chances to be upset.
In other words, it might not be a coincidence that the debut year of the 12-team playoff is providing a relatively clear picture of who might be in or out — or at least what each team needs to do on the field — going into the conference championships. The truth is, we usually have around 12 deserving teams when the smoke clears on championship week, and this year probably won’t be much of an exception.4
Filed under: College Football, Football Bytes
Until they beat Ohio State on Saturday, that is!
Excluding 2020, when schedules were shortened and heavily modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Again, excluding 2020.
Now, check with me next year when there’s total carnage in the rankings and complete uncertainty around who might make the Top 12!
A quick follow-up here. I was listening to a Chuck Klosterman interview today and he made a powerful connection.
He said that since the CFB went to the 12 team playoff, nobody cares anymore about which team was ultimately crowned the best team - unlike the BCS and the four team playoff. Now, it's all about just getting in, and it has morphed into - as I have pointed out here and elsewhere - a pure television show and nothing more. Nobody really cares about the ultimate winner any longer or whether the process is legitimate to that end.
He suggested the media and fan perception now is to no longer view the playoffs as a proxy for excellence, just one for entertainment value. It's why there's so much concern over the match-ups but not outcomes.
It struck me that this explains why there is sorelatively little anger over picking SMU over Alabama. The public is tired of Bama as an entertainment product, even if they agree they are a more deserving team in the 12. He also agreed that the Big 10 and SEC will form their own tournament in 4-5 years and render this one irrelevant.
Adjectives are funny things..."better." Things that make you go hmmm.
It depends on who you ask and where you sit. If you are firmly sitting on a couch with chip dip and wishing Jolt Cola were still around, maybe. Maybe watching the likes of a bunch of superfluous suboptimal programs lose in early rounds offers some faux excitement and entertainment value. A successor to the 70s ABCs' Superstars competition in cold wintry January perhaps.
Bread and circuses do have their place I suppose.
But I would use a different adjective here - perhaps "ominous." When this unsubstantiated randomness to nowhere shakes out and the coffee cups and ashtrays of the Selection Committee are being emptied, at least 3-4 Big 10 and SEC teams will be pissed - justifiably or unjustifiably. Pissed that the likes of SMU, Boise State, Miami, Clemson etc. will be creating all that supposed excitement while they watch from their couches.
How quickly will there be seething phone calls to Sankey and Petitti demanding major changes and how they need to understand who has the power in college football? See, it’s one thing to debate who is truly elite each year – one of the four best teams. It’s another thing to tell South Carolina that they aren’t one of the top 12 but Boise State is.
Uh-uh.
The next steps seem obvious. First, CFB will get rid of automatic bids and reintroduce the computer to rank the teams from 1-12 to alleviate some of the upset and likely expand the number of Big 10 and SEC teams in the mix. Perhaps they expand again. That will work for a bit - until the two conferences expand to carve up the ACC in a few years. Then, they will announce their own playoff - Big 10 v. SEC.
The current charade will remain in place for the "other" programs on the outside looking in for a while. Sorta like the NIT Tournament used to be relative to March Madness. If I were a fan of the current setup, I would be hoping hard for some big upsets this year, or I might be reaching for a different adjective in just a few years when looking back – “shortsighted” comes to mind.