New Format for CFP Coming in 2026?

[Mic]

Apparently, the heads of the CFP committee voted on Friday to expand the CFP to 12 teams (good!).  The format will be defined by the "highest ranked" conference winners (6) and 6 more "at large" teams, based on final season rankings (and other esoteric mystery).

 

OK, fine.  Then, for this to work the NCAA has to stop major CFP teams (like Miami, for example) playing completely inferior teams and demand the 'Big Power 5" teams (and others) start scheduling appropriate, quality opponents.  If this much emphasis on rankings is to work, team schedules have to start being more equal across the board.

 

Taking Miami U. as our example.  Tomorrow UM plays Bethune-Cookman Univ.  Not to disrespect B-C, (by all accounts a fine school) they have a total student body of about the same size as the faculty at Miami!   And Miami has about 6x the student body enrollment as B-C, meaning (probably) 20x the football budget at least!

 

To be fair, Oregon plays Eastern Washington next weekend.  But EWU is about 3x bigger than Bethune-Cookman, with a decent football program.  All one has to do to see what this means is to check out the betting odds.  Miami is -45 of B-C.  (And that's being generous).  O will likely be < -20 over EWU, at best, depending on tomorrow's outcome.

 

Fans are going to have to demand this scheduling bias get cleaned up.  We can't keep justifying it by claiming this "helps the B-C's of the football world".  Not if this new College Football Playoff system is going to work the way it should, with rankings based on meaningful win/loss records and strengths of schedule.  

 

What do you guys think about all this?

[Charles Fischer]

Agreed.  And if a conference wants to be in the Playoffs, then we all have to uniformly agree to the same number of conference games.  We all have eight, or we all have nine, but the Pac-12 should not longer operate at a disadvantage, IMHO.