CFP Quarterfinals Results Reinforce The Push For Playoff Expansion
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Last season marked the first year of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. This was always the first step in expanding field to 16 teams down the road, but based on the results of the last two years in the quarterfinals, the need to expand to 16 teams grown exponentially. The playoff format, big picture, had remained the same from 2024 to 2025 with the top four teams in the field all receiving an automatic bye in the first round.
Last season, it was the four highest ranked conference champions while this season, it was just the four highest seeded teams. The cause for change is immediate; seven of the eight teams in the last two years in the College Football Playoffs that received the first round bye have lost in the quarterfinals.
In 2024, No. 1 Oregon who won the Big Ten, No. 2 Georgia who won the SEC, No. 3 Boise State who won the Mountain West and No. 4 Arizona State who won the Big 12 all received automatic byes in the first round due to being the highest ranked conference champions in the field. The Ducks took on the 8th seeded Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl and lost 41-21. The Bulldogs took on the 7th seeded Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the Sugar Bowl and lost 23-10.
The Broncos took on the 6th seeded Penn State Nittany Lions in the Fiesta Bowl and lost 31-14 while the Sun Devils took on the 5th seeded Texas Longhorns in the Peach Bowl and lost 39-31 in overtime. The Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl was the most competitive of the quarterfinal games by a wide margin. All other teams who received the first round bye lost by double digits.
Now, after watching last season's results, there was a level of understanding as to why the four teams who received byes lost in the first round. Due to the format of the seeding, the four teams that received byes were not the four best teams in the country. You could argue that for Oregon and Georgia, but that task became much more difficult when discussing Boise State and Arizona State. The No. 1 and No. 2 seeded teams lost to two teams in Notre Dame and Ohio State that eventually played for the National Championship.
This season, with straight seeding, that trend continued with three of the four teams who received byes losing in the quarterfinals of the playoffs. No. 10 Miami took down No. 2 Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl on New Years Eve 24-14. No. 5 Oregon shut out No. 4 Texas Tech 23-0 in the Orange Bowl and No. 6 Ole Miss took down No. 3 Georgia 39-34 in a thriller last night in the Sugar Bowl. The lone exception was No. 1 Indiana dominating No. 9 Alabama in the Rose Bowl 38-3. The one outlier for this argument involved a team in the Crimson Tide that shouldn't have made the playoffs in the first place.
So what am I getting at here? Teams work tirelessly throughout the regular season to earn a bye in the first round of the playoffs. But based on the outcomes in the last two seasons, it's worked out more as a punishment than a reward. They don't get the opportunity to play on their home turf like the No. 5 through No. 8 seed get to do and they have almost an entire month off of football before they get to play their first game while teams who played in the first round have already worked out some kinks a week and a half prior to the quarterfinal matchups.
The time to expand to 16 teams in the College Football Playoffs is now and it needs to be formatted the same as the NCAA Tournament in basketball in March. The No. 1 seed plays the No. 16 seed, the No. 2 seed plays the No. 15 seed and so on and so forth down the line. Teams that earn a top four seed need to reap the benefits of being a top four team in the field. If all teams play in the first round of a 16-team playoff, then the quarterfinals will be set up in the exact same format as the 12-team playoff which will include the major bowl tie-ins.
Something has to change, and change quickly, after this two-year sample size of early exits in the quarterfinals of teams who receive the bye. Out of the seven teams who lost that received byes, six of them lost by double digits in the quarters. I'm all about handling business on the football field, but it's clear that teams receiving first-round byes are being put at a disadvantage.
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