Blessing and curse: Byes add a wrinkle of preparation to CFP challenges for programs
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Rest or rust? Stay hot or overheat? Cool down or cool off? It’s the perpetual question facing strong teams heading into playoffs with byes baked in: Would you rather keep playing, risking a loss, or take a break, risking the loss of your edge?
Multiple potential College Football Playoff programs are now eye-to-eye with the Bye Question. Not that it’s in their control, of course; you don’t get to choose whether you get a bye or not. (The SEC and Big Ten will be pushing for that in the next iteration of the CFP.) The question is: If you get one of these weeks off, how do you handle it?
The bane of byes
In the 2024 CFP, the answer was: Not well. All four of the teams that received byes in the first round — Oregon, Georgia, Arizona State and Boise State — were underdogs and lost to lower-seeded teams that had played those first on-campus games. Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame and Texas all blazed into the semifinals, running right through the bye recipients.
Now, granted, some of that raft of upsets was due to the CFP’s first attempt at seeding, which rewarded conference champions. That meant Arizona State and Boise State received free passes to the second round that, well, let’s be honest … they earned but didn’t really deserve, from a quality-of-roster standpoint. (Still, Arizona State did take Texas to overtime, so it’s not like they were frauds.)
The CFP’s seeding procedures rectified that this year, and the top four teams, regardless of conference, will earn first-round byes. Those four teams now — and for as long as the CFP remains at 12 teams — have a substantial advantage, playing three potential playoff games as opposed to the lower eight’s four.
The opportunity for rest is obvious; the opportunity to avoid injury a bit more hypothetical but no less real. The bye now gives those top teams — which likely will include some combination of Ohio State, Indiana, Georgia and another SEC team — a substantial lead on the field. In the rich-get-richer world of college football, the first-round bye is yet another perk, however long it lasts.
Oh, and then there’s this … some teams might enjoy the possibility of two bye weeks.
Byes by another name
There’s a nonzero chance, for instance, that the Georgia Bulldogs might not play a game in the entire month of December. ESPN Analytics give Georgia a 33 percent chance to miss the SEC title game through a combination of Alabama and Texas A&M victories. (Georgia is done with its SEC conference games.) Given that Georgia is ranked No. 4 in the current CFP bracket, there’s a decent chance the Dogs will get a first-round bye … meaning Georgia will go from Nov. 28 (the Georgia Tech game) until Dec. 31/Jan. 1 (the date of the semifinals games) without any competition.
A similar possibility exists over in the Big Ten, where Oregon and Michigan could vulture away conference championship berths from Ohio State and Indiana if the latter two can’t finish the year with a clean slate. (Unlikely, but possible … especially if Ohio State can’t shake its Michigan demons.) Would the teams seeded 1 and 2 in the current CFP rankings both fall out of the top four? Probably … but maybe not.
(The conference championships also offer the grim but very real possibility that a team could reach the title game, then lose and fall all the way out of the playoffs. This is the fate that likely awaits the loser of the ACC title game … and also Alabama, too, if the fates don’t align for the Tide.)
Coaches are aware of this loophole, and aren’t necessarily opposed to taking advantage of it. “It’s not just, do you potentially get knocked out by losing (the conference title game)?” Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin said last season. “Do you go get more injuries? So you’re going to go get more injuries, play another game to get a bye, but then the other people are having their bye while you’re playing.”
With two crucial weeks remaining in the regular season, no program ought to be even considering the possibility of a bye at this point. But if and when the byes do come, it will be fascinating to see how coaches handle what can be both a gift and a curse.
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