Peak Perspective: Reviewing Two Years of the New Playoff Format

NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...

We’ve had the new playoff system for two years now. Like last year, there were plenty of arguments about who should or shouldn’t have gotten in. Last year there was a lot of fuss about Alabama being left out, finishing the regular season ranked 11th. This Notre Dame was viewed as being snubbed, also ranked 11th. That’s a fun coincidence!

Right after last year, changes were made. Originally, the four highest ranked conference champions received a bye. That immediately changed, and now the seeding is based on ranking, though the four highest ranked conference champions are still guaranteed a spot. Before the playoffs started, talks were already happening about change, like expanding to 16 teams.

We’re going to hear more about what should or should not change. Here are some of my random thoughts and ideas.

No Matter How Many Teams are Included, the Fringe Teams will be Snubbed

I already talked about how the teams ranked 11th in 2024 and 2025 viewed themselves as robbed of a playoff spot. Let’s say a 16-team playoff was implemented this year. Here are the teams that were ranked 14th – 18th prior to the postseason, with their overall record:

15 Utah 10-2
16 USC 9-3
17 Arizona 9-3
18 Michigan 9-3

How shocked would you be if Arizona in this hypothetical situation argued about being “robbed” of a playoff spot, like Notre Dame this year? I’d say it’s pretty high. Arizona beat two ranked teams and had a close loss to #11 BYU, a playoff team in this scenario. Michigan might argue as well, since two of their three losses were to top 10 teams.

Going back two years, Florida State went 13-0, including winning the ACC title, but missed the playoff when they finished ranked fifth, which led to a lot of arguments. No matter how many teams are included, the teams who barely made the cut will feel they got shafted. March Madness, which has 68 teams, has this debate every year. I have no strong opinions on expanding or contracting the playoff, but teams will always be left out. That shouldn’t be the factor in deciding how many teams to include. If Notre Dame was included this year, Alabama or Miami would have been the ones arguing they were unfairly left out (even though Miami would go on to vindicate themselves).

The Regular Season Has Not Been Diminished

This is an argument I’ve seen thrown around, but without much to back it up. For the teams ranked throughout the top 10 all year, maybe they could afford to lose a close game to a great team, but my argument is that expanding the playoff is actually increasing the importance of the regular season. I’ll use three examples.

First, Notre Dame this year started 0-2. Under the old playoff format, whether it was the BCS or the four team playoff, their season would have been over by week 2. Didn’t matter what the context behind the two losses was, no one could climb their way back into the top five after that. The rest of the season would have been a consolation prize. The reason we know this is because it’s happened before. Georgia in 2011 started 0-2, but ran the table on their way into the SEC title game. Even though they lost that game, had they won, there’s no way anyone would have moved them from their 12th place ranking to the top two. There was no real discussion about Georgia the rest of that year. Virginia Tech did the same thing in 2010; started 0-2 after having title aspirations in the preseason, ran the table, won the conference and got into the Orange Bowl. But they were ranked 12th; no one argued they should have been in the national championship.

But this year, Notre Dame stayed in the conversation all year, despite the 0-2 start. Each game mattered and was followed closely. Up until the regular season ended, their games still had an impact on a potential title run. Had Notre Dame been included in the playoff and won a game or two, I doubt many would have been surprised – they had the fourth-best odds to win the National Title prior to the final ranking being released.

My second example comes from the Mountain West. Boise and UNLV have played each other in each of the last three conference championships. In 2023 the average TV viewership was about 1.4 million (paywall), while this past game averaged about 1.5 million. In 2024 it was 3 million. Why was the viewership so much higher? Part of it was people tuning in to watch Heisman ~~snub~~ finalist Ashton Jeanty, but he’d been a phenom all year, where they never had viewership reach 2 million. This game served as a de facto playoff game, since both Boise and UNLV were clearly the best Group of 5 schools that year. That wasn’t earned through a weekend; that happened over the course of the year. That doesn’t happen if either team had lost an extra game or played worse.

Third, and this is the shortest example. Under the old four team format, ESPN did a weekly “eliminator” update, showing how many teams were out of title contention each week. By the end of week 1 that would be as high as 40. This year, pretty much 0 teams were eliminated by week 1. In other words, every team had something huge to play for by week 2, even if it was a small chance. Under the old format, only 66% of teams could say that after the first week.

Is Having an Extra Bye Week an Advantage?

It’ll be interesting to see how this works. Right now the top 4 seeds get an extra week off. You would assume that would be an advantage, but so far it isn’t. The past two years the top 4 seeds are 1-7 in the second round of the playoffs, with those losses coming by an average score of 17-31. Blue bloods like Oregon, Ohio State, and Georgia all had losses by 10 points or worse, despite having a rest “advantage”. However, I will say that eight games isn’t enough of a sample size to say if this is a real trend or not. Tom Fornelli at CBS Sports adds some useful context to those losses, further explaining this. He points out that if Steph Curry goes 1-8 on three point shots, no one cares, because the next 8 shots could easily be different.

That said, I do think this should change, because it gives an incentive to not win. Miami didn’t play in the conference championship, but still made it to the national title#. Had they played in the ACC championship they still likely would have made the playoff, but there’s a chance a key player could have been injured. Right now there’s room for coaches late in the season to look at their schedule, realize they’ll still make the playoff regardless of what happens, and decide to rest starters at the end of the year. We saw teams go 7-1 the first round without being one of the top four, including both championship games featuring teams ranked lower than fourth, so we know it’s realistic. Sure they miss the conference championship, but that’s not as important as winning a playoff game. Essentially they could game the system to move their bye week to earlier in the month. I doubt many fans would like that idea.

So what changes should be made?

I wrote earlier how I don’t have strong opinions on expanding, but you can’t base it off of teams being snubbed, and drastic changes after two years would be an overreaction. But for the sake of conversation, I’ll give three ideas; one to implement right now, and two to consider further down the road.

1. Change How the Playoff Committee Works

For those who don’t know, the rankings used to determine who makes the playoff are made up of a committee of 12 individuals with various backgrounds related to college athletics. From week six onward they release their rankings, with a final one coming right after conference championship weekend. I have two issues with the committee though that could easily be fixed this off season:

Replace weekly rankings with one, single, final ranking. I know ESPN likes their weekly rankings release show, but I’m going to be blunt and say I know of no one who actually watches it. It’s redundant since we already get weekly updates from the AP and coaches poll. The real issue is the lack of consistency, especially this year. From the final ranking, the committee moved Miami ahead of Notre Dame, giving Miami the last spot and excluding Notre Dame from the playoff. Neither played a game that weekend, yet somehow their opinions changed of the two teams. Even if their process was transparent, with the members explaining their rationale, the week-to-week changes hurts credibility. A single ranking at the end of the year removes this issue.
Committee Members Shouldn’t be Actively Involved with a University. Half of the committee are current athletic directors at FBS schools. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re fair and unbiased, and I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure a lot of people would call this a conflict of interest given the amount of money involved. Even Supreme Court Justices are supposed to recuse themselves from cases with potential conflicts.

2. Change to All Potential Playoff Teams Playing the Weekend of Conference Championships

To me there should rarely, if ever, be a good reason to lose. It’s just boring. Regardless of what you think about what has happened, going off of what has happened to determine policy is ill-advised when compared to what realistically could happen. For example, lets say Fernando Mendoza was hurt in the BIG 10 Championship. How much would that have changed the argument about first round byes, or “skipping” the conference championship? In this alternate history, Indiana would have thought it would have been better to lose to Purdue to close out the year, since doing so would keep them out of the conference championship, but still make the playoffs with their Heisman quarterback.

We all think events like this are unlikely until they happen. When the playoff was revamped, everyone assumed the top four conference championships would also be the four best teams nationally. Boise State, Arizona State, Duke, Tulane, and James Madison have already proved that wrong. Even if you view these past two years as outliers, if it happened once it can happen again. Ask a millennial how many “once in a lifetime” events they’ve experienced in their relatively short lives.

Jon Gruden gave an interesting idea. The short version is that you have conference championships, but the other at-large teams still play that weekend, basically in play-in games. He doesn’t explain a formula or exact method for making the seeding; he only goes over what match ups he “likes”. I do like the idea though, so here’s what I would do for a 12 team playoff:

Committee has their ranking of teams at the end of the regular season
You have the conference championships. Right there you get the four automatic spots from the highest rated winners of these games.
The six highest rated teams not playing in those conference championships are in a ‘play-in’ round. Those match ups are based on traditional seeding (best vs worst, second best vs second worse, etc.), with the higher ranked team hosting.
After that weekend, the committee redoes rankings. The eight highest teams who didn’t win their conference get in. That final ranking determines seeding, the top four teams still get a bye week
- Only teams that played in conference championships or play in games can make the playoff. No leaping ahead of teams without playing.

The main reason I want this is because it incentivizes winning. At no point would a loss be beneficial. Again, Miami may have benefited by not playing in the ACC Championship, which intuitively shouldn’t make sense. In this format, the only teams guaranteed to get in are those that win their conference. For that play in round, here’s how it would have worked this year:

Oregon vs Notre Dame
Ole Miss vs Miami
Texas A&M v Oklahoma

This solves the “Notre Dame not in a conference” issue, since all teams play a game this week anyway, and even have an opportunity at home field advantage. There’s still a chance you get in after losing in this play-in round, and a chance you’re left out if you win. It’s to balance out cases where a conference is top heavy, like Ohio State and Indiana this year. Most of us would probably agree that Ohio State still get in over any of these six teams listed, regardless of how those games went out. But most of all, it’s to incentivize winning.

But, if I had complete power over the playoffs, I would do a radically different approach

3. Dramatic Change: Model it After the FCS and do a 24 Team Playoff

Yes, this would never get approved, and everyone would argue it, but I’d still implement it.

Since 2013, each FCS conference champion automatically gets into the playoff, with 14 at large teams. You can go into the details here, but this is my model:

Each Conference Champion automatically gets in. Yes, even the MAC and Sun Belt are represented
14 at large teams get selected, being the 14 highest rated teams that didn’t win their conference
- I’d still do my play-in stage of the highest ranked teams not in a conference championship, so they don’t have a situation where not playing in their conference title could be helpful
Seeding based on overall ranking of 24 teams, regardless of conference championship
8 Highest ranked teams get a bye

There aren’t many issues that FBS schools would have with this that FCS doesn’t. They start right when the regular season ends and don’t have notable issues with injuries piling up.

The biggest complaint I foresee is automatic qualifiers for every conference, even the small ones. The counterpoint is the FCS is just as top heavy as the FBS. Since 2013, only five of the 10 FCS conferences have had a school make it to the championship, and only three have done it multiple times. The Big Sky and the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) are basically the equivalent of the Big 10 and SEC. At least one of those conferences has had a school in the championship literally every year since the format was redone. A team from the Big Sky and MVC has played the other in the title game in four of the past five, the exception being 2022 when the MVC had two teams. Part of it is North Dakota State basically being the FCS equivalent of Nick Saban’s Alabama teams (8 championships in this window), but Montana State, Illinois State, South Dakota State, and James Madison were responsible for 33% of all title game appearances since 2013, in league with over 120 schools. Sure, a “bad team” might get in the playoffs, but they’d be a lower seed and presumably an easier game. I’m guessing a team like Georgia would prefer an easy path to the second round over a harder one.

The issue of “Bad Teams” Making the Playoffs and Reliance on Models

In both years of this playoff format, there have been complaints about the structure, specifically about teams that seemed to have benefited more than others. For Boise and Arizona , the issue was seeding, while for James Madison and Tulane was inclusion. Some are already arguing about going back to the BCS, where computer models developed rankings. Regardless of what changes are made, there are good ways and bad ways to approach it. To me, the issue is most of college football’s playoff reform has been reactive, rather than preventative. The NFL has a tiebreaker that could, in theory, send a team to the playoffs on a coin flip. It’s never been used, but the league accounts for the possibility.

Playoff formats shouldn’t be based solely on what has happened but what could happen. Imagine if college basketball in 2017 decided to reduce the NCAA tournament and eliminated the 16 seed, since in the prior 30 years those teams had never won a game. Few would have said that was unreasonable. Luckily that didn’t happen, because over the next six years two 16 seeds won a game. The purpose of giving every team a shot, even a small one, is to account for evaluators not being perfect. If their predictions peak at 99% accuracy, then models alone shouldn’t be used to outright disqualify teams. Teams are underestimated just as often as they are overestimated.

Too much of college football rankings and seeding are based on hypothetical matchups, historical reputation, and speculation. I’d prefer letting players and teams decide who’s better by playing each other on the field instead of using statistical models to project outcomes – and I say this as someone with a degree in statistics. If models and experts were 100% accurate that would be different, but they aren’t. I’d prefer a system that rewards the accomplishments, such as winning their conference, rather than rewarding assumptions. Those assumptions may be reasonable and credible, but they require evaluators to be flawless in their reasoning. An example of this is assuming a team from the MAC could never win the title, and therefore having a format to potentially exclude them if a committee agreed. A good format would account for evaluators being wrong and minimize potential bias. It may result in an underwhelming team making their way into the playoffs, but it also allows for an overlooked team to prove doubters wrong.

Conclusion

The debate about playoffs will likely never end, but sports would be boring if debates were done away with.

Feel free to give your thoughts in the comments!

More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos