Playoff parity is here as Ohio State's loss ensures 4 new teams fill out CFP semis

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No. 2 Ohio State’s upset loss to No. 10 Miami not only ensured that the Buckeyes wouldn’t be the third team to win back-to-back national championships in the 2000s, but it also means the semifinals of the 2026 College Football Playoff are completely unrecognizable from the year before.

No matter what happens in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, none of the four semifinalists were in among the final four in last year's playoff. And of the teams that advanced to the quarterfinals this year, only Ohio State, Oregon and Georgia even reached that point of the playoff a season ago.

This playoff parity isn’t entirely unprecedented. When the four-team playoff was started in 2014, Washington became the eighth different team to make the field in just the playoff’s third season. But there seems like a far greater chance that this type of parity will continue now that the playoff features far more teams.

Over the final seven years of the four-team playoff, just seven new programs made the field as the likes of Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State hoovered up playoff bids on a seemingly annual basis. But Nick Saban and Urban Meyer are now on television and Dabo Swinney just got done navigating one of the worst seasons of his coaching career.

Thanks to the advent of NIL and the transfer portal, there’s never been more parity at the top of college football. Yes, the chasm between power conference teams and everyone else may be growing as schools with bigger budgets sign star players away from smaller schools, but it’s never been easier to instantly build a power conference contender than it is now.

Just look at Texas Tech. Yes, the Red Raiders flopped on Thursday as they became the third team in CFP history to get shut out in a 23-0 loss to Oregon. But Tech wasn’t a contender in 2024 and it was nearly unfathomable to think that the Red Raiders would be in the playoff field 12 months ago. Thanks to an influx of cash from mega-donor Cody Campbell, a moribund defense immediately became one of the nation’s best and the Red Raiders dominated the Big 12.

More stories like Tech’s and Indiana’s are not only possible in the years to come. They’re probable.

Upsets may continue be more commonplace, too. By now, you probably know that every team with a first-round bye last season lost its quarterfinal game and that Ohio State and Texas Tech extended that losing streak to six straight this week. But thanks to the CFP’s wonky first-year seeding format, all four teams who got byes a year ago were underdogs.

This season, underdogs are 4-2 straight up after Oregon’s Orange Bowl win and power conference underdogs are 4-0. Against the spread, underdogs are even better at 5-1. Only Tulane, which got blown out by Ole Miss for a second time, failed to cover the spread.

Just two more wins by underdogs over the final five CFP games of the season will guarantee a winning record for teams not favored at kickoff. Over the previous 11 years of the playoff, underdogs won just 10 of 41 games.

Playoff expansion could create even more legitimate opportunities for upsets like we saw Wednesday night. Teams like BYU, Texas and Vanderbilt just missed out on the playoff field in 2025 but regularly looked more than capable of beating the top teams in the sport. 

The inevitable move to a 16-team playoff will disproportionately reward power conference teams as it seems unlikely that more than one or two Group of Five teams will get into the field on an annual basis. But that move to reward teams in the teens of the CFP rankings could come at a cost to those in the top five. Just ask the Buckeyes.

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