IRVING, Texas – The College Football Playoff will not consider the outcome of the Army-Navy battle in the selection process, CFP leaders decided Wednesday.
Army and Navy traditionally meet on the second Saturday in December, a date that poses complications for the CFP selection: It falls six days after the selection committee meets to choose the field of 12 teams.
An issue that has been on the minds of CFP leaders for months: How should the selection process be handled if either team is in contention for the Group of Five’s automatic playoff spot?
On Wednesday, Day 2 of the annual spring meetings, the CFP Management Committee decided to treat the game as a sort of exhibition match. If Army or Navy wins the American Athletic Conference championship and is the highest-ranked champion of the Group of Five, that team will advance to the playoffs, most likely as the No. 12 seed, despite there being another six days later match to be played.
The decision ends one of the most pressing issues on the agenda this week in Dallas for the CFP Management Committee, which consists of the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director.
Navy athletics director Chet Gladchuk, who served on the selection committee in the past, said he is “grateful” that the CFP did not exclude the Army and Navy from consideration for making the CFP.
“I’m relieved that it turned out this way,” Gladchuk said.
In a story earlier this spring at Yahoo Sports, Army and Navy school officials encouraged the CFP to make an exception for the outcome of the game. That would have meant the selection committee would pick 11 of the 12 teams and wait to fill the 12 seeds until the completion of the competition if the Army or Navy were in contention. The committee also probably should have announced an alternate 12-seed if Army or Navy — whichever team was in contention — lost that game.
The decision would have raised a fascinating issue. Waiting a week to name a No. 12 seed would have meant the No. 5 seed would be tasked with preparing for two opponents and wouldn’t hear from his opponent until a week before kickoff.
Initially, CFP leaders had encouraged school officials to move Army-Navy to the regular regular season. According to stakeholders, that was not possible.
“We are not moving the game,” Gladchuk told Yahoo Sports in February. ‘It stays there. If the Army-Navy game is crucial to the selection process, let’s play the game in the spirit it represents.
There are complications with shifting the game. The contract with CBS requires the game to be played on that date. There are obligations for corporate sponsors, host cities and the military itself. The game’s television rating has soared since it moved from the conference championship Saturday to the standalone spot the following weekend in 2009 – a shift made to highlight the clash between U.S. forces and capture the attention of the entire country Pull.
The 2009 game was the most viewed game in the series in ten years. Last year’s Army-Navy game drew 7.2 million viewers, making it the 21st most-watched game of the college football season.
While the chances of Army or Navy making an impact on a four-team playoff were slim, the twelve-team format gives both programs more of an opportunity because it automatically awards spots to the five highest-ranked conference champions in an FBS division which now has four power leagues. . Stakeholders acknowledge that the chances of Army and Navy impacting the expanded playoff remain slim, but the possibility still exists.
If the CFP’s 12-team format were used in 2015, Navy might have qualified as the top-ranked Group of Five team due to the realignment shifts that have occurred since then.
Next year, the Army will join the Navy as permanent members of the AAC. The two teams will not meet during the regular regular season, but could meet in the AAC championship game a week before their traditional showdown on a neutral site as part of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy series.
With this decision, the CFP deviated from a protocol in place during the four-team playoffs. The protocol required the selection committee to postpone any pairings – a New Year’s Six bowl game or playoff seeding – involving the Army or Navy if the game’s outcome affected it.
The expanded play-off also poses other problems for the Army and Navy.
The game could soon face competition in its standalone spot with the relocation of bowl games. Leaders are exploring whether they can increase the bowl schedule each week.
Seven bowls were played during the opening day of the bowl season last year, on Saturday, December 16. On that third Saturday of this year, December 21, three first-round playoff games are scheduled, with the fourth being played on the preceding Friday.
Nick Carparelli, executive director of Bowl Season, told Yahoo Sports in February that the organization is looking into moving up at least some of those bowls each week to expand television windows and avoid TV conflicts with playoff games. The final decisions likely rest with ESPN, owner and rights holder of most bowl games.
Regarding an Army-Navy conflict, Carparelli said, “We would respect that game. We know its history.”
