We still haven’t made it through the first postseason with a 12-team College Football Playoff, but I’ve seen enough to call it a resounding success — with asterisks.
The expanded slate involved so many more teams and fanbases in the regular season than ever before, with dozens of meaningful games during the month of November. It also gave teams like Boise State a path to getting into the Playoff. Hope is incredibly important in sports, and the expanded CFP gave more teams more of it.
Yet the system is not perfect. To be honest, I never expected this to happen in year 1. It’s almost like a beta version of the expanded Playoff we’ll see in 2026 when the new CFP contract officially goes into effect. A lot could change between now and then, and a lot of it will depend on what Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey want. They will largely be able to dictate the future of the Playoff themselves, with input from their peers in other conferences.
But before we reach 2026, there is one glaring problem with the current format that needs to be fixed now. We can’t go through another season with an unbalanced group that gives the No. 1 overall seed an unnecessarily challenging route to a national championship. The whole point of using a bracket is to ensure that the best-seeded team takes the easiest path; that’s what drives excellence. But usually sports brackets are set up where the teams are placed in the order in which they are ranked.
This tournament is not set up that way. The top four seeds (Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State) are not the four highest ranked teams. The Broncos were ranked ninth in the selection committee’s final rankings. The Sun Devils were ranked 12th. But because the CFP requires conference champions to be assigned to the top four seeds — to encourage participation in league title games by rewarding those four teams with first-round byes — the actual third- and fourth-best teams have been seeded. And so on down the list.
According to this committee, Ohio State is the sixth best team in the country. Tennessee ranks seventh. That means both teams are two full seeds lower than they should be. That is not fair to the team that chooses the winner of that match in the quarter-finals.
Oregon went 13-0 and won the Big Ten Championship Game. His reward? A treacherous path that could include Ohio State in the quarterfinals, Texas in the semifinals and Georgia in the championship game. While the Ducks are still the odds favorite to win it all, these three teams have the second-best odds.
Of course, any team that wins a national championship in the new format will have to earn it. The paths to a title are significantly more difficult and longer than they used to be in the four-team CFP era or the BCS era. But the No. 1 overall seed shouldn’t have the toughest draw. We’re not supposed to highlight how No. 5 seed Texas and No. 6 seed Penn State have the easiest paths to the semifinals… because they would draw Nos. 3 and 4 seeds in the quarters (Boise State and Arizona State) , who aren’t actually the third and fourth best teams in the field! They are among the worst in the entire area – at least that is what the commission tells us.
Meanwhile, Oregon could face the sixth-seeded Buckeyes, third-seeded Longhorns and second-seeded Bulldogs in three straight games.
“What an opportunity, right?” Oregon coach Dan Lanning said of the Ducks’ draw. “In our world we always talk about red light, green light. Focus on the things you can control. That’s what we’re going to focus on, and winning a national championship shouldn’t be easy,” Lanning explained. “You can ask Coach (Nick) Saban. If our path is a little more difficult, then it is a compliment to us if we go through it and take care of things.”
That’s a great way to look at a dire situation, and I’m sure Lanning really enjoys the challenge. But it’s not fair to him and his players. It’s not true that the loser of the Big Ten Championship Game has a more enviable path through the Playoff than the winner. In what world does that have any meaning?
The good news? This is a problem with some simple solutions. The CFP could eliminate the requirement that you have to be a conference champion to earn one of the top four seeds. The top five ranked conference champions would still automatically receive a spot in the bracket (as they do now), but they will not have assigned seeds. The committee would then simply rank the twelve teams 1 out of 12. Sure, the Big Ten and SEC will likely fill the top four seed lines most years, and it may seem unfair that their leagues benefit from the most first-round byes. But it is much fairer for the highest ranked teams to have seeds that match the rankings. It would also simplify the format for fans; There was nothing more confusing this fall than seeing two different numbers next to a team’s name during the Tuesday night rankings shows on ESPN.
Another solution to this problem is to reseed the bracket after the first round. That would ensure that the No. 1 overall seed would draw the weakest possible opponent in the quarterfinals as a reward for their regular season performance. That would work too, although it would pose logistical challenges for both schools and fan bases if they don’t know their opponents and/or game locations until closer to kickoff.
A third possible way to solve the seeding problem is one that could be implemented if the sport’s power brokers choose to change the format entirely – and that’s something that is very much on the table going forward. If the bracket were expanded from 12 to 14 teams, only two teams would receive first-round byes. That would alleviate the stress (and reshuffling) currently going on with the third-, fourth- and fifth-tier champions. If the top two seeds almost always went to the Big Ten and SEC champions, that would probably match the actual rankings themselves, so the committee wouldn’t have to manipulate other seeds like they do now.
The commissioners overseeing the CFP are expected to meet this offseason, as they always do, to evaluate the Playoff standings. Multiple sources told NBC Sports they expect the first-round byes, which are tied to conference championships, will be reexamined.
I hope they make it a priority. There is too much good in the new system to let this one mistake overshadow the rest.
