Why expanding the College Football Playoff to 8 teams is a really bad idea

Last Sunday, Dak Prescott hit wide receiver Brice Butler on a 20-yard slant to put the Dallas Cowboys up 6-0 in the fourth quarter against the Philadelphia Eagles. Right after the touchdown, my friend Adrienne – a die-hard Eagles fan – asked if we all wanted to leave.

We all agreed quickly for multiple reasons. We had spent more than three hours at Lincoln Financial Field watching a terrible game, it was so cold that the beer taps were frozen and I couldn’t surf the net because my phone’s battery froze and shut off even though it had 50 percent charge.

But the main reason was Eagles QB Nate Sudfeld.

When I arranged to get the Eagles tickets, I imagined a fight for playoff position against a hated rival, featuring a shootout between Prescott and Eagles QB Carson Wentz. Instead, what we got was the Eagles third string QB in a game that didn’t matter at all.

There was only one thing going through my mind as we left. Welcome to the unintended consequences of an expanded College Football Playoff.

Entertainment arguments against an expanded CFP

Let me start by saying that I understand the reasoning behind wanting an expanded playoff. The knee-jerk reaction to someone being left out is to want to be more inclusive, to make sure the result is decided “on the field.”

But the unintended consequence of being more inclusive is that the game-to-game product becomes less important.

We already saw that this year, as the Iron Bowl result didn’t matter in the slightest. Alabama was getting into the playoff based on its resume (and reputation) the minute Ohio State beat Wisconsin.

But even in that situation, there was some intrigue. Alabama fans didn’t know that things would fall their way as Auburn was finishing off the Tide. And Ohio State fans had some hope that a dominant performance against the Badgers would sneak them into the playoff ahead of Alabama.

Now imagine a scenario where there is an eight-team playoff and look at the standings prior to and after the championship games. In 2017, seven of the eight teams would remain unchanged. The only addition would have been USC for Miami, and had the Hurricanes defeated Clemson I don’t think the Tigers would have dropped far enough to allow USC into the tournament.

We have four years of playoff rankings to look back on now, and pretty much the same thing would have happened each year.

Changes in playoff rankings 1-10 before and after championship weekend. Teams highlighted red would have been in an 8-team playoff with or without those games. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

In 2014 and 2016, 7 of the 8 slots were set before the conference championship games. In 2015, all 8 were set and the conference championship games would have meant very little.

That year the only championship game that would have mattered was Clemson vs. North Carolina, as the Tarheels would have been able to play its way in. But the Iowa vs. Michigan State Big Ten Championship Game would have meant absolutely nothing because both teams were basically assured of a spot in an 8-team tournament.

That’s a real problem when a matchup between the number 4 and 5 teams in the country in the last week of the season doesn’t have any significance.

The entertainment factor doesn’t just apply to the last week of the season either. In an 8-team tournament, this year’s Wisconsin team would have been able to get to the tournament playing only two teams in the playoff rankings (Ohio State and Northwestern) and splitting those games.

This happens over and over when you look at expanding the playoffs. Teams no longer have to attempt to schedule challenging out-of-conference games because if they can go 11-1 or even 10-2, they’ll get into the tournament.

This is the beauty of the exclusion that a 4-team tournament provides. Because there are five conferences vying for four spots, teams are forced to make a choice. Schedule cupcakes and pay for it if you lose or schedule tough out-of-conference games so you can afford to lose a game.

Say what you will about Alabama’s schedule in 2017, but the Tide tried to bolster its strength of schedule significantly by playing Florida State to open the season. Wisconsin bet on a garbage non-conference schedule and couldn’t afford to lose to Ohio State. Conversely, the Buckeyes loss to Oklahoma would have been forgivable without the significant hiccup against Iowa.

It’s not a coincidence that these opening games have become more prevalent since the playoff started. If you were a fan of seeing Alabama vs. FSU, Florida vs. Michigan, West Virginia vs. Virginia Tech,  Oklahoma vs. Ohio State and Auburn vs. Clemson in the first two weeks this season, you have the 4-team playoff to thank for it.

Practical arguments against an expanded CFP

Fairness

The argument against the exclusivity of a 4-team playoff is that it isn’t fair. This actually seems initially like a decent argument for schools like Central Florida, whom despite its claims of a national championship knew that it had zero shot at a real championship coming into the season.

But I would submit that the goal of the playoff isn’t to be fair. It’s to identify the best team. And if we agree that this is the goal, then the approach to the playoff should be to identify the best team. And this is where we get into arguments of schedule.

UCF did win all of its games. But it did so playing a schedule with opponents that have an average ranking in the ESPN football power index (FPI) of 76.2. The Knights played four teams that finished ranked worse than 100 and played FCS Austin Peay.

Schedule comparison of UCF and the four playoff participants in 2017. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

Compare that to the four teams that made the playoff. Each of those teams played a schedule almost twice as hard as UCF according to ESPN’s FPI. They also played less total teams ranked worse than 100 in the FPI together (3) than UCF played all by itself (4). Both Alabama and Clemson did play an FCS opponent, but Oklahoma did not.

This means that UCF essentially had five guaranteed wins, while the playoff teams had significantly less. UCF won those games by an average score of 59-24. That is really impressive. It also means that the Knights didn’t have to play its key players for a large portion of the season.

Two years ago I wrote about the importance of bye weeks and how much better Florida, in particular, plays following a week off. UCF essentially had five of them.

That doesn’t seem very fair to me.

Deciding it “on the field”

I really dislike the argument that a playoff allows you to decide the championship “on the field”. It offends me as someone who uses statistics because I rely on drawing conclusions from large sample sizes. A 12 or 13-game season is just a much more reliable indicator of how good a team is than one game.

But even if you ignore that, I don’t think an expanded playoff is going to help us achieve the goal that we established earlier of finding the best team.

I say this because the NFL has a tournament of 12 teams every winter. NFL teams are much more closely matched than college teams. And in the NFL, the top-4 teams dominate in a way that indicates that going beyond that means that a hot team may win the playoff, but it wasn’t the best team.

NFL playoff results based on seeding from 2007-2016. (Will Miles/Read and Reaction)

For the past 10 seasons, the top seed in either conference has advanced to the Super Bowl 55 percent of the time. That rises to 75 percent if you include the second seed as well. So what is essentially the top-4 takes up three quarters of the Super Bowl slots.

There are outliers who make it through the NFL playoff. The New York Giants beat the Patriots twice, once as the 6-seed in 2007 and the 4-seed in 2011. The Giants got to raise a banner both of those seasons.

Interestingly, that seems to be a trend. The Giants in 2008 and 2011, the Packers in 2010 and the Ravens in 2012 all won the Super Bowl once they got there. The only lower-seeded team to lose the Super Bowl this decade is the Arizona Cardinals in 2008, and that took an unbelievable throw from Ben Roethlisberger to Santonio Holmes in the last few seconds to secure the win.

This suggests that there is something to teams getting hot. But I don’t think for a second that the 2007 Giants were better than the 18-1 Patriots. They were a bad matchup for New England and needed everything to go their way to beat the Patriots.

So is that what we want the college football playoff to be?

Do we want a team that went 10-3 (Auburn, 7 seed) knocking off a team that went 12-1 (Oklahoma, 2 seed) because they happen to be a bad matchup?

Or do we want Alabama to get another crack at Auburn in a playoff after Auburn already beat them?

And if the NFL dominance is to be believed, do we want an 8-team system where the top-4 is going to dominate anyway? If the goal is to identify the best team, I think the NFL numbers indicate that we’re probably doing that with a 4-team playoff.

The champion is already being determined on the field.

Personal arguments against an expanded CFP

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a die-hard Florida fan. I am too. And when thinking about how to structure this column, I started looking back at how a less inclusive system has shaped the moments I have experienced while watching my favorite team.

Looking back we all remember the high flying offenses of Urban Meyer, but in 2006 it wasn’t there yet. That Florida team really struggled to score, particularly on the road. A loss in October on the road to Auburn had dropped Florida out of much of the conversation for the national championship (on a “fumble” by Chris Leak returned for a TD that I still contend was an incomplete pass).

Florida kept me on pins and needles for a solid month. The first domino was the Jarvis Moss blocked field goal to preserve a 17-16 win against South Carolina. I remember my heart beating, waiting for the disappointment figuring the kick would be good and the elation when I realized Florida was still alive.

The second domino was Ohio State beating Michigan. As someone who grew up in Indiana and hates Ohio State, I remember the Buckeyes getting up by a couple of touchdowns and it being the only time in my life I’ve ever rooted for an Ohio State route so that Michigan would drop far enough to give Florida a chance to get to the championship game.

The third domino was Florida beating Arkansas in the SEC Championship Game. That game was much closer than the 38-28 score. I remember admiring the stones on Urban Meyer when he called for the fake punt from his own 15-yard line.

I also remember not getting too excited about taking the lead in the Arkansas game because I was switching back and forth between the SEC Championship and USC vs. UCLA. USC was ranked number 2 and it seemed a foregone conclusion they would make it to the championship. Instead, a severely shorthanded UCLA won 13-9, sending Florida to the championship against Ohio State.

I had the same experience again on the last day of the regular season in 2012. This time, Florida came into its game against Florida State in Tallahassee ranked fourth in the BCS. The Gators blitzed Florida State, with the signature play being linebacker Antonio Morrison blasting FSU QB E.J. Manuel and Manuel crumbling while fumbling the football. Florida State couldn’t stop Florida’s running game and the Gators ran away with the game 37-26.

But at 8pm that same night, I tuned to ABC to watch Notre Dame playing USC because Notre Dame was ranked second in the BCS standings. With the SEC Championship game featuring number one Alabama and number three Georgia the next week, it was clear that the winner of that game was going to either play Notre Dame or Florida for the title.

USC had Notre Dame on the ropes the whole game. With 2:33 left, USC got a first down at the Notre Dame one-yard line down by 9. Four plays later, the Irish were celebrating a goal-line stand and Florida was heading to the Sugar Bowl.

I bring up both of these examples because these are probably my most vivid memories of Florida football. Yes, I remember the championship over Oklahoma, but it doesn’t have the same meaning to me as the times when everything had to fall just right for Florida to earn a spot in the championship.

And that’s my biggest worry with any expansion of the current 4-team system.

I want Florida to win championships. But to me Florida football is also about sharing the collective experience with people who live and die with the result the same way I do. Those moments are why I watch, and the experience means something whether Florida wins or loses.

When I was watching the field goal against South Carolina that Moss blocked, I was supposed to be at my Grandmother’s house for dinner. I kept telling my wife that we’d leave soon. And every time I thought I might be able to find a lull to drive over there, something else would happen and I’d sit back down afraid of missing something.

When we got to Grandma’s house nearly an hour late, my uncle – who is a die-hard Virginia Tech fan – didn’t do anything other than nod. He understood where I was. He would have done the same thing.

An 8-team playoff might make more money. It might allow UCF to test itself against the big boys. It might make certain that the Big 10 or Big 12 doesn’t get left out.

But it will harm the quality of the product on the field. It won’t make things fair, but instead reward teams that play cupcake schedules. It won’t do any better job of actually identifying the best team.

But most critically to me, it diminishes the collective experience that makes college football unique and special.

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