College football at its highest level (FBS) just completed its first legitimate playoff culminating in No. 8 Ohio State defeating No. 7 Notre Dame 34-23 in the national championship game. It was an exciting 12-team tournament that had several upsets. Most notably, the national title game featured two non-SEC teams: Ohio State representing the Big Ten and Notre Dame as an independent though kind of representing the ACC (Notre Dame is an ACC member in all their other sports and commits to playing five ACC teams per season in football).
Given the success of the tournament coupled with the fact that the non-tournament bowl games garner little interest, the College Football Playoff should expand from its present 12-team format. The only question is to what number should the tournament expand? Three options are on the table as I see it: They could expand to 16, 24, or 32 teams.
With a 16-team model, they could keep the same format but simply add four additional at-large bids. That would create for a deeper field and also remove a bye week for the top four teams. Just so everyone can get rested up a bit, they could give every team a week off in between the end of the regular season and the playoffs, starting in mid-December and finishing in early January. Or they could start at the end of December and finish in mid-January, right around the same time as they do now. That would give teams more chance to heal up, complete finals, etc.
A 16-team field wouldn’t be diluting the product much if at all. It would just add four more quality teams and create a chance for more upsets. It would also go by pretty quickly as it would take just four weeks.
The FCS level, which is the level below FBS has a 24-team tournament that went from November 30th to January 6th this past season. It seems to work out well with 10 conference champions getting automatic bids and 14 teams getting at-large bids. The top eight seeds get a first round bye. You can check out the 2024 bracket here to better visualize it.
The advantage of a 24-team model is you could now give each FBS conference champion an automatic bid. 10 automatic bids and 14 at-large bids. Just like the FCS. It would give the FBS level a true NCAA tournament just like all the other NCAA Division I sports. Every school could now have hope of making the tournament and having a theoretical shot at a national title. If FCS can do it, I don’t see why FBS can’t. There would also be the advantage of giving the top eight teams a bye, giving them a bit of a reward for having a strong seed.
Lastly, we have the 32-team model, which would have 10 automatic bids and 22 at-large bids. In order to win the tournament, a team would have to win five games.
Let me first address the obvious concern with this model, which is that this makes the college football season too long, these are student-athletes who need to be in class, and that this would dilute the product too much.
Starting with it being too long, in a 24-team model the potential for a team to play five games is already there. If a team wins the national title without getting a top eight seed, they’ll have played five games. This just makes it so every team in the tournament has to win five games as opposed to giving the top eight teams a bye and only needing to win four games.
Furthermore, Ohio State, and Notre Dame both played four games in this year’s playoff, a 32-team model would only be adding one more game to the amount of games that both finalists played this year. Not only that, but with each passing round, fewer and fewer teams stand.
So, you’d have 32 teams playing one extra game, 16 teams playing two extra games, eight teams playing three extra games, four teams playing four extra games, and two teams playing five extra games. For the vast majority of teams, it wouldn’t change the season all that much, but for a select few, it would give them a chance to extend their college careers and play more games of the sport they love.
As for the academic component, you could set up the tournament such that it starts after finals are over. The regular season would end on say November 30th and then the playoff would start the week of December 21st, ending the same time as the current playoff ends.
Lastly, regarding the diluting of the product, you could argue that the NCAA men’s basketball tournament dilutes the product too much with a 68-team field. Yes, you’d have a lot of blowouts in round one, but you’d also have a lot of exciting matchups. The 16-17, 15-18, 14-19, and 13-20 matchups would be pretty entertaining. So, I think the product would still hold just fine. People love football. They’d be happy.
Switching gears to why I think a 32-team model is the best, I already stated the first reason, which is you’d get some pretty exciting first round matchups. You’d have some real barnburner games that would get a lot of eyeballs for TV networks and fire up college football fans across the country.
The second reason I like the 32-team model is it would give FBS an even more legitimate tournament that mirrors that of other sports. Women’s soccer has a 64-team playoff, men’s soccer has a 48-team playoff, baseball has a 64-team playoff, softball has a 64-team playoff, women’s basketball has a 64-team tournament, and then men’s hoops has a 68-team field as mentioned above. The FBS should look to mirror those other sports’ tournaments as much as possible and I think a 32-team tournament would satisfy.
The third reason for why a 32-team tournament should happen is simply why not? Why not give more schools and fanbases a chance to taste the tournament? Why deprive people of more entertainment that they crave? A 32-team tournament would have fantastic TV ratings and bring life back to college football in the month of December. Fans could fill out brackets, win prizes, and have a bonus March Madness. February Frenzy would be a great name for this season, except this tournament would end in January. Delirious December? I’ll need to workshop a name, but you get the point.
Finally, a 32-team playoff could solve the issue of the transfer portal ruining the month of December for college football fans.
Few guys would hit the portal if they knew their team was playing in a 32-team playoff. You might have a couple guys do it, but I think by expanding the playoff to 32 teams, you would greatly mitigate the disruption that the portal causes to bowl season. It would become much more like college basketball where guys hit the portal after their season is over. Do you see guys entering the transfer portal before their team has played in an NCAA tournament game? No. That’s my point.
To touch quickly on format, I think one obvious thing should be that the top 16 seeds in a 32-team tournament should get home field advantage. The question is at what point should a neutral site take shape? Personally, I think the best thing to do would be to give teams home field advantage through the first two games and then have the final three games be neutral site. That is, Round of 32 and Round of 16 games should be determined by home field advantage; quarterfinal, semifinal, and national championship games should be neutral site games with a designated bowl affiliation.
One other thing that they should do, perhaps as a solution to preserving all the bowls, is they should give every team at least one neutral site bowl game. Teams that lose in the Round of 32 and Round of 16 should get a neutral site bowl game to close out their season. You could send Round of 16 losers to higher ranked bowls than Round of 32 losers. That would give home to 12 bowl games.
Anyways, I think you get the idea here. A 32-team playoff in my opinion would inject even more life into college football for the fans and players all while offering solutions to making the bowl season more meaningful while curbing the transfer portal craziness that has plagued the season. I don’t think we’ll see it expand to this number of teams but given the way things are going in college football, I also wouldn’t rule out. One thing is for certain: The playoff will expand. The only question is by how much.
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