The first year of the expanded College Football Playoff wasn’t exactly an unmitigated success.
Fans were frustrated in the early rounds, as most of the first few games weren’t tight, competitive contests. Though that hasn’t always been a feature of even the four-team playoff either.
There’s no way to guarantee close, exciting games in any sport, but where fans did have a more legitimate complaint is the seeding process. And SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey agrees, saying that the Power Four conferences and the Playoff Committee need to take a good, hard look at how they run the playoff moving forward.
For example, the Oregon Ducks completed an undefeated regular season, then capped it off by winning the Big Ten Championship Game 45-37 over Penn State. Their reward was a second round matchup against a dangerous Ohio State Buckeyes team with momentum from a blowout win over Tennessee.
Sankey, like many others, wants to fix that.
Greg Sankey is discussing the changes the need to be made to the College Football Playoff seeding format. (Credit: Getty Images)
College Football Playoff Can Be Changed, Though Maybe Not Right Away
Per Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, Sankey talked with Paul Finebaum about the importance of altering the playoff format moving forward.
On the one hand, as Sankey says, the current landscape “is not the same reality that existed when the 12-team” playoff came into existence. That alone suggests he believes changes are necessary.
But he also said that, specifically, the seeding “needs to be looked at deeply.”
There’s plenty of ways to switch things up, with one option to seed based on the committee’s final rankings, eliminating the automatic byes for conference champions, or maybe to re-seed after the first round.
Though with the need for a unanimous vote to change the format for 2025, there’s very little likelihood of alterations for the upcoming season. Sankey said it’s “really tough to achieve” that level of agreement among the powers that be.
So what would make the most sense?
Well, it does seem unfair or unwarranted to give, say, Boise State a higher seed because of its status as a conference champion compared to maybe, Ohio State that doesn’t win its conference. Then there’s the Oregon issue, where they were “punished” with a much tougher game when sitting out an extra week relative to their opponent.
One possible solution could be to seed based off the rankings, then re-seed after the first round. Though retaining the automatic bye for conference champions at least gives some meaning to those games. In a world where the two participants in the Big 10 or SEC Championship games are near-locks to make the playoff, there has to be some reward for winning them, other than bragging rights.
Still, seeding based off rankings and ensuring that the top team always plays the “easiest” opponent would go a long way already. Maybe those changes are coming, but it doesn’t sound like it’ll be until the 2026 season at the earliest.
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