Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin is in favor of College Football Playoff expansion.
Kiffin made his case for expanding the CFP to 16 teams at the SEC spring meetings on May 27 in Destin, Florida. The sixth-year Ole Miss coach has become a national voice for college football and is no stranger to voicing his opinion as NIL and the transfer portal transform the sport.
Kiffin said he has looked at the analytics and CFP scenarios in 12-team and 16-team brackets. He likes the hypothetical expanded format better.
“It just appeared to me that there’s still flaws in every system,” Kiffin said. “The best system should be 16 (teams), and it should be the 16 best.”
That scenario would have benefitted the Rebels in 2024. Ole Miss was No. 14 in the CFP rankings when the bracket was unveiled, missing out on the 12-team field by two spots.
Although four automatic byes are no longer guaranteed to go to conference championships, the CFP model for 2025 will still award automatic bids to the four highest-ranked conference champions. Kiffin said the CFP should get rid of automatic bids and preserve the spots for teams deemed the best.
“I don’t know exactly how that’s figured out,” Kiffin said. “I think we’ve got to use some indexes and, I’m not saying this because I’m in here (with reporters), media people that watch the most that are on it and don’t have any other motives in it. And figure out the best 16 teams.”
Sam Hutchens covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at Shutchens@gannett.com or reach him on X at @Sam_Hutchens_
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