The first round of the first ever 12 team College Football Playoff has come and gone, and if we are being honest I haven’t been that disappointed since I found out a Christmas Cantata was a bunch of singing and not a Taco Bell item.
College football fans had the weekend of December 20th and 21st circled for quite some time. The first round of the new playoff format on home college campuses? Sign us up.
However, the end result was four duds leaving the fans disappointed and the scoreboards with lopsided victories. In fact, the four games were won by an average of over 19 points, and each home team led by at least 21 at some point during the game.
So here are three ways to fix the 12 team format moving forward.
- Make the seedings based off the actual rankings
I will admit I was excited for the storyline between Indiana and Notre Dame, and I thought Ohio State and Tennessee would be a better matchup. Regardless, the aforementioned disparity in scores as well as on-field talent was quite evident. The argument immediately became that a 9-3 SEC team should have been in over Indiana or SMU. I’m not even going to get into that hypothetical argument of who would’ve played a better game. What I will gladly say is that seeding the teams based off their rankings would have been much better. Arizona State facing Clemson or Boise State playing Indiana would have been much better games and gotten fans everywhere much more invested.
- Get rid of auto-bids
This isn’t even directed at Clemson. I don’t care to have the argument on whether or not they should have been in. However, giving Boise State and Arizona State the No. 3 and 4 seed with a bye was a joke. Why? Because they ran through the Mountain West and Big 12.
I have no problem with a three loss SEC team being left out of the playoff over 11-2 SMU. What I do have a problem with is pretending that the teams who played strength of schedules in the 70’s deserved a bye week because they beat UNLV twice. That’s insane.
- Reseed after the first round
I’ve said this for weeks, but a lot of fans were banging the drum that “the committee got it right” after they selected SMU over Alabama. That was wildly shortsighted. The committee definitely got it right to leave Alabama out. However, the way they seeded everything gave several teams with higher seeds and better regular seasons worse draws to get to, and potentially win, a national title.
Oregon finished the season undefeated in a Power Four conference with wins over the No. 6 and No. 8 seeds in the field. Why are they getting rewarded with another matchup against a hungry Ohio State team that has a $20 million roster and the largest chip on their shoulder imaginable? Make it make sense.
