Let's Talk About the College Football Playoff
A couple of important bits of information to get you started on your journey through this playoff blog. First and foremost only four (4) teams will qualify for the playoff out of a pool of 130 FBS teams.
Who Qualifies?
FBS stands for “Football Bowl Subdivision” and is the top tier and most competitive subdivision of college football teams. The FBS is made up of 10 conferences: ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, Pac 12, American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sunbelt. As well as six “Independent” schools that do not affiliate with any conference at all: Army, BYU, Liberty, New Mexico State, Notre Dame, and Umass.
These 10 conferences are split into two distinct groups:
Power 5:
- ACC
- SEC
- Big 10
- Big 12
- Pac 12
Group of 5
- American
- Conference USA
- MAC
- Mountain West
- Sunbelt
Basically the Power 5 are the 5 most talented and most competitive conferences in college football and the Group of 5 are the next tier of talent, not bad, but these guys can not compete with the top dogs of the Power 5.
This makes the decision process considerably easier because the pool shrinks from 130 teams to 64 Power 5 teams plus Notre Dame. Notre Dame is the only Independent Program considered to be on par with the Power 5 and it is widely considered that being Independent hurts their case to make the play-off more than it helps. Either way, they are part of the equation bringing our final total to 65 eligible teams.
Who decides?
The College Football Playoff is decided after a full season of the conference and non-conference play where teams spend the year jockeying for a position to convince the College Football Playoff Committee that they deserve a spot in the big dance. The Committee is made up of 13 members and they pretty much have full control of the selection process. They have a list of criteria they are expected to take into consideration but they are people and people are not perfect. The bullet points that matter most are:
- Strength of Schedule
- Conference Championship
- Team Record
- Head to Head Record
It's impossible to expect these 13 people to watch every single play of every single game, which leads to some lapses here and there, but for the most part, they have done a good job in their five-year existence.
When is the decision made?
The first 2019 College Football Playoff Ranking will be released on Tuesday, November 5. In other words, next Tuesday. From that point on, the committee will meet every week to discuss everything that's happened and release a new ranking on the following Tuesday until December 8, when the final ranking is released and we officially have our four playoff team.
On December 8, everyone's regular season will be over, Conference Championships will be played, and Conference Champions will be crowned. Winning a Conference Championship is HUGE in the pursuit of a playoff spot, but it certainly isn’t a guarantee.
If you were paying attention you’ll notice there are five teams in the Power 5 and only four playoff spots. Guaranteeing at least one champion gets snubbed than add the fact that Independent Notre Dame made it last year, kicking out a second champion. Finally, in 2017, the committee selected Alabama and Georgia to both make the playoff thus allowing two SEC teams to make it, again only having three conferences represented.
Chances are if a conference is going to have a representative, that representative will be the champion. However, in 2016 a 2 loss Penn State team won the Big Ten Championship and beat Ohio State at home, but the Committee decided that 1 loss Ohio State deserved the spot. And with that decision, they completely blew off their own claims about the importance of winning head-to-head games and winning Conference Championships.
Now that you’re caught up on what's going on and how the teams are decided, we can start looking at resumes and talk about who deserves a spot in the 2019 College Football Playoff. Tuesday (11/5) the first ranking will release and I’ll be here to breakdown whats going on.
