It’s time for a 12-team College Football Playoff

I’ve spent the last few weeks pondering what the right number of teams is for the College Football Playoff, and I’ve finally landed on a number.

Twelve.

That’s enough to ensure that a couple dozen teams are still playing meaningful games in November, but not so many that the regular season becomes completely diluted. It’s also enough to ensure that the best Group of 5 teams get their shot.

With a 12-team playoff, UCF’s upset of Auburn in 2017 would have been a first-round game. This year’s thriller between Georgia and Cincinnati would have been a first-round game too.

Georgia kicked a last-second field goal to beat Cincinnati in the 2020 Peach Bowl.

In a perfect world, the leaders of college football would listen to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and form a unified entity of top college football programs that competes outside of the NCAA. That new entity could create balanced schedules and an equitable playoff format played completely outside of the bowl system.

But I’m not going to get my hopes up for such radical change any time soon. So, in the meantime, a 12-team playoff could accommodate the Power 5 conferences, the Group of 5 conferences, and the current bowl system, while barely disrupting the current calendar.

Here’s how it would work:

• The top eight conference champions would qualify for the playoff.
• Four at-large bids would be given to the next best teams.
• The top four conference champions would be given a first-round bye.
• The first two rounds would be played on campus at the top seeds.
• The semifinals would be played as part of the New Year’s bowl slate.
• The championship game would be played at a neutral site.

The first two rounds of the playoff could be played on back-to-back weeks in December, between conference championship weekend and the start of bowl season.

Each first- and second-round game could be given its own viewing window by playing one game each Friday night and three games each Saturday (noon, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.).

No. 4 Ohio State beat No. 1 Alabama in the 2014 College Football Playoff semifinals.

There are a lot of positives to this 12-team playoff, including:

• By inviting the top eight conference champions to the playoff, that should ensure that no conference champion with a legitimate claim to playing for a national title is left out. It should also ensure that every region of the country is represented in the playoff.
• With four at-large bids available, more teams will play meaningful games late in the season. Power 5 teams with two losses may be eliminated from earning a top-four seed but they‘ll still be in the mix for those at-large spots as a reward for a great season.
• With the requirement that the top four seeds must all be conference champions, the conference championship games will carry even more weight than they already do.
• In most cases, the maximum number of playoff games a team could play is three. The only way a team would play four playoff games is if a team seeded 5–12 reached the championship game. That probably won’t happen very often.
• The top 8 seeds each add one home game to their schedule. Seeds 5–8 host first-round games, and seeds 1–4 host second-round games. (The semifinals and final are played at neutral sites.)
• Unlike in a 16-team playoff, in which we’d probably see some embarrassing blowouts in the 1 vs. 16 and 2 vs. 15 games, the first-round match-ups should be competitive. They’d mostly be G5 champions against the second- or third-best teams from P5 conferences. Kind of like the 6 vs. 11 and 5 vs. 12 first-round match-ups that we love to watch in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
• Since we’re still stuck with the bowl system, teams that lose in the first two rounds of the playoff would have plenty of time to prepare for bowl games.

Here’s how this 12-team playoff would have looked in each year of the College Football Playoff. The quality of the top G5 teams has increased as time has gone on, making the first-round match-up more and more appetizing.

2014

(1) Alabama
(8) Michigan State vs. (9) Ole Miss

(4) Ohio State
(5) Baylor vs. (12) Memphis

(3) Florida State
(6) TCU vs. (11) Marshall

(2) Oregon
(7) Mississippi State vs. (10) Boise State

2015

(1) Clemson
(8) Notre Dame vs. (9) Florida State

(4) Oklahoma
(5) Iowa vs. (12) San Diego State

(3) Michigan State
(6) Stanford vs. (11) Western Kentucky

(2) Alabama
(7) Ohio State vs. (10) Houston

2016

(1) Alabama
(8) Wisconsin vs. (9) USC

(4) Penn State
(5) Ohio State* vs. (12) San Diego State

(3) Washington
(6) Michigan vs. (11) Temple

(2) Clemson
(7) Oklahoma vs. (10) Western Michigan

2017

(1) Clemson
(8) USC vs. (9) Penn State

(4) Ohio State
(5) Alabama* vs. (12) Toledo

(3) Georgia
(6) Wisconsin vs. (11) Boise State

(2) Oklahoma
(7) Auburn vs. (10) UCF

2018

(1) Alabama
(8) UCF vs. (9) Washington

(4) Ohio State
(5) Notre Dame* vs. (12) Appalachian State

(3) Oklahoma
(6) Georgia vs. (11) Fresno State

(2) Clemson
(7) Michigan vs. (10) Florida

2019

(1) LSU
(8) Wisconsin vs. (9) Florida

(4) Oklahoma
(5) Georgia vs. (12) Appalachian State

(3) Clemson
(6) Oregon vs. (11) Boise State

(2) Ohio State
(7) Baylor vs. (10) Memphis

2020

(1) Alabama
(8) Cincinnati vs. (9) Georgia

(4) Oklahoma
(5) Notre Dame* vs. (12) Oregon

(3) Ohio State
(6) Texas A&M vs. (11) San Jose State

(2) Clemson
(7) Florida vs. (10) Coastal Carolina

*These teams reached the College Football Playoff despite not winning a conference title. In this playoff, teams have to be conference champions in order to receive a first-round bye.