A Love Letter to the 8 Team Playoff
An 8 team playoff for college football would make the world a much better place, and here’s why.
First and foremost, more college football is always a good thing, and expanding the playoff from 4 teams to 8 would add two games to the bowl season schedule. Colleges and athletes might complain that an extra game would add more chances for players to get injured, damaging their draft stock and the overall quality of football. However, playing in more football games, especially on the biggest stage possible, provides the athletes yet another opportunity to shine and showcase their talent.
Scheduling for extra bowl games could also become a concern, however I believe that there’s a relatively easy solution. In the 2016 season, the first bowl games were played on Saturday, December 17th, two weeks after the final weekend of the season. I would suggest that the first round of the playoff should be played that weekend in order to kick off the bowl season on a high note. A lot of fans really only tune into bowl games before the playoff because there’s nothing else appealing on TV, and I’ll admit to being guilty of this too. If the bowl season were to open with crucial first round playoff games it might add some more excitement to the early slate of bowl games, and as an added bonus, the second round of games could be kept around the New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day time frame while still giving teams a two week gap between the rounds. As an additional note, I would recommend playing this first round of games at the higher seed’s home stadium to give some extra benefit to teams who have a fantastic regular season. This includes teams in cold weather states too; I don’t fully understand the aversion to playing important college football games in a cold or snowy climate like Ohio or Wisconsin.
Another concern with adding extra teams to the playoff would be the frequent recurrence of the same teams year after year. However, this is more of a college football problem than a problem with an 8 team playoff system. In the first three seasons of the college football playoff era, the following teams have finished in the top 4 of the college football playoff committee’s rankings:
Alabama (3 times), Ohio State (2), Clemson (2), Oregon (1), Florida State (1), Michigan State (1), Oklahoma (1), Washington (1)
If we look at the top 8, here’s the list:
Alabama (3), Ohio State (3), Michigan State (2), Oklahoma (2), Clemson (2), Oregon (1), Florida State (1), Baylor (1), TCU (1), Mississippi State (1), Iowa (1), Stanford (1), Notre Dame (1), Washington (1), Penn State (1), Michigan (1), Wisconsin (1)
Adding four teams doesn’t significantly alter the number of recurring teams, Alabama and Ohio State are still present nearly every year, as is Clemson. Rather, adding the extra teams would have provided for a far more diversified group of competitors.
Some might argue that adding four more teams and thus including some two loss teams and potentially even three loss teams would make for worse football games, as we would see less talented teams involved in the fray. For starters, this is simply wrong. If you’re a college football team that only lost two or three games, especially if you’re in a power conference, you are still a good football team. These are still the 8 best college football teams in the country, so the level of play will not suffer. Rather, the addition of extra teams adds more potential for the randomness and excitement that is essential to the charm of college football.
One of the important added benefits to this system is the role of conference championships. Using the college football playoff committee’s final rankings from 2014–2016, a playoff with 8 teams would have included the champion from every power 5 conference each year. With only four teams, the Big 12 champion has been left out twice, the Pac 12 has been left out once, and the Big 10 champion has been left out once (2016, Penn State was left out, however Ohio State made the playoff). Using an 8 team system, conference championship games could act as play-in games for the playoff, with a conference championship victory essentially guaranteeing a playoff appearance.
Furthermore, I firmly believe that creating an 8 team playoff would create a more exciting regular season, particularly during the early-season non-conference games. It is evident from the rankings so far this year (see Wisconsin, Miami), that the selection committee values strength of schedule very highly, however it seems that many teams will still schedule a less challenging non-conference schedule to make sure they survive that period of games without a defeat. However, an 8 team playoff allows the best teams a little extra wiggle room to lose a game or two, which could make them more comfortable scheduling challenging early season opponents in an effort to build an even stronger schedule. An example of this effect would be this season’s Oklahoma vs Ohio State game from September. A loss in such a game wouldn’t come anywhere near eliminating Ohio State from the playoff in an 8 team system, however as a potential 2-loss Big 10 champion, it is possible Ohio State could be left out of the 4 team playoff. On the flip side, Oklahoma can point to this victory as a point in their favor towards making the playoff in the current four team system, whereas in an 8 team playoff, a victory over another playoff team makes an impressive case for Oklahoma as a top 4 seed. In the 8 team playoff system, there is a lowered risk involved with difficult early season games while the reward is every bit as high as it is in the 4 team playoff system.
At the end of the day, there are more than 4 great college football teams every season, so expanding the playoff only makes sense. Plus, who doesn’t want to see more college football?
