Sunday Column: Bigger Should Be Better For CFP…But How Different Will It Really Be?

Sponsor: This edition of For The Blogy’s 2023-24 Sunday Column is brought to you by Happy Valley United – the NIL collective representing every Penn State student-athlete. CLICK HERE to join the team and pledge your support.

5 + 7 = 14.

No, this isn’t the new math your kids are learning in schools, but it’s how math works in college football these days. Before the digital ink dried on the CFP press release announcing the new “5+7” 12-team format (five highest-ranked conference champs plus seven at-large berths) that model became instantly antiquated as word leaked that discussions on how to shift it to a 14-team field by as early as 2026 were already underway.

More teams, of course, playing for the biggest trophy at the end of the season means more money for a sport that is already Scrooge McDucking it, but it also means more opportunities for more teams. At least in theory.

As we look ahead to what should be an interesting few years for both the game and in particular a Penn State program that would have surely been in multiple playoff fields by this point had there been 12 teams invited previously, it’s worth examining just how much impact this change will have on which teams are actually hoisting said trophy at the end of the season’s final game, which by my rough calculations will be sometime around Easter.

The expanded field will make things more difficult on the playoff selection committee, which must shift from choosing four teams from a group that has usually been between five and six teams to choosing the last two or three at-large spots from a group that could be as large as a half-dozen teams, if not more. Why? Because the further you get from the top, the more the résumés start to look like one another. Choosing between a one-loss team from what’s left of the Pac 12, a two-loss Notre Dame team, and a two-loss Ohio State team that has won its last five by an average of 28 points is not an entirely unrealistic hypothetical, and it should lead to more debate and scrutiny and more fan bases getting involved, all of which means more ratings for ESPN and more programs in the national spotlight.

With more teams in the field, though, will more actually have a legit chance to win a natty? Well, yes and no. If a hot team gets in as a lower seed, it might be able to knock off a more talented and higher-ranked top seed that hasn’t been in great form toward the end of the season, as happens quite often in the NCAA Tournament. However, college football’s gap between the end of the regular season/conference championships and the start of the playoff, even under the new format, would likely negate most of the momentum for that hypothetical hot team and allow the higher-seeded cold team to regroup. Momentum is huge in college football but talent is, um, huger, and though it wouldn’t be a stretch to see a top-four team go down in the first round now and then, it’s far more likely the most dominant teams during the regular season will continue to wind up in the final.

On the other hand, whether the 12-team format holds or the 14-team format quickly replaces it, the regular season games are going to take on more importance. In previous seasons, if you had one loss and it wasn’t to a top-5 program and you weren’t a top-5 program at the time yourself, your season was pretty much done, whether that loss came in September or early November. If you had two losses and you weren’t Alabama or Georgia, you were really done. Penn State, which often plays Michigan and Ohio State in the relative middle of the schedule, has acutely felt this phenomenon several times in recent years, seeing promising seasons go up in smoke in just a couple of hours. In the new format, a defeat to one of its hated rivals, even a lopsided defeat, would be a setback but not a fatal blow. The remaining games on the schedule would become not mere chances to continue to develop or to put some good tape together for pro scouts but to build momentum and stay in the hunt for one of those at-large bids.

The fans will win out, too. Instead of three marquee games, one of which is often a blowout, and a whole slate of low-stakes bowl games in which most of the better players have opted out, there will now be 11 playoff games involving the 12 best 12 of the best 15 teams in the country, and though it’s unlikely there won’t be the occasional opt out, we should see most of those teams at close to full strength as injury will allow. Plus, home-site playoff games will give more fans of the best teams more chances to see a playoff game without extensive travel.

Is it all a money grab? Of course. Is it a good look to have “student-athletes” spending the entire month of January on the road instead of studying on campus? That ship has long sailed and reached its port, gang. Is it going to fix the real issue college football is facing right now, the way NIL and the transfer portal have combined to thrust the sport into anarchy? No way. But it’s hard to argue that putting more teams into the national title mix is a bad thing, even if the expansion model continues to change before the most recent version has had a chance to debut.