Welcome back to the latest edition of Five Wide Fullbacks. In this week’s article we are discussing changes to the 12-team playoff format, removing first round byes, how our rankings differed from the committee, the current betting odds, and the chances of a Notre Dame deep run into January.
1) Was this a good seeding decision by the playoff committee for the first 12-team post-season? What would’ve been your rankings and how could they have handled things differently?
My final rankings after conference championship week would’ve looked like this based on our previous rankings coming into last week’s action:
#1 Oregon
#2 Georgia (+1)
#3 Notre Dame (+1)
#4 Texas (-2)
#5 Ohio State
#6 Penn State (+1)
#7 Tennessee
#8 ASU (+3)
#9 Boise State (+1)
#10 Indiana (-1)
#11 SMU (-5)
#12 Clemson (+6)
#13 BYU (-1)
#14 Alabama (-1)
#15 Ole Miss (-1)
#16 South Carolina (-1)
#17 Miami (-1)
#18 Colorado (+1)
#19 Army (NR)
#20 Iowa State (-3)
Which would’ve given us the following matchups:
#12 Clemson at #5 Notre Dame to face #4 Boise State
#11 SMU at #6 Texas to face #3 Arizona State
#10 Indiana at 7 Ohio State to face #2 Georgia
#9 Tennessee at #8 Penn State to face #1 Oregon
I already had Penn State behind Notre Dame before championship weekend began so I feel good about them staying behind but yet moving up one spot for a good showing in a loss against Oregon. I’ll just reiterate what I’ve been stressing a lot since the playoff format began–we have to punish losses. When you lose it has to matter–even if you played really well in a close, hard fought battle. I think it’s the only way we keep things sane when “best wins” became the de facto first, second, and third talking points in the decision making process a few years ago.
The committee did an okay job, this wasn’t a very controversial process this year–unless you’re a super SEC homer.
2) The consensus from the media seems to be that the automatic byes for the top 4 conference winners is a feature that will be going away as soon as the 2025 season, is this a good idea?
Instinctively, yes. The automatic byes to conference champions feels unfair and wrong. It seems incredibly silly that Arizona State and Boise State get to rest now while other teams have to prepare for tough 1st round games. We don’t have to pretend the conferences are all the same in terms of talent while an automatic bid is more than enough for the league champions.
On the other hand, without that rule this year we would be looking at both Texas and Penn State losing their conference championship games and still getting a 1st round bye, at least according to the committee’s logic. Doesn’t that kind of suck? This goes back to my idea that losses need to be punished more harshly, even when that kind of seems unfair. It’ll bring back more value to games prior to the playoffs.
We cool with a first round bye for Penn State this year?
A team like Boise State shouldn’t get a bye as a 9-seed and in general the rankings vs. seeding decision in all of this was needlessly silly and difficult to understand. There’s so much momentum for it going away that it seems locked up it’ll happen next year.
3) What change to the 12-team format isn’t getting talked about enough?
College football needs to cut the cord completely and remove the bowl games from the playoffs. The first 3 rounds, so 10 games in total, should always be held on the campus of the highest seed. Oregon should be playing 2 games inside Autzen Stadium as the no. 1 overall seed for an undefeated season if they were to make the National Championship Game. That they won’t get one home playoff game is insane to me.
For the non-playoff bowl games to watch for next week’s article I have the following locations:
Birmingham, Alabama
Las Vegas, Nevada
Orlando, Florida (2x)
San Antonio, Texas
Tampa, Florida
The top bowl won’t do it because it’s far less money in their pockets but moving Iowa State-Miami to the Orange Bowl instead of the Pop-Tarts Bowl is the right move for the sport. The non-playoff teams should be getting the top bowl game spotlight and the playoff higher seeds should be getting the bigger money windfall and advantages from on-campus home games. This is also a better deal for fans.
4) Using the current betting odds, who has the best and worst value heading into the playoffs?
I won’t speak to Notre Dame’s odds at this juncture. However, I will partially contradict myself a little bit from what I’ll say down below. Normally in the playoffs, you need to pick things up offensively, and while their odds have dropped since the news of Carson Beck’s injury concern, having Georgia at +500 tied for 2nd best odds feels like bad value if they are rolling with an extremely untested quarterback in the 2nd round.
I shouldn’t say this after their horrendous display against Michigan but Ohio State’s talent, and at least on paper, stability of playmakers on both sides of the ball would make them much better value at +500 than Georgia in my opinion.
5) This is a strange year where Notre Dame lost to NIU, played a relatively underwhelming schedule, and still has to win 4 straight games in this tournament, and yet the Irish feel closer than ever to a National Championship. How real is this?
The biggest thing that many people are commenting on this year (and maybe last year too) is that there’s a complete lack of elite of the elite programs and there has been a great meeting in the middle for the top programs nationally. Now, it feels like it could be anybody’s title (except perhaps Boise State, SMU, and Arizona State).
Winning 4 games at this stage will be brutally difficult either way, although in the past I would’ve envisioned Notre Dame needing to be incredibly efficient passing the ball to get through this type of gauntlet. And yet, Michigan is coming off a National Championship last year in which they converted 3 out of 21 attempts on 3rd down in their 2 playoff games. Three!
Are we allowed to dream?
It’s not crazy to think that Notre Dame’s defense and running game can take things deep into the playoffs and maybe all the way to Atlanta. I was really out on this team after the events on September 7th and there are still parts of this program (key injuries, lack of receiver play, a young offensive line) that scream they shouldn’t win a title.
It’ll be fascinating to see where it goes. The trend line for 2024 has been amazingly high since week 2 but it would be foolish to think this team can’t lose to Indiana. Then the season would look far, far different. I’m not excited about Georgia having a month to prepare for the Irish, should they make it there, and even beating them without Carson Beck feels a bit underwhelming–but I’ll take that all day!
A National Championship in 2024, for real? That is still hard to grasp–it’d be the only thing that would make me feel better about Michigan winning it last year.
Oregon’s reward for being the number one team is the hardest path to the championship, while Penn St, a mediocre team, has the easiest path to the championship. I like what McElroy said on his tv show, do it like the hoops tourney, 1 plays 12, 2 plays 11, etc., or at least reseed after round 1.
Wild Bill! Yes, when you put it that way…the path for PSU is way too easy.
If the weather in South Bend or State College is slightly worse than the projected forecasts (and they keep changing), then I think it more likely you see a change to more neutral sites rather than fewer. The southern teams are not going to stand for playing in those conditions. In truth, the current forecasts, for next week, could be much worse. The high in SB the past 24 hrs. was 16 degrees. The II guys on their podcast yesterday were discussing how IU’s offense could be hampered by the weather. Perhaps a couple domed northern venues could be picked for first round games to lessen travel.
Didn’t Swarbrick hint at that at one point in the past? I really hope not…but I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved the games.
Before Gene Smith retired, he spoke multiple times in the media about the possibility of OSU moving their home playoff games to Indianapolis to play in the dome. The very definition of SOFT…
This disgusts me more than four SEC + four B1G autobids
They’re going to have to change the playoff calendar if the games are going to move on campus (which I agree feels inevitable). Most college campuses aren’t ready for a huge influx of people on New Year’s Day, and the students aren’t around (massive disadvantage for a school like Notre Dame which doesn’t have local or semi-local students).
Until they dump the stupid conference championship games, I think neutral sites are a must for New Year’s Day games at minimum. Now we could easily get rid of the CCGs, have Army/Navy that weekend then round 1 where Army/Navy currently sits and then the quarterfinals where the first round currently sits, and then you can have traditional New Year’s Day bowl semifinals and the title game, but that probably makes too much sense.
Conference championship games should have been gone a long time ago — I will be ecstatic to see those go away. And as you described, ditching those will allow them to bump up the first two rounds of the playoffs so that they are played in December
The conference championship games are huge money makers – why do people think those would be going away?
I think it will likely work out as 14 team playoff, SEC and B1G champs automatically get the 1 and 2 seed, 3 more conference champs are automatically in, and then either they’ll have conference slots or just seed 3-14 based on the rankings subject to the conference champ condition. But, that world will still have conference championship games.
At least that would be a better setup for ND than what we have now, which, as it turns out, is not a great one so long as they don’t punish conference championship game losers much.
The problem with moving the bowl games is the money you’re taking away from billionaires and it’s rare that we do that.
Arthur Blank, Jerry Jones, Stephen Ross and the other NFL owners aren’t going to voluntarily allow that money to leave their stadiums, or at least I’ll be shocked if it does happen.
I unfortunately also agree with what TLNDMA said that Southern teams aren’t going to stand for playoffs games outside in even mild Northern climates and unfortunately since they tend to be the whiniest we will cowtail to them. Then we’re going to have ND hosting a playoff game in Lucas Oil because a general US region that considers themselves the toughest and manliest can’t play football outside in some cold weather.
We’re going to see this all expand to 16 teams in no time. I think they’ll still keep CCGs because $$TRADITION$$. If magically, we somehow avoid the BIG swallowing up the ACC/Big 12 in the next round of TV negotiations, then we’ll see this playoff expand to 20 or 24 teams by 2034. I prefer 24 teams mostly because I can’t stand playing the transitive win/loss game anymore and much prefer watching it get settled on the field. We should just follow the FCS model, but I’m sure someone will say that’s not viable at this level for rea$on$.
I actually love the byes going to conference champs, but largely agree with the rest. Maybe a re-seed like the NFL does? I’d be mad if the bball tournament re-seeded but this is different.