College Football Playoff Blowouts Are Nothing New As Debate Over Indiana, SMU Rages

Many of the semifinal games in the four-team era looked like this weekend's games at Notre Dame and Penn State.

Southern Methodist Mustangs running back Brashard Smith (1) carries the ball during the first half as Penn State Nittany Lions defensive end Smith Vilbert (92) and safety Jaylen Reed (1) tackles at Beaver Stadium. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

The first two games of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff haven't been particularly competitive. Notre Dame jumped all over Indiana on Friday night, which scored two late touchdowns to make the score a respectable-looking 27–17. That final does not do justice to just how dominant the Fighting Irish were. Nothing went right for SMU early on, as Penn State took advantage of three Kevin Jennings interceptions to jump out to a 28–0 first-half lead en route to a 38–10 win.

Indiana and SMU each made the College Football Playoff field with impressive records against relatively light schedule. Despite Hoosiers coach Curt Cignetti's pregame assertion, the Hoosiers did not beat a team ranked in the CFP or AP Top 25 during the season. SMU avoided the ACC's other top teams—Clemson, Miami and Syracuse—before falling to the Tigers in a tight ACC championship game.

Fans and members of college football's punditry (and Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin), largely from SEC country, have used the two results to argue that the Hoosiers and Mustangs didn't belong in the field after all. There is certainly a chance that Alabama, the first team out of the field, would have performed better in South Bend or Happy Valley, although the Crimson Tide's rough outings at 6–6 Vanderbilt and 6–6 Oklahoma don't lend much confidence. The bigger takeaway is that the first-round of the 12-team playoff looks pretty similar to the first-round of the four-team playoff so far.

A strong majority of playoff games from 2014 through last season were blowouts. In fact, 13 of the first 16 CFP semifinal games were decided by double-digits. The 2023 and '24 semifinals delivered incredible games, but those were the exception.

People clamoring these teams aren't worthy for the playoff are just talking to hear themselves talk..

Of the 30 previous CFP games, 18 of them have been won by 17+ points and that's with a 4 team field.

5 of the natties have been 21+ point blowouts, its just college football.. pic.twitter.com/3xHJkCpgVn

— Marshall Levenson (@MarshallLev_) December 21, 2024

Teams on the wrong ends of some of those blowouts: an undefeated, defending national champion Florida State (2015); Clemson teams in the midst of their program-altering run of national title contention (2018, '21); an Ohio State team with a slew of future NFL players ('17). Those were not controversial inclusions in the field.

There will be plenty to debate after this first edition of the 12-team playoff concludes, and there are certainly tweaks to conference scheduling and the playoff seeding that can help create the best matchups possible. But the history of the CFP has featured far more blowouts than classic games, even between teams that were evenly matched on paper.

Indiana and SMU's losses are far from outliers.

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