Predicting the College Football Playoffs: Thinking Through Some (Mostly) Unintended Consequences

There will be opportunities for conspiracy theories to flourish

Jan 8, 2024; Houston, TX, USA; Michigan Wolverines wide receiver Darrius Clemons (0) celebrates with the CCFP National Championship trophy after beating the Washington Huskies in the 2024 College Football Playoff national championship game at NRG Stadium. / Troy Taormina-Imagn Images

The move to a 12-team playoff will affect college football in many obvious ways, but there are many other wrinkles that won’t be as obvious until things start to play out. Many of those changes are of the sort that Nebraska fans and fans of other teams have long dreamed about. Let’s look at some specific ways that (mostly) unintended/unforeseen consequences of the changes are likely to wash over this season and/or the next.

It could end up being an advantage to be ranked #5 or #6 for the playoffs rather than having a bye for the first round.

The top four playoff teams by rank will be the four highest-ranked conference champions, while the #5 and #6 teams will be the best of the rest. Ohio State and Georgia are widely believed to be the most talented rosters in all of college football as both are loaded with future NFL players, many of whom are also veteran leaders. Both teams will now be playing in highly competitive conferences without divisions, so losing even one conference game could be enough to keep either or both out of their conference championships.

When you consider that Ohio State has to travel to both Oregon and Penn State (plus a home game against Michigan), and that Georgia has to travel to Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, and Ole Miss (in addition to home games against Clemson, Tennessee, and Florida), it’s entirely likely that each could/would/should lose a game, even if they are objectively the best teams in the country. If either misses out on playing in their conference championship game(s), they would be prime candidates for being ranked #5 or #6. That would mean a homefield advantage in the first-round games against the two lowest ranked teams in the playoff field. The two lowest ranked teams will likely include the conference champ from a Group of Five conference, and also a bubble team from the P4, such as someone who made their conference championship game but didn’t do well. With the #5 and #6 teams hosting the first-round games in their home stadiums, the two lowest ranked qualifiers will have to go win in a hostile environment against one of the best teams in the country, and it’s likely that #5 and/or #6 will have a week of rest following the end of the regular season as it would be complicated to lose the championship game yet end up ranked as high as #5 or 6. (Georgia likely would have done that last year if the same system had been in place, so it’s definitely possible.)

If the #5 and #6 teams have a week of rest before winning their first-round games, they’ll then play the #4 and #3 ranked teams on a neutral field for the second-round games. The #3 and #4 teams will be conference champions who weren’t good enough to be ranked #1 or #2, so those will likely be teams that benefited from being in a weaker conference and/or upsetting someone in their championship game: Kansas State in 2022 would be an example of this as they won the Big 12 by upsetting an undefeated TCU. If everything plays out according to this pattern, the #5 would end up having a home game against the team thought to be the weakest in the playoffs followed by a neutral site game against the weakest of the P4 conference champions.

Nov 15, 2014; Madison, WI, USA; Wisconsin Badgers linebacker Marcus Trotter (59) celebrates by making snow angels on the field following the game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Camp Randall Stadium. / Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images

Cold-weather teams could finally realize their fans’ long-held dreams of getting to play Southern teams at home in December.

For decades, Nebraska fans would grumble about having to play Florida teams in the Orange Bowl, which often meant having to play Miami on the Hurricanes' home field in front of their home crowd. It wasn’t much better if it was Florida State at the Orange Bowl. How about Big Ten champions having to play USC or UCLA in Pasadena? How about having to play LSU in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl? Georgia in Atlanta in the Peach Bowl? Texas or A&M or any other Texas team in the Cotton Bowl? Yes, obviously, it was a much nicer trip for fans from the frozen north to spend New Year’s in warm sunny climes, but there clearly was a huge homefield advantage for teams playing at or near their home stadium for what is supposedly a neutral-site bowl game.

Hallelujah, the tables can be turned! The #5-8 ranked playoff teams will get to host bowl games in their home stadiums for the first round, which means it should be highly likely that at least 1 or more teams from the southern states will have to travel north in mid-December to say “hello” to a game on the frozen fields of the Midwest. If you want to imagine a dream-like homefield advantage, picture Nebraska hosting Miami at home on a windy, blustery below-0 night game. Not only would the players be in shock, but how many Florida folks will be making the trek north to support their team? Imagine the same scenario for other potential matchups, such as Florida @ Michigan, Texas @ Notre Dame, Clemson @ Ohio State, LSU @ Utah, or Alabama @ Penn State. Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler would be high-fiving each other somewhere, grabbing the popcorn. It seems likely to happen at least once per year, especially if the committee that ranks the teams seeks to avoid conference rematches in the first round, which is what has happened in the first decade of the four-team playoffs.

Or would something suspicious happen instead? If there’s one area of agreement among the institutions of the SEC and ACC, as well as the West Coast additions to the Big Ten, it would be a fervent desire to never have to play a road playoff game in the frozen north in December. Since the playoff committee is a committee, the process of ranking and matching up teams is a political process, so prepare to feel suspicious if somehow, magically, the #5-12 teams end up being ranked in such a way that southern teams do NOT end up traveling north to play road playoff games in the first round.

The rich will get richer.

This will prove true on a number of levels, and it’s almost unavoidable. The SEC and Big Ten will get a minimum of six teams into the playoffs between them for as long as it remains a 12-team playoff, and it could possibly be as many as nine if Notre Dame doesn’t make it. The Big Ten and the SEC make too much money off their conference championship games to give them up, but they also won’t want to see whoever loses that game being penalized for playing in it. This effectively is what happened last year to an undefeated and #1 ranked Georgia who missed the playoffs due to losing to Alabama in the SEC championship. In the 12-team format, both teams would now get in, but what happens if a 2-loss Georgia or Alabama loses a close SEC championship game to the #1 team in the country?

Meanwhile, the guaranteed spots for the top four conference champions would mean that another 3-loss team that wins a conference championship game in an upset would be in the playoffs. The 2022 3-loss Kansas State would now make the playoffs, but an objectively better 2-loss SEC or Big Ten team who loses their conference championship game (for a third loss) could be pushed out. There’s no way that the Big Ten and SEC will go along with that scenario being repeated in the future. If it happens once, it’s an anomaly, and it can generate more interest, but if it happens more often than that,… well … it won’t. There will likely be more expansion of the playoffs, but they’d also want their conference champions to still get a first-round bye, so look for a 14-team playoff to be coming soon.

The rich will get richer, part 2.

Most college football fans probably didn’t pay much attention to the resume of Matt Entz who was recently hired by Lincoln Riley to coach at USC. Entz is a two-time FCS national champion as head coach at North Dakota State. He succeeded Chris Klieman and Craig Bohl, both of whom had also won FCS NCs, but they left for head-coaching positions at Kansas State and Wyoming, respectively. Before them, there was already a long tradition of FCS championship coaches at NDSU and elsewhere being hired away to coach at FBS schools.

So what is so significant about Entz leaving NDSU to go to USC? Not only is he NOT leaving to be a head coach at a larger school, he won’t even be at the level of a coordinator. Entz is now the linebackers coach for the Trojans. Why? First, it pays more than being head coach at the most dominant FCS program in the history of the sport. Second, it is the fast track to being named a coordinator for USC or a similar prestigious program, which will pay more in most instances than being a head coach at almost any program outside of the Power Four conferences. “Power Four” is a misnomer, too, because the salaries and facilities of the median Big 12 and ACC programs do not compare to those in the Big Ten and SEC, and the chasm will continue to widen.

There is a new pecking order being established: if you’re a successful head coach at the FCS level, it’s likely a smoother track to being a HC at a prestigious FBS school to be an assistant at a Blue-Blood than to take a chance on trying to turn around a non-Blue Blood by taking over as head coach at a Group of Five school, … and probably even at any of the financially challenged bottom schools of the ACC or Big 12. The Big Ten is currently filled with coaches such as Kirk Ferentz, PJ Fleck, Matt Rhule, and Curt Cignetti who started out as head coaches at small schools before being given their shot at the biggest stages. Will that happen much in the future? With the limits being taken off the number of coaches who can work with the players, schools like Texas, USC, Ohio State, et al. will be able to pay more to their 15th assistant than what a competitive FCS school can pay its head coach.

Nov 4, 2023; Tucson, Arizona, USA; UCLA Bruins head coach Chip Kelly on the sidelines during the second half at Arizona Stadium. Kelly is now the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. / Zachary BonDurant-Imagn Images

Chip Kelly gave up his position as head coach at UCLA to be the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Granted, Chip had other considerations than a young up and coming coaching prospect, but doesn’t it seem likely that this will be the future of coaching in college football? Lincoln Riley, Dan Lanning, Sherrone Moore, and Ryan Day were each given their first head-coach position at an elite football school after proving himself as a coordinator at an elite program.

So how is this related to the playoffs? With the December early signing period overlapping with the first part of the playoffs, teams will be switching out coaches fairly regularly during this crucial time. Nick Saban famously showed Lane Kiffin the door in 2016 between the semifinal game and the championship game, which Alabama then lost to Clemson. Saban was annoyed that Kiffin was spending too much time working on building the Florida Atlantic program, which he had been hired to coach the following season. The decision was probably made easier for Saban because he happened to have Steve Sarkisian sitting on the bench as a backup analyst at the time.

The NCAA has now effectively removed many of the restraints that prevented guys like Saban from hiring an army of NFL coaches to work at every position. If a program has the money, and they want to win, why not hire another coach to help out? Luke Fickell just hired former NFL head coach Jack Del Rio to work at basically an unnamed role with both offensive and defensive players. Why not? Almost every year there is some drama over whether or not Sean McVeigh will return to the Rams for the next season. Is it crazy to think that Lincoln Riley might pick him up some December to help USC in the playoffs in a year when the Rams won’t make the NFL playoffs? Is anybody completely off-limits? If Ryan Day has Ohio State at the #1 spot in the playoffs when he announces that he has been hired to take over for ___________ NFL team, why wouldn’t Ohio State hire some all-star (or even all-star cast) to help ensure both a better championship run and a smoother transition for what follows?

Is it crazy to think that the successful head coach of the G5 conference champion might get poached to work with a different team before the same playoffs? Last year Kalen DeBoer left one playoff team to coach another almost immediately after the championship game: is it crazy to wonder what that situation might have looked like if Saban had told the Alabama athletic director ahead of time that he would be retiring? We still don’t know exactly how many games Lincoln Riley coached at Oklahoma after having already agreed to terms to coach USC: is it crazy to think that that could happen again with playoff teams involved?

Nebraska is blessed with a fan base and alumni support that truly outpaces what should reasonably be expected,… but money doesn’t grow on trees in Nebraska. Meanwhile in Texas, money flows out of the ground for the Longhorns and the Aggies. The Texas constitution set aside land in West Texas to support the University of Texas and Texas A&M, and—shocker!—there was a lot of oil in that ground. On top of incredibly generous alumni support, incredibly athletic department revenues, and money from oil flowing into their coffers, both programs also get full shares of the SEC money pie. Oregon still has Phil Knight and Nike dollars, USC has Hollywood money, and Washington has booster bucks from the local aviation and tech industries spilling out of its coffers. What happens when one of those teams is in the midst of a playoff run when they decide that what they most need is somebody else’s head coach to coach their linebackers or running backs or quarterbacks or whatever? Big money usually gets what it wants.

Notre Dame, for now, can pretty much schedule its way into the playoffs.

Notre Dame is a program that typically starts every season ranked somewhere in the top 15 teams in America. They possess one of the most marketable brands, and they have the option of joining whichever conference they would prefer at whatever point they would desire. They don’t want to join a conference though. Notre Dame is the only current independent team with the combination of financial wherewithal and contractual opportunities to continue somewhat indefinitely as an independent and still compete at the highest level. Jack Swarbrick, the former Notre Dame athletic director, literally had a seat at the table when the committee negotiated the expansion of the playoffs from four teams to 12. Was he naïve enough to not notice the implications of the rule about conference champions being the only teams that could have a first-round bye?

Jack Swarbrick was almost certainly quite aware of the pros and cons of what was being proposed, and he knew that Notre Dame would reap incredible benefits from the changes. He was aware that Notre Dame will likely end up ranked somewhere between #5 and #8 more years than not. If you followed what was written above, that means that they’ll host a first-round playoff game most years. Notre Dame Stadium in December will be a fearsome homefield advantage, and there’s a decent chance that most years they will end up playing 1 of the 2 lowest ranked teams in the playoffs. If given a choice, would it be better for Notre Dame’s future brand recognition to have a bye in the first round of the playoffs or to consistently host (and usually win) a first-round game at home? The four first-round playoff games will likely draw as many or more viewers as the top bowl games in the past, and Notre Dame is perfectly situated to potentially host one almost every year. All that they have to do is 1) be good enough to be ranked at the start of the year; 2) not lose more than 2 games during the season. When you keep in mind that they set their own schedule, they could literally schedule their way to hosting a first-round playoff game every year.

Notre Dame happens to have a ton of traditional rivalry games with teams that are—how should this be phrased?—NOT national powerhouses. Yes, they play USC every year, and that’s a tough one, but they also play Navy every year, and their schedule is often filled with teams like Purdue, Georgia Tech, Stanford, et al. These are good teams, but nobody will confuse that schedule with what Georgia or UCLA will be playing this year.

Aug 31, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish quarterback Riley Leonard (13) throws a pass under pressure from Texas A&M during the first quarter at Kyle Field. / Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images

In fairness to the Irish, yes, they typically do schedule tough home-and-home series with teams like Texas A&M this year or Georgia a few years ago,… but they don’t have to. With all of the conference expansion taking place, efforts to “force” Notre Dame to join a conference could easily backfire into Notre Dame scheduling 3 games every year with the service academies while continuing to play whichever traditional rivals are willing (and able) to continue to play them. They do NOT have to add in an extra tough nut, like Georgia.

It would not be hard to schedule 10 teams every year that they would beat almost every year ad infinitum. Consistently hosting a first-round playoff game would likely mean consistently playing in two rounds of playoff games … every year. Sometimes they’ll win that second-round game, too, and sometimes they’ll win the third-round game. Eventually they’ll win the whole thing, and that’s a significant reason for hope as a Notre Dame fan since they haven’t been able to win a national championship since 1988 in any of the prior iterations of the Bowl Championship Series or College Football Playoff.

Yes, they have to give up the possibility of having a bye for the first round, but some of those teams with byes will lose their second-round game. Is that worth more than Notre Dame’s potential to a) host a playoff game more years than not; b) win more of those first-round home games than they lose; and c) occasionally win the second-round game, too? If the SEC and the Big Ten push for (or at least allow) an expansion to a 14-team playoff, it provides even more security for Notre Dame to qualify every year. While other teams will have to share their CFP payday with their conference mates, Notre Dame will get to keep all of theirs for themselves. Where’s the downside?

There is more left to be written, but this article is already long enough for now. Thank you for reading this far. If anything was shared here that you had not heard or read before, I’d appreciate the feedback.

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