Tulane Coach on Expanded College Football Playoff: ‘We’ve Got an Opportunity’
Starting this season, the best Group of 5 team won’t just be going to a New Year’s Six bowl game. That school will be guaranteed a playoff berth.
The new, expanded 12-team College Football Playoff has guaranteed a berth for the top five ranked conference champions at the end of the season.
While the Power 4 conferences will get four of those bids, the last will go to the top-ranked champion from one of the five Group of 5 conferences — the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference and the Sun Belt Conference.
It’s a chance for those teams to show they’re worthy of playoff access. New Tulane football coach Jon Sumrall is all for it.
“Access is great,” Sumrall said on the ‘Wake Up With Mintzy' podcast recently. “I think it creates more fan interest. Nobody every says, ‘Man I wish they’d cut some of the NCAA Tournament (basketball) games. I wish they’d play less.’ I think more football is good football. I think it’s going to be good for our game.”
Two years ago Tulane was that team talked about as being worthy of a berth in an expanded playoff.
In 2022 the Green Wave were 11-2 and won the AAC title game over UCF. When the final CFP rankings came out, Tulane was ranked No. 16, making them the top-ranked Group of 5 champion and giving them access to one of the New Year’s Six bowl games.
The Green Wave went to the Cotton Bowl and beat USC, 46-45. The Trojans were ranked No. 10 in that final CFP Top 25.
Had this format existed two years ago the Green Wave would not have gone. The top five ranked conference champions were Georgia, Michigan, Clemson, Utah and Kansas State. They were all in the Top 9. After that it would have gone to the next seven ranked teams.
But, that was when five power conferences existed. Now there are only four after the implosion of the Pac-12 only left the league with two schools — Oregon State and Washington State. The two schools have a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West but must compete for one of the seven at-large bids.
That means a Group of 5 conference champion will make the playoff. Sumrall is eager for the challenge.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about whether a Group of 5 school could be a Power 4 school in that format,” Sumrall said. “And a lot of Group of 5 schools have beaten Power 4 schools in a bowl game.”
Sumrall wasn’t coaching at Tulane two years ago. Head coach Willie Fritz led the Green Wave back to the AAC title game last season before a loss to SMU. After that, he left Tulane to take over the program at Houston.
Now, Sumrall — a former Tulane assistant under Curtis Johnson a decade ago — picks up where Fritz left off. He believes the Green Wave have a chance to claim that berth this year.
“The momentum is real,” he said. “You know, the trajectory program right now is high. It's been fun to watch what's happened the last couple years from afar. ... We've got a really good opportunity. The momentum that's already been started. The 12-team playoff is a real thing now. So we've got an opportunity. We've got access that we all want, and I think it's a great time to be a Tulane football fan, for sure.”
MATTHEW POSTINS