15: The Magic Number For the College Football Playoffs

So we witnessed quite the impressive March Madness on both the men’s and the women’s brackets as we saw a slew of early upsets and it was punctuated by a couple excellent final four matches. This was everything that we’ve been trying to see from the college football side, but of course with the same schools being selected and the pleas for playoff expansion being met with resistance, the College Football Playoff was a sought-after idea with unintended consequences.

Now, it’s just an expanded version of the selecting process that gave us many instances of better teams being singled out over the years, and schools in specific areas and specific divisions being ignored altogether. One of my favorite stats was Boise State in one four-year stretch only lost three times by a total of four points---and still never got a title shot. At least until 2026 we’ll be stuck with the current format of just the top four teams making it, which means at least one Power 5 conference champion will be missing out.

What makes March Madness fun are the smaller schools that can emerge out of nowhere and defeat titan sport programs, nobody is truly safe in winner-take-alls partially because usually these larger seeds will play schools they never play, resulting in different styles of play they may not be accustomed to countering. Football is built for this sort of thing, as the sport allows for dozens of ways to create offensive and defensive schemes. Alabama can easily prepare for what is coming from schools like LSU or Auburn.

But why not expand the playoffs significantly and have them play schools they’d never usually face in a regular season? With all the talk about UCF during their back-to-back undefeated seasons, I would have loved for them to at least have the opportunity to face an Alabama or a Clemson. But the space is too small, because if excellent football programs from the Power 5 can’t make it, how on earth can a Group of 5 earn a shot?

So the solution should not be 8 teams, the solution should be -15- teams entering the playoff. Therefore, 15 of the 35-40 bowl games currently in existence can be dedicated to the expanded playoff format.

Under my scenario, the top 15 ranked teams will compete for the championship. Give me all the Power 5 champions, all the Group of 5 champions, and then we throw in five runner-ups from the mix of Power 5 and Group of 5 conferences. The top seed overall will have a bye week (in the case of 2020, it would be Alabama not having to compete in the first round) and will be the only team allowed to play at their home field in their bowl game when the bracket goes down to eight teams. When the bracket also minimizes, the seeding will reshuffle once again so your performance in the opening round is just as important as the victory itself.

So if we take the 2020-2021 season and apply my format, here would have been the teams on the first day of the College Football Playoff:

Under this situation, the importance of the conference champions increases dramatically because it guarantees you a spot in the playoff, and if you lose you still can’t be guaranteed a playoff position despite the strength of your conference because of the automatic entry of 10 conference champs within the two levels of schools. Some of course are going to feel bad for the SEC, but if the weaker conferences keep getting killed in the opening rounds then the case for the remaining five seeds will lean towards the tougher groups of schools like the SEC or the Big 10.

But we keep relying on computers and pollsters to assume that the SEC or the Big 12 would demolish anything coming from the Mountain West or anyone in the Group of 5. With expanded playoffs, the field is possible for the Group of 5 to show their worth, to see how they’d manage against an Ohio State or a Clemson. As of today, all we have are hypothetical scenarios, with 15 teams going in instead of 4, these hypotheticals become realistic matchups with actual results.

The one setback is that these kids getting paid nothing to play would potentially have four additional games on top of their regular season if they aren’t the top seed in the playoff bracket. My solution is that THEY SHOULD ALL BE PAID—————

never mind, let me retrace my steps here since I know the NCAA would never…..

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My solution to the potentially-bloated football season is that every college football season in every conference should be 10 games, with the eleventh game depending on your ranking in the conference. If you happen to rank on top of your conference, then that’s your title game while aiming for the playoffs. That way, at most, you’ll play 15 games.

Cut the regular season a little, slice off some of those infamous fluff games, and that way you can fit in the expanded playoffs without adding more physical damage to the college kids. Also, expanding the rosters, and maybe even setting a regular season limit to how many games the players can play before the postseason could also be put in the equation.

To me however, the playoffs need to grow dramatically to add more intrigue and interest in a college football playoff system that is seeing its interest and ratings wane dramatically. Even though hitting March Madness numbers of over 60 teams is a near impossibility, 15 teams would be the perfect number to lower the number of deserving teams missing out while also giving smaller and weaker conferences their opportunities to make some noise and take down the usual Samsons of college football like Alabama and Ohio State. This would also increase revenue for the bowl games which through a rotating schedule will be allowed to also participate in the playoffs every so often. More money, more interest, better chances for upsets, and less ridiculous snubbing from the rankings. I see all of this as a win-win-win.

But yea, let’s also pay the players and bring back college football video games, please.