Indiana winning the national championship a couple weeks ago showed what college football can offer in this new era. The new age of college football has brought changes to the sport that makes it much different from the landscape we knew ten years ago. Now we have a 12 team playoff, Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) money going all over the sport, and a huge amount of transfers, many of which never find a landing spot. 

In 2023, the College Football Playoff committee let Michigan and Washington in as the one and two seeds respectively, leaving two spots in what was a four team playoffs system. Texas got in with little opposition, but the fourth team invited to the playoffs was Alabama, a team who lost to the fifth ranked, undefeated Florida State Seminoles. Georgia and Ohio State also had one loss that season and while the 12 team playoff was already announced for 2024, the 2023 season showed why a higher number of teams were needed in the playoffs. Or did it?

I would actually argue that the playoff system’s problem is not the number of teams, but the people selecting the teams. The playoff committee should not have the final say as to who gets into the playoff without better guidelines. An undefeated Florida State got left out due to their quarterback being injured, which caused an uproar. Now with the expansion of the playoff there have been missteps. In 2024, Boise State and Arizona State were the third and fourth seeds respectively while being ranked ninth and twelfth. This was due to a rule that has since been eliminated where the top four out of five conference champions had to be the top four seeds in the tournament. This was changed for the following season and likely for the better. But then there is another question that emerged from the following season, should conferences have a championship game at all? The Virginia Cavaliers were likely going to be in the playoffs this year if they had not lost to Duke in the championship game.While Miami got in the playoffs, this exposes the biggest issues with huge conferences, parody in the sport and the money driven mindset of everyone involved. The Duke Blue Devils were left out of the playoffs, becoming the fourth Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) champion to be left out of the playoff in five years. This is problematic for a conference that had a national runner up this year in Miami. There is a solution to some of these problems and just looking at two different tournaments can address the problems.

First, look at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) (the level lower than Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) which is the highest level) and their 24 team playoff system. Expanding to something between 16 and 24 should give some room to have enough teams from all the conferences in the FBS. Next, look at the Union of European Football Association (UEFA)  Champions League in soccer where they have a system of ranking leagues based on the performance of their teams in previous years. The system could help give conferences like the Big10 and Southeastern Conference (SEC) more playoff spots while still giving the lower conferences a place to compete for a national championship. As for conference championship games, they might as well not exist and be replaced with the new playoff system. Teams in each league are selected into the playoff by the standings of the conferences rather than a committee. In a 24 team format the top 16 teams would be seeded with the higher ranked teams hosting the first and second rounds. The unranked teams, who are likely non-power conference champions, go to the nine through 16 ranked teams in the first round and the top eight teams have a first round bye. While it is not perfect, implementing both systems into college football would make the playoffs more fair and give all the leagues in the FBS at least one bid each and keep the seeding somewhat competitive.