If you were the athletic director at Utah or BYU, or the commissioner of the Big 12, and you were meeting with the other P4 conference commissioners about the future of the College Football Playoff, what would be your play?
Would you prefer the model put forth by the Big Ten, namely one that features four automatic bids for the Big Ten and the SEC, and two auto-bids for the Big 12 and the ACC, one spot for a G5 team, and three at-large bids for the other highest-ranked teams, combining for a field of 16 qualifiers?
Or would you prefer the model put forth by Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, namely a spot for five league champions, plus 11 bids for the remaining highest-ranked at-large teams, based on the final CFP poll?
If you were suddenly dropped into Yormark’s or Brian Santiago’s or Mark Harlan’s role, which of those two options would you favor?
The obvious consideration:
On the one hand, with two auto-bids, the Big 12 would have a couple of guaranteed teams in, come what may, and then get a slim shot at whatever space remained.
On the other hand, with one auto-bid, the Big 12 would get its champion in, then have to hope for the best, counting on other league teams to boost themselves into contention for qualification at the top of the CFP rankings.
Harlan was recently quoted as saying: “Then, Big 12, let’s win more games. Let’s get after it.”
Hear, hear.
The Utah AD is bang on.
No self-respecting power conference, regardless of how or how much TV money is divvied up and dealt out, should want to acquiesce to the others by conceding a horribly uneven setup that would, without ever playing a single game, give a lopsided advantage to the Big Ten and the SEC. Four automatics for those two conferences, with just two autos for the Big 12 and the ACC? That’s essentially caving to the competition, rendering your league and the schools in your league to second-class status.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark addresses the media during the NCAA college Big 12 women's basketball media day Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
And the message that would send to the advantaged and to your own, the disadvantaged, including coaches, players, recruits, networks, sponsors, boosters, and fans, would do nothing but firm up that enormous divide.
Who wants that? Nobody who hopes for as level a playing field as there can be in college football, given the already unbalanced financial distribution.
Those who say, “Hey, but the other way, you have two guaranteed spots instead of one,” are as weak competitively as they are wrong-headed. Equal out the five auto-bids, and rumble from there.
Technicalities may arise, such as the number of conference games teams from all the leagues schedule against themselves, a number that has not been at the same level in the past, but that could be worked out.
Also, the 5-plus-11 model would grant even more power to those doing the rankings, power that isn’t known to be the most … let’s see, what’s the word? … impartial? Fair? Objective? Reliable? Unbiased? Even-handed? Honest? Scrupulous? Trustable? Intelligent?
Pick your own.
Still, it’d be better than the other plan. Like Harlan said, go out and win more games, earn it on the field, make your team, your league, as relevant as possible.
There will forever be controversy when it comes to guessing which teams deserve to be included in a playoff and which are to be left out. That’s already been evident, and it will go on being exactly that.
But rolling over to the Big Ten and/or the SEC, sitting back and empowering and enabling them and their teams to declare themselves more worthy from the start, without even a single ball being kicked, is too high a toll to pay.
There may well be some subsequent strong-arming here, certain powers declaring themselves more equal than others, all at the detriment of real competition, but Yormark and any AD from the other Big 12 schools, including BYU and Utah, should howl all the day long, doing all they can in the attempt to block a plan that would in the long and short terms disadvantage them even more.
With 11 at-large bids, maybe that would tempt the greedy leagues, too, to seek to get even more qualifiers in the field. At least then the race, if the rankings were done with integrity, would come down to what happens on the field.
In the field, on the field. On the field, in the field. That sounds like an accompaniment that would be in the best interests of all of college football, not just those who see themselves as ordained to rule over and be atop it.
