Is more always better?
If you are a fan of a team in a Group of Five conference, like Hawaii, you might think that a 14-team College Football Playoff is a great idea because it would mean more access than the 12-team model that goes into effect next season.
Yes, that’s right — a down has yet to be played with the first expansion to 12 teams and there’s already talk of adding more teams to the CFP.
I’ve written many times that eight is the right number for the CFP. But 12 is much better than four. For the next two years, the five highest-ranked conference champions are guaranteed a spot in the CFP, with seven at-large selections. It doesn’t matter what conference those champions are from.
But that new number, 14, sounded suspicious when I first heard about it last month. Why 14? Isn’t that a strange number of teams for a tournament? How would it even work?
Actually, it’s pretty familiar and simple. The NFL playoffs have started with 14 teams since 2020. You might know that the way it works is the teams with the best records in the AFC and the NFC get a bye, while the other 12 slug it out in the wild-card round. That leaves eight teams, who then play quarterfinals and semifinals leading up to the Super Bowl.
In the CFP proposal for 14, the Big Ten and SEC want their conference champions to play the part of the AFC and NFC top seeds — meaning they would be guaranteed a bye.
That’s not all. According to multiple reports, the super conferences have pushed for four automatic qualifiers each, leaving just six total spots for about 100 of the 133 teams.
As you might suspect, that didn’t sit well with anyone else, and it’s looking more like this (for now ): three automatic qualifiers for the Big Ten and the SEC, two each for the ACC and Big 12 and one for the Group of Five. That would leave three at-large slots.
So, it turns out there’s good reason for cynicism. A 14-team CFP is about the rich getting richer, and the powerful retaining that power.
Everyone knows that the Big Ten and the SEC are in a world of their own now, after the Big Ten looted the Pac-12 of premier programs USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington and the SEC plundered the Big 12 — again — this time stripping it of its two biggest brand names, Texas and Oklahoma.
So, going up to 14 isn’t really about more access for deserving teams that aren’t in one of the super conferences. It’s about more automatic bids and byes for just the twin powers.
The most pushback against 14 is understandably from the ACC and Big 12, since with the 12-team format their champions are likely to receive byes. Plus, how could they like any proposal where other conferences get more automatic qualifiers than they do?
Those who benefit from a 14-team tournament most will say that a system that helps protect the big names in the biggest conferences means everyone wins—the trickle-down money (aka crumbs) that goes to the rest of the FBS world will be bigger, and the top champion from the Group of Five is still guaranteed a spot.
UH athletic director Craig Angelos can see both sides of expansion.
“The hope was more opportunity for Group of Five schools. This gives us one automatic. One for 50-to-60 schools, out of 133 FBS schools,” he said. “I totally understand that the teams playing at a higher level have more spots. It was our hope that we would have more than one automatic bid, we can still get an at-large.
“If you like the NCAA basketball tournament, where you have lots of Cinderella stories, you like more opportunities for more teams,” Angelos added. “But football is a little different.”
Yes, it is … one great player with some hot-shooting teammates can get you pretty far at the dance. But you don’t get bonus points for scoring from far away in football. And, especially now with NIL and the portal, football success requires deep pockets to build and sustain a deep roster.
It also helps if you’re in one of the two super conferences. Membership has its privileges.