San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
‘12 IS THE SWEET SPOT’
Expanding from current 4-team format gives Texas schools seat at table
COLLEGE STATION — Jimbo Fisher has been quite feisty this offseason after his Texas A&M team was a lone spot removed from making the four-team College Football Playoff in December.
“If you want a seat at the playoff table, you’re going to have to go take one. It’s not like anyone invites you to sit down,” Fisher said last month. “They ain’t gonna get up and say, ‘Sit down.’ You’ve got to kick the legs out, take the chair and sit down, and kick ’em out of the room.”
But what if the NCAA added an extra-long leaf to the table, offering programs like A&M left hungry and ornery over the holidays the past seven years plenty of space to prove themselves on the field of play?
The College Football Playoff late last week announced it’s considering expanding from its current four teams to a dozen, perhaps as early as the 2023 season. The proposal makes A&M athletic director Ross Bjork, who recalls college football long before even the long-gone Bowl Championship Series, happy for the future of the sport.
“We knew this day was coming,” Bjork said. “You went from the pre-BCS era to the BCS era, to the plus-one model, to the fourteam playoff. This is just the next evolution. I’m really pleased with the number 12 — not because we’re ‘Home of the 12th Man’ — but because it’s really about more access.
“You have five power leagues
and then the Group of Five.
That’s six access points, but if you only added two ‘at-large’ teams, that seems a little small. So you have six automatic spots and six at-large. For the good of the game, 12 is the sweet spot.”
Under the proposal that could be approved by the NCAA within six months, the four highestranked league champions would get byes, while the next four in the opening round would host the last four in. Quarterfinals would be hosted by bowl games on or around New Year’s Day.
Prominent bowls would continue hosting the semifinals, and the title game site would remain up for bidding.
“We’ll take the next three to six months and provide feedback on how and where the games are played,” Bjork said of athletic directors’ roles in the process. “I love this proposal and believe it’s at the right time for the sport.”
Critics argue an expanded playoff will dampen the importance of regular-season showdowns, but Bjork said more seats at the table will create the opposite effect — because they allow hope for a program as a sometimes-rugged season presses on.
“Let’s say we’re in the top five and Alabama is in the top five, and you lose in the last second, or the game is in the middle of the season,” Bjork said. “You still have time to recover, where with one loss you’ve kind of put yourself out (of the running). The regular season will be more impactful this way, and you can stay in contention longer.
“Especially with us in the SEC — it’s a gantlet. This enhances the regular season. But I’m also a bowl guy — I love bowls — and I want to know what the impact on bowls is going to be. Those are the kinds of things I want to study more and see the impacts.”
Had the proposal been in place this past season, A&M would have finished the regular season at No. 6 as an at-large entrant and would have hosted No. 11 Indiana in the opening round. Had the Aggies defeated the Hoosiers, they would have faced No. 3 Ohio State in the CFP quarterfinals, according to Associated Press research.
In 2019, Baylor under thencoach
Matt Rhule would have checked in at No. 7, and in 2015 the University of Houston under then-coach Tom Herman would have made it in at No. 12 as the American Athletic Conference champion.
In 2018, Herman was coaching Texas when the Longhorns lost 39-27 to Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. Had UT won, the Longhorns likely would have competed in a 12-team playoff — and declarations that “Texas is back” would have rang out across the plains.
The first season of the CFP in 2014 would have had even more of a Lone Star State flair, with Baylor at No. 5 and TCU at No. 6. Instead, the equally irate Bears and Horned Frogs stood helplessly on the proverbial sidelines of the initial four-team playoff as Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State mixed it up for the title.
Ohio State prevailed over Oregon
in the championship game — after the Buckeyes were the highly debatable pick ahead of Baylor and TCU for the No. 4 slot.
“You can’t say the (choice) was body of work … we beat somebody 55-3 and dropped from three to six,” a still-smarting TCU coach Gary Patterson said a few months after the snub.
Starting as early as 2023, there would be no need for such heated (and justified) arguments from the oh-so-close outsiders looking in. Finishing 13th does not hold nearly the gravity of finishing fifth.
“Will there always be debate with numbers 13, 14 and 15? Sure,” Bjork said. “But the expansion broadens the pool, and this is all about access. If you took the last couple of years, 13, 14 or 15 might have three or four losses.”
North Carolina finished 13th in the final 2020 CFP tabulation under former Texas coach Mack Brown and lost 41-27 to Fisher
and the Aggies in the Orange Bowl. A&M wound up No. 4 in the final Associated Press poll, its highest finish since winning the national title in 1939, a bittersweet end to the season for the surging Aggies, considering they had narrowly missed on competing in their first CFP.
The lone loss for 9-1 A&M was 52-24 to Alabama in Week 2 — the same score of Alabama’s victory over Ohio State in the national championship game. The Crimson Tide beat Notre Dame 31-14 in the CFP semis.
“A&M should (have been) a playoff team,” Brown said after the Tar Heels’ two-touchdown loss in the Orange Bowl. “Watching them and watching Notre Dame, they’re so similar that you feel like we should expand the playoff.”
Brown was hit hard by prominent players on both sides of the ball opting out of the Orange Bowl as they began preparation
for NFL careers. More meaningful games — ones with national-title connections — also likely would cut down on players opting out of postseason contests, at least among the top dozen teams each year.
Fisher has said he’s a longtime “bowl traditionalist” but that what happened to cap the 2020 regular season — and not just to A&M — made him even more of an outspoken proponent of playoff expansion. For example, Cincinnati of the AAC finished the regular season 9-0 but just No. 8 in the final CFP ranking. The cold-shouldered Bearcats wound up narrowly losing to perennial SEC East contender Georgia in the Peach Bowl.
“The way we’re going to find out” the true champion each season, Fisher said, “is to expand the playoffs.”