16 teams, more campus games, fewer auto-bids: Connelly fixes the CFP

In the latest meeting to discuss the future of the College Football Playoff, the sport's leaders last week ended up doing ... not much of anything. They talked about what they would discuss in the future but made no decisions on what the 2025 CFP or the CFP of the next six-year contract (2026-31) would look like.

We have a decent idea of where this is probably headed -- expansion to 14ish teams, maybe with a defined number of bids for different conferences -- but the sport now has a chance to actually get it right. Some of the ideas being discussed make plenty of sense, and others are ridiculous.

If the sport is going to expand the recently expanded playoff -- even though 12 turned out to be an awfully fun number -- and the leaders are going to set the calendar for a few years at once starting in 2026, here's how they should do it.

Jump to a section:
Keep seeding as is | 16, not 14
Limit auto-bids | Straighten out scheduling
More campus games | Adjust calendar

First, don't ditch the weird seeds for 2025

As originally conceived, the 12-team playoff was intended to provide first-round byes for the top four conference champions and automatic bids for the next two. This, of course, was drawn up before the most recent round of conference realignment devoured one power conference (the Pac-12, as originally constituted) and made two others (the SEC and Big Ten) more powerful and brand-heavy than any conferences had ever been. In response, the number of auto-bids for conference champions was reduced to five, but the byes remained. And as a result, the teams ranked first (Oregon), second (Georgia), ninth (Boise State) and 12th (Arizona State) received the top four seeds and first-round byes.

A lot of people hated this, and it certainly looked weird on brackets that had both a team's seed and ranking by a school's name. (Boise State, for example, was listed as both No. 3 and No. 9.) It also inadvertently gave unbeaten Oregon a tougher road, when Ohio State dropped to the No. 8 seed following its upset loss to Michigan, then bombarded the Ducks in the quarterfinals.

Granted, the power of the byes in general came into question when each of the top four seeds lost in the quarterfinals (though none were favored, and Arizona State nearly pulled off an upset as a 12.5-point underdog). But that hasn't stopped the SEC and Big Ten from pushing for a change to the seeding processes in 2025. They'd have each gotten two top-four seeds last season had the conference champion byes not existed, and they are recommending straight 1-through-12 seeding. Because this would be a change to a playoff that has already been contracted out, it requires a unanimous vote from the FBS' 10 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua.

There's no clear reason any conference besides the SEC or Big Ten should agree to this unless they think it will result in favors in 2026 and beyond. Both ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and CFP executive director Rich Clark were quoted in this regard last week. "You've got to look at it in totality," Phillips said. "It's one contract coming to an end and a new six-year cycle, but those things have some linkage to them as well." Meanwhile, Clark said, "It's important we make these decisions for '25 now because they're going to impact what happens in '26 and beyond."

Let's be clear: There's no link between 2025 and 2026. We are likely to see changes in 2026 and beyond no matter what happens in 2025. The SEC and Big Ten are going to act in their best interests regardless. They've already arranged to take a majority of future CFP revenue whether or not their teams earn it in a given year. Everyone else might as well stick with the system that might benefit them slightly for one more season.

Go to 16 teams, not 14

If college basketball has taught us anything in recent decades, it's that we like a nice, clean bracket. The size of the men's NCAA tournament slowly crept up from 23 to 53 in the 30 years before arriving at 64 in 1985. Its popularity skyrocketed right around that same time. Even with the slight expansion to 68 in the decades that followed, the bracket, as drawn, has remained the same. Say the word "bracket" to virtually anyone in the United States -- sans, maybe, a Home Depot employee -- and they immediately picture the 64-teamer.

A 16-teamer for football is clean, but the SEC and Big Ten seem to be pushing the hardest for 14 teams when it comes to setting the format for 2026 and beyond. The reason is pretty transparent: A 14-team bracket has only two byes, and they would almost always go to the champions of the two most powerful conferences. It's one of many ways the two powers are attempting to codify their advantages. They certainly don't have to expand this playoff at all, but assuming they do, just go ahead and go to the clean 16.

One more thing: Add a sixth conference champion to the mix. It would give the sport a two-fer: It would expend the level of overall inclusion, which is always a welcome (and rare) development, and it would also give the top team what you might call a half-bye. In 2010's "Death to the BCS," authors Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan proposed a 16-team FBS tournament featuring every conference champion. That was my preference at the time as well. (It still is, but that ship has obviously sailed.)

Those writers mentioned inclusion as a big reason for the proposal but also wrote, "Involving weaker teams actually rewards the strongest with a near-guarantee of a first-round victory, a competitive advantage three months of regular-season excellence in the making. In 2009, seeding teams based on the final BCS standings, No. 1 Alabama would earn a game against No. 16 Troy. SEC runner-up Florida, a fifth seed, would draw No. 12 Penn State. It's a big difference, and it makes every game of the regular season -- or, in this case, the SEC title game -- matter."

Here's what a 16-team, six-champion field would have looked like in 2024:

No. 22 Army at No. 1 Oregon

No. 9 Boise State at No. 8 Indiana

No. 12 Arizona State at No. 5 Notre Dame

No. 13 Miami at No. 4 Penn State

No. 11 Alabama at No. 6 Ohio State

No. 14 Ole Miss at No. 3 Texas

No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee

No. 16 Clemson at No. 2 Georgia

Six conferences (and an independent) all get access to a national title shot, but the SEC still gets five teams in while the Big Ten gets four. Everybody gets something. Oregon, the only team to reach the postseason unbeaten, would have been rewarded with the largest point spread of the first round. With only five conference champions, the Ducks would have hosted Clemson in this format; they'd still have been favored, but not by nearly as much. Meanwhile, Army gets a shot! That's fantastic! And considering Oregon's defense was far stronger against the pass than the run, the option-loving Black Knights might have been able to make things awkward for the Ducks.

One other thing to mention as it pertains to clean brackets: No re-seeding. Ever. March Madness has taught us that sometimes brackets are chalky, and sometimes they fall apart entirely. Every bracket has its own personality. That's part of the charm.

Multiple automatic bids? Hell no

In the 23 years from 1959 to 1981, as the NCAA men's basketball tournament jumped from the mid-20s to 48 teams, with all sorts of different regional arrangements, teams from either the Pac-12 (usually UCLA) or Big Ten won 15 titles, nearly two-thirds of them. In the 12 tournaments from 1982 to 1993, as the tournament jumped from 48 to 64 teams, either the ACC or Big East won seven titles; they've won 11 of 15 since 2009, too, despite what has felt like a rise in parity within the sport. There's a lesson there: If you have the best collection of elite teams, things are going to work out in your favor more often than not.

The Big Ten and SEC currently have programs that have won 27 of the past 33 football national titles. They are going to dominate any playoff structure. But that's evidently not enough. Last spring, the two conferences seized a huge percentage of guaranteed revenue to come from the new CFP in 2026, and it appears the most prominent expanded playoff idea discussed over the past year has been a 14-teamer with a 4-4-2-2-1-1 structure: four SEC and Big Ten teams each, two ACC and Big 12 teams each, one Group of 5 team and one at-large.

Even the SEC Network's Paul Finebaum thinks this doesn't make sense.

It's hard to simulate previous seasons because the power conference structure changed so drastically in 2024, but even with just a 14-team playoff (not even 16), the SEC and Big Ten would almost certainly average around four bids each at the least. That's how many they would have gotten with a 14-teamer in 2024. So just let it all play out! You're going to get your teams in anyway! A 4-4-2-2-1-1 structure makes it look like you're unnecessarily rigging the game in your favor. We finally have a true tournament for deciding major college football's national champion, and we're immediately going to try to turn it into some sort of weird invitational instead?

With guaranteed playoff spots, it appears the leagues with multiple bids would also be able to create a new TV spectacle for championship weekend: play-in games, where, say, the No. 3 team in the conference hosts No. 6 for an automatic spot in the field. I understand the draw of a win-and-in situation: It's like a playoff game in itself. But while I always scoffed at the idea of an expanded playoff ruining the integrity and impact of the regular season -- as we saw in 2024, it muffled the relative impact of a few specific games while magnifying the impact of far more -- this would actually threaten to render the impact of lots of regular-season games inconsequential.

With play-in games in 2024, we would have gotten games such as 11-1 Indiana hosting 8-4 Iowa and 10-2 Tennessee hosting 8-4 LSU with CFP bids on the line. Indiana and Tennessee had clearly earned playoff spots over 12 games, and Iowa and LSU had clearly been inferior in that regard. But with a single upset, we'd be replacing a deserving team with an undeserving team and completely negating the impact of the 12-game regular season.

Theoretically, another potential draw of having a set number of bids is that Big Ten and SEC teams in particular could confidently schedule harder nonconference games. The two power leagues have been discussing a scheduling arrangement for a while now. Suck it up and schedule those games anyway! We're letting at least 14 teams in the playoff soon! If you're a playoff-caliber team, you'll either win the big, early games or you'll win enough of the other ones to qualify anyway. The money and allure of big games should be more than enough to schedule big games.

The need for a proper strength of schedule discussion

I don't love the level of power Greg Sankey and Tony Petitti, the heads of the SEC and Big Ten, have carved out for themselves -- and how they've used it -- of late. The idea of a college football commissioner continues to resonate, and I would love for such a position to exist just so there's someone capable of telling Sankey and Petitti "no" when needed.

That said, I don't have a problem acknowledging quality where it exists.

The multiple automatic bids are an automatic no-go for me, but without them, the SEC doesn't really have a playoff-related reason to move from eight- to nine-game conference schedules, at least not without either (A) ditching a number of harder nonconference games or (B) the promise of more cash and some clarity on how the CFP committee might handle strength of schedule issues moving forward.

In a recent piece by ESPN's Heather Dinich, a CFP source said, "If we're going to try to have some uniformity and standardization, everyone's got to move to nine conference games because you're never going to get strength of schedule right if some are playing eight and some are playing nine."

This is sensible in theory, but it's also incorrect. Even with only eight games, the SEC already plays the hardest overall schedules.

The reason for that? The SEC has a far larger middle class than anyone else. Last season, one SEC team finished worse than 52nd in SP+. Seven Big Ten teams did. Even with the top half of the Big Ten proving itself beautifully in bowl season, the dregs of the conference were awfully bad. And even after a CFP that featured Big Ten teams playing eight playoff games to SEC teams' five -- providing a boost in the Big Ten's overall schedule strength -- the SEC still finished with five of the top six teams in my SP+ strength of schedule measure and six of the top 11. If you prefer the FPI-based SOS numbers from ESPN Analytics, it was six of the top nine.

(My SP+ SOS rating is derived from a simple question: How would the average top-five team, per SP+, be projected to fare against a given team's schedule? Georgia had the hardest schedule in the country per SP+, with an SOS rating of 0.762, meaning said top-five team would be projected to average a .762 win percentage, equivalent to 10.7 wins over 14 games. Georgia went 11-3.)

There's less dead weight in the SEC, and there are fewer sure wins. That adds up in an strength of schedule formula, and giving each SEC playoff contender a ninth conference game would have an obvious effect. The CFP committee proudly eschews discussion of advanced stats whenever possible, so we're left with discussions of "scheduling intent" and math like "9 > 8." We can do so much better in discussing strength of schedule.

Quarterfinal home games, please

We unlocked something powerful in the first round of 2024's CFP, with some of the sport's most celebrated venues going to a completely different level of hysteria. Notre Dame, Texas, Penn State and Ohio State were favored by a combined 34.5 points in their first-round home games. They won by a combined 77, and that was with Notre Dame (from 24 to 10) and Texas (from 21 to 14) watching commanding leads shrink in the fourth quarter.

These were nuclear-grade environments that left virtually everyone wanting more of them. The weather was ridiculously cold at three of the four venues, but so be it: Weather has been a factor in the NFL playoffs since the NFL created playoffs. Expanding the playoff will itself increase the number of first-round games, but we shouldn't stop there. Take the quarterfinal games out of bowl sites and put them in home stadiums as well.

But this will kill the bowls, right? That's what we always hear -- bowls have already been rendered less meaningful because of the playoff, and now we're going to take some of the season's biggest games (and some of the sport's biggest brands) out of the most revered bowl venues? That has to be a bad thing, we're told. Two retorts:

1. People will watch regardless. Nothing is killing bowls anytime soon. More than 1.5 million people watched the First Responder Bowl on a Friday afternoon in early January. People are going to watch the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1 no matter who is playing in them.

2. Quick: Can you tell me who won the 2024 Peach Bowl? Unless you're a Texas or Arizona State fan, you might not be able to because it wasn't really the Peach Bowl -- it was a neutral-site quarterfinal in Atlanta. And the winner (Texas) then proceeded to play in another bowl game, the Cotton Bowl, nine days later. Ohio State ended up as Rose Bowl champion and Cotton Bowl champion, and neither really mattered since the Buckeyes became national champions in a different game as well.

Never mind the pressure that attending three straight neutral-site games (quarterfinals, then semis, then finals) can put on fans' pocket books -- which we shouldn't ignore because holy smokes, do these trips add up -- but doesn't this diminish the major bowls in a way? Would it really be worse if we took, say, the eight highest-ranked teams that didn't make the CFP and paired them off into the most intriguing possible matchups? We could even assure the Rose Bowl of a Big Ten team and the Sugar Bowl an SEC team if we wanted.

Sticking with the 2024 hypothetical, here's what we might have had for the four major bowls that weren't hosting semifinals:

Fiesta Bowl: No. 17 BYU vs. No. 24 UNLV

Peach Bowl: No. 21 Syracuse vs. No. 23 Colorado

Rose Bowl: No. 19 Missouri vs. No. 20 Illinois

Sugar Bowl: No. 15 South Carolina vs. No. 18 Iowa State

Despite the lack of big brands available, these would be four delightful matchups. BYU fans would have packed the Fiesta Bowl. The Peach Bowl would have pitted two of the four most prolific quarterbacks in the country (Kyle McCord vs. Shedeur Sanders). Illinois and Missouri fans would have been absolutely thrilled to continue their Braggin' Rights rivalry in football's prettiest and most famous venue. And hell, South Carolina would have finally played in its first Sugar Bowl. Granted, we'd have been deprived of the glorious nonsense that a South Carolina-Illinois Citrus Bowl provided, but maybe Illinois' Bret Bielema could have gotten Mizzou's Eli Drinkwitz riled up instead.

Even if ratings didn't quite have the same ceiling, these would have been fun, watchable games played in front of enthusiastic crowds, all potentially with spreads within a touchdown. (BYU-UNLV might have ended up slightly beyond that.) Doesn't that almost feel healthier for bowls than serving as a generic quarterfinal venue?

Maybe fiddle with the dates so it ends sooner?

As mentioned above, I have a very specific reason for wanting college football to have a commissioner at the moment, but the last time the conversation came up on a national level was when Penn State backup quarterback Beau Pribula decided to enter the transfer portal before the playoff-bound Nittany Lions' season officially ended.

Granted, part of that urgency came from the simple fact that things move quickly in the portal and spots fill up, but the fact the season was due to last until Jan. 20, and Missouri -- Pribula's eventual transfer destination -- began its spring semester Jan. 21, didn't help. Considering the transfer portal opens for a set amount of time for playoff teams after their seasons end, this is all pretty awkward timing. So let's scrunch up the calendar at least a bit.

The 2024-25 CFP featured first-round home games on the weekend of Dec. 20-21, followed by the aforementioned major-bowl quarterfinals on Dec. 31-Jan. 1, semifinals on Jan. 9-10 and the title game on Monday the 20th. Because we're hypothetically moving the quarterfinals to home sites, they can now happen on the weekend after the first round, somewhere between Christmas and Jan. 1. The semis can happen a week later, giving us a calendar that would have looked something like this for 2024-25:

First round (Dec. 19-21): One game on Thursday night, one on Friday, six on Saturday (two early, two midafternoon, one early evening, one later evening)

Quarterfinals (Dec. 27-28): One game on Friday night (pitting the two teams that won on the previous Thursday and Friday to avoid any short-rest situation), three on Saturday

Semifinals (Jan. 4): Both on Saturday

Finals (Jan. 13): Still on the customary Monday night

If you want to fiddle with getting rid of conference championship games, as some have proposed, or if you want to play with fire by moving Army-Navy off the weekend after conference championships, then we can have those conversations. But keeping all of those things as is, we can still cut a week off the season without dramatically altering players' rest periods.

Obviously any playoff format is going to have to deal with the juggernaut known as the NFL, which invades Saturdays in December. But a 16-team playoff with six conference champions, quarterfinal home games and minimal automatic bids would give us 19 games celebrating almost every team in the top 25, with 16 teams from six different conferences getting a shot at the national title and only a couple of extra mulligans than we have with the current 12-teamer. And the Big Ten and SEC would get their teams in without mandating it.