Less than two years into the 12-team College Football Playoff format, a new narrative has emerged after each round.
Last year, it was about lower-ranked teams like Boise State and Arizona State receiving first-round byes thanks to their status as conference champions. Last week, the question was whether Group of Five teams truly belong.
And now, it’s time to talk about whether bye weeks are actually a disadvantage for the teams that receive them based on two years’ worth of results.
As you may have heard, teams coming off of bye weeks are now 1-7 in the first two years of the 12-team College Football Playoff. Aside from Indiana’s thrashing of Alabama in the Rose Bowl on Thursday, every team that has received a bye in the CFP has proceeded to lose in its first game.
Admittedly, that number is somewhat misleading, as two of those losses came byway of the aforementioned Boise State and Arizona State teams that only received byes based on a seeding technicality that the College Football Playoff has since changed. It’s also worth noting that the majority of teams coming off of byes have actually been underdogs entering the games, albeit often by relatively small margins.
Still, 1-7 speaks for itself. And at this point, it would be tough to argue that the rest is worth the rust.
The most obvious solution? A 16-team playoff, which would eliminate bye weeks from the CFP altogether. Even without playing the result of the last two years, momentum toward such a format was already in motion, as the sport’s two most powerful conferences — the SEC and Big Ten — have each favored expanding the playoff to at least 16 teams, with a greater emphasis on automatic bids.
As recent history has shown, the SEC and Big Ten typically get what they want and there’s no reason to think a made-for-television product like the College Football Playoff will ever favor fewer games over the opportunity to add more. Now, however, the conferences (and ESPN) have a competition-based argument for expanding their field: is it really fair to continue a format that seems to put the sport’s top teams at an inherent disadvantage?
Sure, two years is a small sample size, but as the adjustment to the seeding format proved, the CFP powers that be are willing to react quickly to such narratives. And one would imagine that will especially be the case if a 16-team (or more) playoff was already the end goal in a sport that’s shown a propensity for preferring profits over product.
All things considered, an expanded College Football Playoff was likely always on the way. But with the narrative regarding bye weeks now pervasive, it may merely be a formality.
