CFB Playoff: Management Committee should quickly fix 12-team format

A 12-team CfB Playoff is going to be great fun. Having the change occur for the 2024 season was the correct decision, rather than making college football fans wait.

There is much to be excited about. Byes for the top four teams and first-round, on-campus games are wise format decisions.

What those wise decisions and the six conference champion, automatic qualifiers do not do is assure fairness. Fairness, as to, are the best teams being properly rewarded for their regular season and conference championship games results?

What is the basis for a claim the new format will not provide fairness? The answer requires nothing more than looking at the final CFB Playoff rankings and 2022-23 bowl season.

New CFB Playoff Format and 2022-23 Rankings

Note: Final CFB Playoff Committee rankings are available here.

This season in the 12-team format, the four teams earning byes would have been, No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Michigan, No. 3 Clemson and No. 4 Utah.

Based on bowl games no more than two of those teams (and maybe only one) can be considered as worthy of first-round byes.

In the Orange Bowl, Clemson was badly beaten by the third-highest-ranked SEC team, the Tennesse Volunteers. In the Rose Bowl, Utah lost by two touchdowns to the third-highest-ranked Big Ten team, the Penn State Nittany Lions.

The first-round home teams would have been fairly earned, with Tennessee, TCU, Alabama and Ohio State hosting.

In the quarter-finals, would it have been fair that TCU (assuming they would have beaten Tulane) would have played an extra game, while lower-ranked Utah did not? The easy answer is absolutely not. The same situation is true if Ohio State had beaten Penn State in the first round, while Clemson enjoyed a bye.

Going back to the BCS and certainly, during the CFB Playoff, the primary goal was to have the best teams playing for the National Championship. The four-team format evolved away from that goal. The 12-team format moves even farther away.

The problem is the automatic qualifiers. They are a problem because conference championships are so far from being equal, the new format may frequently give first-round byes to lower-ranked, less deserving teams.

Let’s review exactly how the 12-team format will work, compliments of CBS Sports.

• 12-team bracket: Six highest-ranked conference champions (no minimum ranking requirement) plus next six highest-ranked teams
• Bracket placement: Four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded 1-4 with first-round byes; four highest remaining seeds will host lower seeds at sites to be determined

There are other format details but they have nothing to do with selecting the 12 best teams.

Will the CFB Playoff Management Committee look at the 2022-23 post-season and see the weakness in the 12-team plan? Not a chance.