Dear College Football Playoff Selection Committee and College Football Playoff Board of Managers,
Congratulations on the successful conclusion of the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff. This year’s National Championship had me on the edge of my seat for the first time in three years.
Playoff games inside college stadiums were a great call, highlighted by over 100,000 Penn State fans screaming against the SMU Mustangs. Even better, there were no conference championship rematches, as many fans feared.
The current playoff system has flaws, however, they are not too difficult to fix. I am here to help with two solutions to get the College Football Playoff back on track in 2025. The basic premise? Keep it simple.
Problem: Conference champions are overvalued.
Solution: The top five conference champions automatically make the playoffs. The top four seeds go to the top four teams regardless of conference.
A Boise State team whose lone loss came against Big 10 champion Oregon by one point deserved to be in the CFP. An Arizona State squad that won a challenging Big 12 deserved to be in the CFP.
By no means should those two schools have received bye weeks. The College Football Playoff should reward conference champions with playoff slots, but it should grant the best overall teams four bye weeks.
If two undefeated schools play meet in their conference championship, there is no reason that the game’s losing school should be under a lower-ranked conference champion.
Notre Dame, an independent school without a conference, can never earn a top-four seed with the current system. The Fighting Irish could go undefeated next season and beat every team on their schedule by 50, but they can earn no higher than the five seed. That makes no sense.
Not joining a conference hurts a team’s playoff case with no way to earn an automatic spot. If they play well enough to be a top-four school without needing a conference championship, there is no reason they should not earn a bye week.
Keep it simple. The top four teams should be granted byes, whether they are from the same conference or not.
Problem: The lower-ranked teams have easier paths to the semifinals.
Solution: Reorder the bracket for the quarterfinal round.
The CFP dodged a bullet this year. With no upsets in the first round of the playoff, the fixed bracket progressed with eight-seed Ohio State taking on No. 1 Oregon, seven-seed Notre Dame dueling with No. 2 Georgia, and so on.
If 12-seed Clemson had overcome the odds and defeated Texas, the lowest seed in the tournament would have played…four-seed Arizona State? Meanwhile, undefeated Oregon still would have been forced to play against No. 8 Ohio State. If what awaits the best team in college football is the potential for a tougher matchup, why would any team want the one-seed?
In the NFL playoffs, the one seed in each conference earns a bye week and plays the lowest advancing seed in round two. The top seed is incredibly valuable and whoever plays the best season earns the best possible path to the Super Bowl.
Keep it simple. Copy the NFL’s homework. The top seed in the CFP should earn a bye week, and play the lowest-ranked team that escapes the first round. The No. 2 seed takes the second lowest-ranked advancing team, et cetera.
This way, the one seed has immense value, as it should. If your school is the top team of 134 NCAA FBS schools, you deserve the easiest matchup in your first playoff game.
The College Football Playoff will be a fairer playing field for the teams involved by following these two simple steps. Thank you for a great season. See you in August.
Sincerely,
Caleb Joshua Heffron
