Outside Topic CFP expansion - Printable Version

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CFP expansion - 82lsju - 01-13-2026

is a 16 and/or 24 team CFP in our near future???

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47584209/college-football-playoff-expansion-hearing

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RE: CFP expansion - cctop - 01-13-2026

Part of the Big Ten's issue with the CFP system is a belief that the selection committee has an impossible job that will only get more difficult as the SEC and ACC transition to nine-game conference schedules this year. With an increase in two- and three-loss teams expected, the committee will have a tougher task evaluating those records against the opponents they've played.

Maybe they should guarantee more than one team per conference if all conferences go to 9 games, the playoffs expand, and they get rid of conference championship games.
But this line once again brings up the frustration of the Pac-12 having sabotaged itself by playing a nine-game conference schedule when the SEC and ACC played only eight.

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RE: CFP expansion - 82lsju - 01-13-2026

(01-13-2026, 04:11 PM)cctop Wrote:  Part of the Big Ten's issue with the CFP system is a belief that the selection committee has an impossible job that will only get more difficult as the SEC and ACC transition to nine-game conference schedules this year. With an increase in two- and three-loss teams expected, the committee will have a tougher task evaluating those records against the opponents they've played.

Maybe they should guarantee more than one team per conference if all conferences go to 9 games, the playoffs expand, and they get rid of conference championship games.
But this line once again brings up the frustration of the Pac-12 having sabotaged itself by playing a nine-game conference schedule when the SEC and ACC played only eight.

if they go to 24 teams there will be arguments about a deserving four loss team who is excluded....

Of course some 1 or 2 loss teams should probably be excluded based on who they played given how unbalanced the conference schedules are....

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RE: CFP expansion - BostonCard - 01-13-2026

Assuming that football team quality follows a normal distribution, it is actually harder to differentiate teams the further you get into the “meat” of the distribution, and no matter where you draw the line, there will always be a team on the outside making a claim that it should have gotten in.

The solution, then is to standardize schedules and use objective measures with appropriate tiebreakers to determine who goes in.  You could, for example, say that all conferences must have 9 conference games, and all teams must schedule their 3 non-conference games against FBS teams, 2 of which must be against P4 conference teams.  Then you might give conference champions an automatic bid and “wild card” teams based on the following sequence -> overall record -> head-to-head -> conference record -> opponent’s record (to encourage scheduling tough opponents) -> cumulative margin -> coin flip.  Yeah, I know, then you debate what the algorithm is and what it rewards, but at least you get rid of the committee.

BC

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