You don't actually want a bye, do you?
Is a College Football Playoff bye actually worth the trouble?
Author’s Note: This piece was originally scheduled to be released last Wednesday, January 8. Due to technical issues that took SID Sports offline, it was not able to be released then. Still, I think it’s an interesting article so I’m still pushing it out, just a lot later than I wanted.
As I’m sure you’re aware from reading this newsletter, the College Football Playoff is in a brand new era ushered in by the 12-team playoff. There’s a lot of change and, as we weed through the data, a lot to learn.
One thing that stuck out at me watching the Quarterfinals this past week was that all four teams that received first-round byes ended up losing, most of whom lost badly. Sure, Boise State and Arizona State were the underdogs against much higher-regarded teams like Penn State and Texas, respectively. Georgia may have been on their backup quarterback, but still. Those aren’t excuses, they’re just context. Context that belies quite a trend.
Boise State looked flat aside from Maddux Madsen. It took half of the game for Arizona State to show up and mount a torrid fourth-quarter comeback to force overtime against the Longhorns. Ohio State dominated the undisputed Number One team from start to finish, scoring first on a 45-yard catch and run by Jeremiah Smith one minute into the game. Georgia took until the third quarter to find the endzone their only time of the day against Notre Dame.
What caused all of these teams to fall flat on their faces? Could it be the long layoff between games?
Anatomy of a Bye
Traditionally, a first-round bye is supposed to be a reward from a well-played season. It gives teams a rest after a hard-fought season while their competitors duke it out on the gridiron another week.
In terms of the current College Football Playoff alignment, first round byes are awarded to four teams: the four highest-ranking conference champions according to the final College Football Playoff Poll. This year, byes were awarded to: Oregon (No. 1 Overall), Georgia (No. 2 Overall), Boise State (No. 3 seed, No. 9 Overall) and Arizona State (No. 4 seed, No. 12 overall). The fifth conference champion was No. 16 ranked Clemson, who earned the fifth autobid spot but was seeded at 12.
Because the autobids into byes are reserved for conference champions, each team earning a bye had to play on conference championship weekend. That was December 7 for most of these teams. The opening round of the College Football Playoff was played December 20 and 21 - two full weeks later. The Quarterfinal round was this past week on December 31 and January 1 - three weeks after conference championship week.
Remember when I told you the purpose of a bye? For a team to earn their rest and recuperation while other teams are forced to get back into the fire. Does it have that affect after three full weeks compared to two full weeks for the other programs?
This is the first year the College Football Playoff has had byes, so we can’t really judge based on a four-team data set. Luckily, there’s another football league in America that does have byes in their playoff format and have done so since 2002.
What does the NFL have to say?
Surprisingly, a lot.
I decided to break down how NFL teams that have earned their byes performed in the postseason in the modern expansion era (2002 onward). You can see a full breakdown of the information on the pie chart below.
70 percent of teams that have a bye in the NFL playoffs make it past their first game, which is in stack contrast with what we’ve seen in this year’s College Football Playoff. This data also isn’t coming off of four data points like we’d see analyzing the College Football Playoff. It comes from 22 years of data with 80 teams involved. That’s enough to be statistically significant
One important thing to note is that the current playoff structure of the NFL, starting in the 2020 season, is that only one team gets a bye week as each conference’s top dog. There’s also no weeks off. The NFL Regular Season this year is scheduled to come a close January 7 in a Sunday Night Football game between the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions. The Wild Card round opens the very next weekend, with games likely starting January 11.
If we look at the bye weeks in the NFL, you see a clear advantage. Each conference’s best teams get to rest the January 11 weekend while the other six conference teams are on the field duking it out. The regular season conference champions get to sit back and rest, knowing they’ll get the lowest seeded team that wins.
That’s a clear advantage, isn’t it?
Possible solutions
So how do we fix this mess?
There are a couple of ways to fix the bye conundrum. The easiest one is actually the most unrealistic: move the playoff up in the bowl season calendar.
By simply cutting down the layoff time from even three weeks to two for bye-earning teams, we can level the playing field some and get the advantage of a bye back. Sure, the other eight playoff teams get a week off, but they have to jump back into the fray after one week off. Two is a stretch and we certainly saw some rust developing in the Opening Round games (at least, that’s what I’m calling Kevin Jennings’s out-of-character performance against Penn State), but we can all agree two weeks off is more on-par for competition than three.
So why won’t that work? Well, it means the New Years Six bowls would have to move off New Year’s to the week of Christmas. That may seem like a trivial change, but college football is a traditionalist sport that clings to its nostalgic and perceived values for better or for worse.
Just look at the tantrum the bowls (cough cough Rose Bowl) threw to delay the 12-team field. The Rose Bowl in particular was stingy, threatening to pull out of the College Football Playoff entirely before ultimately acquiescing and allowing the sport a path into the modern era with an expanded playoff.
I think pulling the Rose Bowl formally off of the New Year’s docket instead of only in odd years where the Rose Bowl would be the home of a semifinal may be the point the bowl would stop entertaining. They already held the process hostage over limited guarantees about their traditional 5 p.m. Eastern on New Year’s Day kickoff slot. Taking that off the table may be enough to make the Rose walk. And without all the bowls’ approvals, the Playoff has an uncertain future.
Where do we turn, then? A more radical solution may be easier after all.
Of course, I’m talking about yet another expansion. This time, from 12 to 14 teams.
Why expand further? Well, moving from 12 to 14 cleans up the bracket a lot. It allows for only two byes for the teams that absolutely earned them, instead of just any conference champions. Additionally, there are discussions and momentum behind the expansion to 14 as early as 2026.
It wouldn’t necessarily affect the scheduling issue - there would still be the same two- and three-week layoffs - but it would address the balancing benefits issue. Especially if you remove seed-based autobids and fully seed the bracket based on the College Football Playoff Rankings.
Before we get into that, let’s clear up one thing. This year is going to be a statistical anomaly. Each team played well in their losses, but had other contributing factors than just being off a long time. Well, except for Oregon. Boise State was a lower-ranked team than Penn State and played admirably in a game much closer than the final score indicated. Arizona State was also ranked lower than Texas, but took the Longhorns to overtime. Georgia had quarterback Gunner Stockton making his first career start against one of the nation’s best defenses. Those circumstances aren’t going to affect every season. That’s not realistic. But neither is the seeding structure of the current playoff.
With that said, we land at the proposal to fix this mess. First, we go to 14 teams from 12. In terms of a bracket, that means moving from four teams with byes to two. That’s much more balanced.
Then, we keep a similar structure. The top five conference champions make the field. The rest go to at-large teams just like the current structure. Except, the conference champions don’t automatically get the top four spots and the byes. Just seed it all based on the overall CFP rankings.
For the 2024 season, the seeding based on CFP rankings would like like this for a 12-team field:
Oregon* (1)
Georgia* (2)
Texas (3)
Penn State (4)
Notre Dame (5)
Ohio State (6)
Tennessee (7)
Indiana (8)
Boise State* (9)
SMU (10)
Arizona State* (12)
Clemson* (16)
Still the same 12 teams, but a much more balanced bracket. Byes would go to Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Penn State. The first round matchups would be:
Clemson at Notre Dame
Arizona State at Ohio State
SMU at Tennessee
Boise State at Indiana
Sounds good, right? I think those games would be a lot closer than we saw in the first round this year.
But that’s not all, we’re re-seeding after the first round. That means if No. 5 Notre Dame beats No. 12 Clemson, Oregon doesn’t draw the best team from the first round. Instead, they get the lowest seed.
In a 14-team field, you’d get the above teams and the final two at-large bids going to No. 11 Alabama and No. 13 Miami.
The field would then include two byes: Oregon and Georgia. With re-seeding they’d get the two lowest-ranking winners of the first round. The first round, then, would look like:
No. 14 Clemson at No. 3 Texas
No. 13 Miami at No. 4 Penn State
No. 12 Arizona State at No. 5 Notre Dame
No. 11 Alabama at No. 6 Ohio State
No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee
No. 9 Boise State at No. 8 Indiana
Not a bad field, right?
Will that fix every problem the playoff has? No. Not even close. But it’s a start. Personally, I think moving the schedule up a week makes it better for everyone, but that’s just me.
What do you think? I want to hear from you! How would you fix the playoffs? And do they even need fixing?
What I’m Reading:
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An idea hatched after years of 12-hour days glued to the couch, Tyler Schuster puts his passion for the sport on full display, delivering big-picture ideas, weekly previews and gambling nuggets directly to your inbox.
Tailgators Setup by Brian Lennon, John Crimella, and Gary McDaniel: I’ll be a little selfish on this one and plug a great college football podcast that I was lucky enough to join a few weeks back to talk UEC and SID Sports! Brian, John and Gary are a ton of fun to listen to and break down the weekend to come in a very easy to digest and entertaining way. Be sure to tune into the Tailgators' Setup podcast and subscribe for more great content from them!
Split Zone Duo by Alex Kirshner, Steven Godfrey, and Richard Johnson: You can't beat Alex, Richard and Godfrey. They're on the front lines breaking news and creating the best content in the game. I 100 percent recommend SZD for anyone into college football and Steven Godfrey hating your team. They’re mostly a podcast publication, but sometimes being able to listen to three well-informed guys talking about college football is what you need in your life.
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I respect you my friend, but this would not work. It would cost everybody too much money, because it would kill conference championship games, with immediate effect. The byes are there to incentivize teams to actually play their conference championship. If that benefit is removed, why play the conference championship game? If you're a team like SMU in this framework, just abdicate the ACC, refuse to play in the game, and keep whatever ranking they had instead of falling down to the final at-large, because even with a win in that ACC championship game, SMU was never getting to as high as fourth, meaning the conference championship (with no bye on the line) would've been an only-lose situation to them. They would've just refused to play it.
Before you say they wouldn't stoop to that level, what makes modern teams different than any of the teams of the past that did this exact thing when the conference championship game became a lose-lose proposition? 2003 Oklahoma not trying very hard in the Big 12 Championship comes to mind. Teams would likely still be contractually obligated to play these games, but there would be starter resting, and opt-out situations, and likely a lot of 66-7 games between one team actually needing the win (in this example, Clemson) and the other team daring the committee to pretend this blowout loss means anything (in this case, SMU).
Perhaps with more established conference-school relationships, this would be less of an issue, but why would Texas care about winning the SEC? Why would SMU care about winning the ACC? Why would Oregon care about winning the B1G? There's no pride there. These teams want to win their conference because there's a reward in the end. It's not like Ohio State trying to win the B1G or Alabama trying to win the SEC, where a conference championship would inherently mean something more.
Therefore, I believe the byes do need to remain attached to the conference championship games. However, the seeds don't. Why don't we just give the byes to the same teams (to keep conference championship games from dying immediately), but seed them according to where they're ordered by the committee? In years like this one, that means giving a bye to the 1, 2, 9, and 11 seeds. From here, just match highest against lowest until you run out of teams. In this season, that would've meant the exact same first round matchups.
We've talked before about how I would prefer a re-seed that intentionally avoids rematches, so this would've created a round two of Oregon-Arizona State, Georgia-Boise State, Texas-Ohio State, and Penn State-Notre Dame, and a round three (assuming Oregon beats Arizona State. The rest of the results are either quite clear or already happened) of Oregon-Notre Dame, Georgia-Ohio State, and if Oregon and Ohio State meet in the finals, that's life. We can't avoid a rematch forever.
The format sucks because it insists on having a bracket (for some reason). That's why. Just eliminate the bracket and do a re-seeding procedure with more sensible ways of seeding the teams, and we don't have to make the playoffs even more bloated (they're way too big already. That was clear as day this season), and we don't have to advocate for the death of conference championship games in the way that you've just done in the above article.
BTW, I would advocate for a two-bye format only if we either abolish the corrupt committee and go to a computer system, or simply make it known from the start that only the B1G and SEC champions are eligible. Elsewise, it will be an embarrassment to the sport when the B1G and SEC *coincidentally* produce the best two teams in the country every year, and this sport needs no more embarrassment.