College Football Playoff should adopt ‘5+7’ model to incentivize regular season, feature quality matchups

After years of debates and multiple rounds of voting, the College Football Playoff finally approved a new, expanded 12-team format which will make its debut during the 2024 season. For about eight months, the future of the sport’s postseason seemed to stabilize. Then, last summer, the Pac-12 as we knew it imploded. 

The Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC all swooped in and picked at the Pac-12’s remains, swelling their numbers and drastically changing the math in the college football landscape. The result sent the CFP power brokers back to square one. Since then, we’ve seen debates on format, meetings with no votes and votes with no results. 

The CFP Board of Managers will meet again this week, and it’s expected (according to ESPN) that they will vote to move from the current 6+6 model to a new 5+7 format that will reduce the number of automatic bids for conference champions to five, adding an additional at-large bid. 

It’s not a perfect change without flaws or downside for some, but it should have a positive impact for both the regular season and the CFP’s first round.  

Why the hold up? 

Expansion to 12 teams was formally approved for the 2024 and 2025 seasons on Dec. 1, 2022. At that time, a 6+6 format provided access for champions from more than half of the FBS conferences. Any changes to the playoff format or the financial distribution model requires a unanimous vote, and to this point a change off of that 6+6 has not garnered unanimous support from the board. 

Because while the Pac-12 no longer has enough teams to hold a regular-season conference schedule or a conference championship game, it does still have a seat in the CFP meetings. Its representative, Washington State president Kirk Schulz, is reportedly the hold up. He is concerned on how the two remaining schools — Washington State and Oregon State — will be paid out in the next CFP contract without knowing what their affiliation would be. 

The hope is next week’s meeting will allow the board to resolve the issue one way or another, bringing clarity to the playoff race for 2024. 

Keeping 6+6 changes original intention of CFP

There was a period of time when the Pac-12’s demise appeared to be a win for the Group of Five conferences. The American, Mountain West, Sun Belt, Conference USA and the MAC agreed to the 6+6 format knowing they would likely be competing for one playoff spot among them, similar to how…