Kirk Herbstreit shares suggestions to fix College Football Playoff
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Kirk Herbstreit is the latest college football media personality to weigh in on what changes need to be made to the College Football Playoff.
TMZ Sports recently caught up with Herbstreit and asked for his CFP fixes.
“I think the only way it gets fixed is you gotta expand. You gotta go to probably 16 [teams],” Herbstreit told TMZ.
The 12-team format is in its second year. The 5 highest-ranked conference champions make the field and the other 7 spots are filled with at-large bids. This year, with a 5-loss Duke team winning the ACC, 2 of the 5 highest-ranked conference champions were No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison from Group of 5 conferences the American and the Sun Belt. It meant the other 10 spots went to teams ranked in the top 10.
Herbstreit said there should be a ranking requirement. He cited disappointment with teams ranked Nos. 11-14 being left out in favor of conference champions from the Group of 5.
“The other thing is, I think the Group of 5, while it’s great to have them involved, I feel like they have to get to a certain ranking to be able to qualify to be able to get in,” Herbstreit said.
“Nothing against those stories. We all love the Cinderella story, but I just think when you leave Texas, when you leave Notre Dame, when you leave Vandy, when you leave BYU out, the goal was to get the best teams in my opinion into the tournament, not try to make everyone happy.”
The CFP has yet to decide on a possible new format. The Big Ten is reportedly backing a format with a set number of automatic qualifiers by conference and limited at-large bids, while other conferences are set to favor a large number of at-large bids and only automatic qualifiers for conference champions.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
