Betting Stuff: Expanding the College Football Playoff only benefits the sport's best
College Football Playoff skeptics have every reason to gloat right now. Coaches who felt Playoff expansion talk would only beget Playoff expansion talk were right. Before even hosting a 12-team Playoff, leaders in the sport have already begun talking about a 14-team Playoff.
How about 16? The SEC and the Big Ten each get 4 spots. Everyone else gets the remaining 8. Perhaps college football’s new alliance has already thought that one up.
According to Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, the SEC and Big Ten want their champions to receive the top 2 seeds and the first-round byes that would come with them in a 14-team field. Unlike college basketball, Liberty isn’t pulling an upset and downing Georgia on the gridiron, even if it manages a first-round win. A made-for-TV event could certainly provide some opening-round drama, but it won’t change something unique about the game — the top is just about untouchable. More teams will just benefit the best teams.
This isn’t the NCAA Tournament, though the timeline feels a little similar.
In 1975, the men’s basketball postseason field expanded to 32. A decade later, the field had doubled to 64. During that first 32-team tournament, the Final Four included 3 teams that entered the tournament as AP top-6 teams. During the first 64-team tournament, 8-seed Villanova won the whole thing and set the stage for what was to come.
Since the field expanded to 64, there have been 21 Final Fours that featured at least 1 team that received a seed outside the top 4 in its respective region.
It has happened in 10 consecutive tournaments dating to 2013. And it has resulted in an astonishingly amazing product.
Anyone who says the same will happen in college football is kidding themselves. Especially in the era of name, image, and likeness.
In college basketball, game-to-game variance is wild. Teams get hot. Shooters get on a run. It’s built for players like Markquis Nowell. Depth doesn’t matter. Nowell played 37, 40, 43 (of 45), and 40 minutes in Kansas State’s tournament games. The Wildcats’ rotation went only 7 deep beyond the opening round. They were 3 points away from a Final Four berth last season.
Depth matters in college football.
Heading into the final Pac-12 Championship, Oregon closed as a 9.5-point favorite over Washington despite losing to the Huskies in the regular season. The Ducks were viewed as the better team. On a neutral field, they’d beat a UW team that wasn’t exactly rolling into the title fight.
Oregon lost by 3. It went into the game without 1 of its 2 starting cornerbacks. Its top edge defender got hurt in the first quarter. Its other starting corner left the game with an injury early in the second half. Against a UW team with a Heisman finalist quarterback and one of the sport’s best collections of receivers, that was a death sentence. Washington gained 142 yards at nearly 6 a play in the fourth quarter alone to outscore the Ducks 14-7 and secure a spot in the CFP.
Washington advanced. Injuries mattered.
Had UW won the national title, it would have been the second-biggest longshot to do so since 2001. Auburn won in 2010 after it was priced +5000 in the preseason. UW opened at +4000 in 2023. Ohio State in 2014 and LSU in 2003 opened with the same odds. Ohio State was +1900 in 2002 when it won.
Sports bettors could get Michigan +800 to win the title in the preseason last fall. Georgia (+350) had the third-shortest preseason odds to win in 2022.
Here’s FanDuel‘s early odds to win next season’s College Football Playoff national championship:
| Odds | Implied Odds | |
|---|---|---|
| Georgia | +300 | 25% |
| Ohio State | +480 | 17.2% |
| Texas | +700 | 12.5% |
| Oregon | +850 | 10.5% |
| Alabama | +1300 | 7.1% |
| LSU | +1500 | 6.3% |
| Ole Miss | +1500 | 6.3% |
| Michigan | +1600 | 5.9% |
| Penn State | +2200 | 4.4% |
| Notre Dame | +2200 | 4.4% |
| Florida State | +2800 | 3.5% |
We’ve seen enough so far to suggest no one outside of the top eight is winning it.
Expanding the Playoff further — a move that would also see four first-round byes eliminated in favor of just two; one for the SEC and one for the Big Ten — would pretty effectively neuter the tournament’s ability to produce a run from a low seed.
The schedule is already long. Teams are beat up in November. Teams like Michigan and Ohio State might rest their stars in the final week of the regular season (a major TV problem) but the teams fighting for at-large bids won’t be able to afford the same luxury.
They’ll have to grind. And then face a team like Georgia with a rest disadvantage on top of a talent gap.
In the Playoff era, Georgia is 13-1 in games where it has a rest advantage. Alabama is 13-1. Michigan is 8-3. Ohio State is 14-4.
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The Playoff has often devolved into a “best vs. most deserving” argument, and the CFP selection committee has frequently been said to seek the four best teams. But until this past season when it excluded Florida State, it hasn’t taken the better team at the expense of the more deserving.
The 2014 Ohio State team was missing its quarterback, but still got in. The 2015 Michigan State team got in and got murdered. The 2018 Ohio State team got left out because Oklahoma avenged its only regular-season loss in its conference title game. The 2021 Cincinnati team got in and got murdered.
But it hasn’t yet mattered because the best have still won out.
Eight of the 10 national championships that have been won during the CFP era have gone to the SEC and the Big Ten.
Is that going to change with more teams in the field? TV execs don’t actually want an answer to that question, they only want more inventory. And the product is harmed in that pursuit.
Sure, teams in the back end of the weekly CFP rankings will have more to play for during the closing stretch of the regular season, but the teams at the top will have less incentive and more margin for error.
In the first year of the 12-team format, I’m backing Ohio State and I’ll feel pretty good about it.
Want to lay an early wager on the 2024 national champion? Sports betting in North Carolina will go live soon, and fans can find all the information they need to get ready with our resources.
