COLUMBUS, Ohio — The College Football Playoff management committee is meeting this week to determine whether to expand the current four-team field to 12 teams. Obviously, it will provide more participation and more revenue.
Naturally, it will rely on rankings and committees to arrive at the chosen dozen. In other words, more politics as usual.
What if we could build a 16-team format, and a committee only had to choose one participant? What if this format created high-stakes drama on multiple levels?
For years, I’ve been tinkering with the idea of adapting college football to a European Champions League soccer grid. The Champions League is a tournament that assembles the best club teams on the continent for a round-robin phase followed by knockout rounds to determine a winner.
I’m not saying it’s perfect and I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments section. “Reed you’re crazy,” is an acceptable answer. Here we go:
We start with a three-year qualifying phase that determines the top-six teams in the Power Five conferences. Everything remains status quo in determining the four playoff clubs through the 2023 season. After that, the top-six teams in each conference, based on their three-year conference record, will enter Champions League play. (Conference athletic directors can decided how to break ties based on divisions such as the SEC East and SEC West.)
That gives us 30 teams. Six other at-large bids will come from the smaller conferences, guaranteeing their participation. I don’t care what you do with Notre Dame, but it would be my wish to put them in a Power Five conference so two smaller schools would qualify for the round of 16.
The six teams in our six conferences will play each other once giving each squad five games. No more of this playing cupcakes and conference bottom feeders. Football fans want to see the best versus best whenever possible.
Each conference team will play one opponent from the other five conferences. That’s five more games, giving us a regular season total of 10 games.
There will be a pre-season draw to determine these non-conference opponents and it will be a TV ratings bonanza.
Let’s use Pitt as an example as they are the local team. It would play five ACC opponents and five non-conference opponents. If Pitt finishes among the top four, it automatically stays in the Champions League for the following year. If the Panthers finish in the top two, they advance to the 16-team knockout tournament. If they finish fifth or sixth, the Panthers would be involved in a one-game playoff to see if it remains in Champions League the next season.
All ties are broken on head-to-head conference matchups. If it’s a three-way tie, it comes down to point differential.
Let’s say Pitt finishes third. It then goes into a one-game playoff with the other five third-place finishers to see who gets into the round of 16. At this point, we would have 15 qualifiers. A committee must pick one other team from the three third-place loser games. Now, we have our 16-team knockout round. A committee seeds them like in the NCAA basketball tournament and we let them battle it out for a national title.
The most games any team can play in a season is 15 games, while the fewest is 11.
So what about the other programs in the country, the non-Champions League teams? They become a second-division league and play their conference games from the teams remaining. They fill out their schedules — probably four or five games — as they please. At season’s end, the top-two teams — based solely on conference records — meet in a playoff game to determine who’s promoted to the Champions League the following season.
Meanwhile, the fifth- and sixth-place teams in each Champions League conference meet to decide who gets relegated back to the second division of their conference. A small-college committee would pick the two most worthy teams from the smaller conferences to see who plays in the promotion game.
Think of all the meaningful games in this proposal and how much money and recruiting cache would be at stake in those relegation and promotion battles. It would be a dream scenario for the networks and for fans who want to see important games every week.
YOUR TURN: Does this Champions League format make sense, and, if it does, what tweaks would you make?
