Kirby Smart on college football’s future
Kirby Smart urges leaders to prioritize the game’s future over personal or conference agendas in playoff talks.
If College Football Playoff indeed expands to 16 teams, it will become a more attainable destination for three-loss teams from coast to coast.Bigger playoff could help teams ranging from Alabama and Michigan to Northwestern and Kentucky.In multiple seasons, the SEC would have qualified seven teams for a 16-team playoff.
When Oregon State went 9-3 during the 2022 regular season – its best season in 16 years – the Beavers earned a trip to the Las Vegas Bowl. If a 16-team College Football Playoff had been in place that season, the Beavers would have qualified.
Conference commissioners are debating the playoff’s future format for 2026 and beyond, and momentum swells behind growing the playoff from 12 to 16 teams.
If the playoff indeed expands by four teams, it will become a more attainable destination for three-loss teams from coast to coast.
No two-loss team ever qualified for the playoff until the playoff grew from four to 12 teams. No three-loss team has ever qualified, but my analysis of the 11-year playoff era shows that at least two three-loss teams would have made the playoff each year if a 5+11 playoff format had been in place during those seasons.
That 5+11 model is the favored format by the Big 12 and ACC, and it’s gaining support within the SEC, too. In that model, the top five conference champions would gain automatic bids, and the remaining 11 spots would be filled via at-large selection.
The Big Ten favors a different 16-team model in which most qualifiers would gain entry via an auto-bid process. For the purposes of my analysis, I used the 5+11 framework.
The analysis became tricky, because so many teams changed conferences in the past 11 years. I…
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Publish date : 2025-06-10 10:02:00
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