- 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 counted teams in the conferences that they’ll call home in 2026. So, a bid for Texas counted toward the SEC, a bid for Oregon counted for the Big Ten, and so on. In some years when Texas or Oklahoma, now in the SEC, won the Big 12, I awarded an automatic bid to the Big 12’s runner-up. Other years, I assigned the Big 12’s auto bid to Central Florida or Cincinnati – those schools are now in the Big 12 – when those schools were highly ranked and won conference championships. Assigning the Group of Six’s automatic qualifier became a chore in certain years, too, because of conference realignment.
You could conduct this analysis in slightly different ways, but it wouldn’t change the upshot that a 16-team playoff would have been a boon for three-loss teams these past 11 years.
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Last season, a trio of three-loss SEC teams – Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina – would have qualified.
The SEC and Big Ten would have benefited most from the four extra at-large spots, as compared to a 12-team playoff, but teams from the Big 12, ACC, the reconstructed Pac-12 and Notre Dame also would have grabbed last-four-in spots in some years.
In 2014, a whopping seven teams with three losses scattered across each of the Power Four conferences would have qualified for a 16-team playoff using the 5+11 format.
Oh, and how about this: The playoff would have featured its first four-loss teams. Auburn (2016), Stanford (2017) and Texas (2018) were four-loss teams ranked high enough to crack a 16-team playoff.
In other words, once the playoff hits 16 teams, it’s no longer a destination reserved for the elite.
Kentucky, Northwestern could have made 16-team playoff
Based off past results during the playoff era, the four extra at-large bids would have helped teams ranging from Northwestern, Kentucky, UCLA, Washington State and Georgia Tech to blue bloods like Alabama and Michigan.
“Sixteen teams, you’d get more people excited about it, more people in play,” said Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin, a proponent of a 16-team playoff.
Beyond the 16 teams that qualify would be many more remaining in playoff contention into November.
The 12-team playoff ‘created a lot of interest,’ Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said during a call with reporters. ‘Going to 16 teams, I think, there’s more of that.”
The four-team playoff became an exclusive party reserved for top-perch programs like Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Clemson.
A 16-team playoff would broaden avenues of access to the middle class and even traditionally lower-tier teams within power conferences that could align the stars and crack the bracket with a 9-3 record.
Blue-blooded Alabama twice would have been among the last-four-in in a 5+11 playoff format. That’s also true of fellow blue bloods like Michigan and Notre Dame. Also, though, Northwestern twice would have qualified in the last-four-in.
Three times in the past 11 years, Ole Miss would have been in the last-four-in of a 5+11 playoff, ranking the Rebels as the biggest beneficiary of the playoff expanding by four teams.
Is it any wonder Kiffin wants 16 teams?
Expanded College Football Playoff would help blue bloods, too
Here are some other findings from my analysis applying the 5+11 format to the past 11 seasons:
∎ Alabama and Ohio State never would have missed the playoff. Georgia would have qualified in nine of 11 seasons, and Clemson would have qualified eight times.
∎ Notre Dame is among the programs that would have qualified seven times.
∎ The Big Ten would have led with 53 bids, followed by the SEC’s 51, meaning each conference would have averaged more than four bids per year. The Big 12 and ACC would have averaged more than two bids per year.
∎ Fourteen of the SEC’s 16 programs would have qualified at least once, with Arkansas and Vanderbilt as the only exceptions.
∎ Twelve of the Big Ten’s 18 programs would have qualified at least once. The non-qualifiers would have been Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Purdue and Rutgers.
∎ The Big Ten would have peaked at six bids but never qualified fewer than four teams.
∎ The SEC’s bid total would have bottomed out at three bids but peaked with seven bids in 2018 and again in 2023.
∎ Thirty-one programs would have qualified as a last-four-in team at least once throughout the 11 years.
No wonder the 16-team playoff concept gains steam. The four extra spots would help a wide range of programs gain playoff access.
College football accelerates away from an era that demanded an undefeated or one-loss record to make an elitist playoff, and toward a terrain in which 9-3 equals a playoff berth instead of a mid-tier bowl bid.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.