Roughly 92 percent of your questions this week could be summed up by this: HELP! THE GAMES WERE ALL BLOWOUTS! WHAT DO WE DO??
I’ll get to those questions in a moment, but first, some perspective.
Note: Submitted questions have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Has everyone in college football forgotten that 21 of the 30 four-team CFP games were decided by two or more scores? — Brian, Mt. Pleasant, Mich.
Either it’s collective amnesia, or there’s a frankly impossible expectation that the committee holds the ability to ensure the games are entertaining. This is not the case in any sport, even the NFL, a league constructed specifically to promote parity and whose postseason field is chosen in an entirely objective manner. In fact, just last season, five of the six wild-card games were decided by at least two touchdowns.
It happened in the four-team CFP, too, even though in theory there shouldn’t be that big of a gap between No. 1 and No. 4. In 2018, Alabama and Clemson were both 14-0, the undisputed top teams in the country, and yet Tigers won their title-game matchup 44-16. A year later, No. 1 seed LSU beat No. 4 seed Oklahoma 63-28. And there had been zero debate whether the 12-1 Sooners should be the fourth seed.
Here’s the good news: In the old system, we’d wait a month for those two semifinal games only to get let down when they weren’t competitive. Now, you only have to wait 10 days to (hopefully) enjoy some better games in the quarterfinals.
Onward.
GO DEEPER
Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Are CFP first-round blowouts the committee’s fault?
How much did losing one entire conference change the intent of the 12-team model rewarding conference champions? — John B.
This! One hundred percent, this!
So many of the most popular gripes with this year’s bracket are rooted in realignment. It was first unveiled in June 2021, a little more than a month before the SEC took Oklahoma and Texas and touched off the chain of dominoes that led to there being four, not five, power conferences, each with at least 16 teams and one as big as 18.
The idea of reserving first-round byes for the four highest-ranked champs made more sense when we still had the Power 5. Now it’s the Power 2 and two others, which this year led to a bizarre bracket in which the No. 3 team (Texas) played last weekend while the No. 9 (Boise State) and No. 12 (Arizona State) teams rested up. And now, the No. 1 (Oregon) and No. 2 (Georgia) seeds have tougher quarterfinal games than the No. 5 (Texas) and No. 6 (Penn State) seeds.
My guess is this will go bye-bye (see what I did there) in 2026, the first year of the next contract.
Meanwhile, mega-conferences have significantly impacted the selection process. Were this last year, Indiana of the Big Ten East would have played both Ohio State and Penn State, and it would be much clearer whether the Hoosiers belonged. SMU would have been in either the ACC’s Atlantic Division, and needed to beat Clemson to get to the title game, or the Coastal, where it would have faced a top-15 Miami team. As it was, the Mustangs missed both those teams plus 9-3 Syracuse.
As I’ve said previously, I didn’t have a problem with Indiana and SMU making it because the 9-3 SEC teams were flawed. And SMU effectively boxed out Miami.
But going forward, the committee needs to carefully scrutinize teams’ conference schedules and not default to 11-1 is better than 10-2.
Indiana’s 10-point loss to Notre Dame ended up being the closest game of the CFP first round. (Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images)
After seeing the first-round blowouts, is it possible that 12 teams are too much? If we continue to have blowouts in round one, do we go back to eight? — Michael J.
Again, as previously mentioned, there were a lot of blowouts when it was four. Also, no Playoff system I know of has ever contracted.
It’s worth remembering why we skipped from four to 12 in the first place: Any changes to the initial 12-year CFP contract had to be unanimous. The ACC, Big 12 and Pac-12 were only going to support an eight-team Playoff that had automatic berths for conference champions, while the SEC and likely the Big Ten would have only approved a field of the best eight teams, period.
Hence, the compromise: twelve teams, with rewards for conference champions but also enough at-large berths for the SEC to get four or five teams in.
It’s also worth remembering why they expanded the Playoff at all. It wasn’t because they felt there were eight or 12 teams capable of winning the national championship. There aren’t.
It’s because were this the old system, you would have spent Dec. 21 watching the Cure Bowl and the New Mexico Bowl. Notre Dame-Indiana would have been a regular Fiesta Bowl, not a CFP game in South Bend, and all the teams’ best players would have opted out of it. Boise State would have played in a regular New Year’s Six bowl against a disinterested opponent.
So no, I don’t see us going back in time.
I think on-campus Playoff games are the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in college football. What are the chances we’ll ever see the quarterfinals or even the semifinals moved to campus sites? — Mike from Indianapolis
It’s inevitable that the quarters will move to campus sites, but you might have to wait for eight years.
GO DEEPER
There aren’t a lot of firsts at Notre Dame. This was one of them
Earlier this year, the CFP and ESPN agreed to a six-year extension through the 2031 season, and the commissioners committed to continue with bowls hosting both quarters and semis. Note: The official contract has not yet been finalized, so it’s possible there could be an 11th-hour change of heart, but it would be very un-CFP-like. It took them two-and-a-half years just to devise this format and another 15 months after that to get it approved.
Also, given the major bowls rely on tens of thousands of fans to travel, they really need to maintain that New Year’s date. The upcoming Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Peach bowls are all expected to sell out, helped by the fact last week’s winners — Penn State, Notre Dame, Texas and Ohio State — all have massive fan bases. I have a feeling this topic will temporarily fade when people tune in on Dec. 31/Jan. 1 and remember that we like bowl games, too.
But then it will come back when we get the Jan. 9 and 10 Orange/Cotton semifinals, which, depending on which teams make it, may be much less attended.
Any discussion about where to hold the games should be accompanied by a discussion about when. I’ll continue on my soapbox that the season needs to shift a week earlier to avoid the Playoff dragging out until Jan. 20. The first round and quarterfinals should be played the second and third weekends in December, both on campus. Then the New Year’s semifinals and the title game a week later would both be hosted by New Year’s Six bowls.
Book it. For 2032.
When you picked SMU to beat Penn State, had you watched either team all year? Either conference all year? Did you have an aneurysm? What is happening? — Andrew B.
Not my finest prognostication moment. I did not feel good about any of the underdogs’ chances, but figured there would be at least one upset so went with that one.
Turned out I should not have stuck that my initial instinct.
Is it me, or has Kirk Herbstreit’s weird beef with Ohio State fans turned unprofessional? Doesn’t he have a responsibility to just call the game straight like he does the NFL games? His rants about crowd size and the “lunatic fringe” etc. just went on and on in a game the Buckeyes were dominating. It’s become weird and distracting. — Amrabin
I have immense respect for Herbstreit as an analyst, but he’s been coming off as increasingly condescending lately.
Ohio State fans are hardly the first in the history of the sport to call for a successful coach’s head. It comes with the territory. And the guys on “First Take” were hardly the only media pundits suggesting Ryan Day should/could be fired after the Michigan loss. I said I didn’t see how he could return if the Buckeyes followed it up by losing in the first round. And that’s because it was waaaaaaaay more than Kirk’s lunatic fringe estimate of “15 to 20 percent” of OSU fans that would have wanted Day’s head in that scenario.
Chris Fowler chimed in, too, saying, “When you hear pundits on this network and other places talking about (Day’s firing) with certainty, it’s nonsense, frankly. The public doesn’t trigger and get rid of the coach, administrators do.” The broadcasters get considerable access behind the scenes, so Fowler’s assessment was likely based on informed conversations. But to suggest the public has no influence in these decisions? I recall the other fan base in attendance Saturday night getting a coach (Greg Schiano) fired before he even started the job.
Herbstreit obviously has a history with Ohio State’s lunatics, having famously relocated his family from Columbus to Nashville because he was tired of dealing with them. His son, Zak, is a player on Day’s team. And on Pat McAfee’s show Monday, he said, “My problem is, I’m a friend of Ryan Day’s. He and I talk on a regular basis about more than just football.” He then mentioned specific threats Day’s family has received over the Michigan losses. Which is horrific and inexcusable, but also likely a tiny fraction of fans. Way smaller than 15 to 20 percent.
In Herbstreit’s defense, he is working harder than anyone in the business this season. This past week, he called the Broncos-Chargers game in L.A. on Thursday night, did four hours of “GameDay” in the bitter cold at Notre Dame on Friday afternoon, another three hours in Columbus in the bitter cold Saturday morning, then called the Tennessee-Ohio State game that night.
Of course, that might also explain the crankiness.
After Notre Dame beats Georgia, do they have to win out to get the respect they deserve or will sanity prevail? — Mike F.
They’ll certainly get my respect. It would be Notre Dame’s biggest postseason win in more than 30 years, and it would come against the sport’s strongest program of the past five years.
But you can already predict the reaction from our friends in the South. Doesn’t count, Georgia didn’t have its quarterback.
GO DEEPER
Georgia’s Gunner Stockton has been preparing for this moment since he was 6 years old
What do you think of Texas Tech dominating the transfer portal? How sustainable is that, and is a Big 12 title a realistic goal for 2025? — Andrew G., Houston
I think it’s awesome. For all the complaints, NIL and the transfer portal have one overwhelmingly positive effect on the sport: It’s allowing non-traditional programs to become nationally relevant. Ole Miss signed the top-ranked transfer class on 247Sports last year, and now Texas Tech is on top in the early stages this year. It’s become a refreshing antidote to high school recruiting, where the same small group of bluebloods dominate the market every year. And that’s because collectives are spending far more money on transfers than high school kids.
The key of course is, at least under the current model, you need donors willing to foot the bill. Texas Tech definitely has them. As Justin Williams and I wrote about last summer, the co-founder of their collective and his wife, a former Tech softball player, gave $1 million to woo Stanford softball ace NiJaree Canady. Big gets in football so far include Georgia Tech edge-rusher Romello Height, USC’s breakout freshman running back Quinten Joyner and UCF All-Big 12 defensive lineman Lee Hunter. While no dollar amounts were disclosed, proven pass-rushers are usually some of the most expensive guys.
I have no idea whether the Red Raiders will contend in the Big 12. You saw this past season how difficult it is to forecast such a flattened conference. Texas Tech had a promising 8-4 regular season in which it beat both of the teams that went onto the conference title game — Arizona State and Iowa State — and starting quarterback Behren Morton is expected to return.
Going into the upcoming Liberty Bowl against Arkansas, Joey McGuire’s three-season record is 23-15. That may seem modest, but it’s actually the highest winning percentage (.605) of any Tech coach since Mike Leach’s 2009 ouster. But expectations will be higher in 2025 after this spending spree.
The first-round “home team” should split the ticket allocation 50/50 to allow the visiting team’s “fan base” an opportunity to see their team play!! — Anonymous U.
Great idea. Almost like a … bowl game.
Is this year’s transfer portal NIL spending going to be crazy since it’s the last time they can spend unchecked before the House settlement and deals have to be vetted to be “fair market value?” — Tim S.
I don’t think many folks in the NIL world believe the third-party “fair market value” vetting will be anything more than extra paperwork to fill out, at least on the part of the collectives. They have lawyers who can advise them on how to word a contract to meet whatever requirements this settlement has.
A more relevant factor, though, is that IF the settlement is approved, that’s $20.5 million a year in NIL money that no longer falls on donors. It’s supposed to come from schools’ TV deals, ticket sales and sponsorships. So if you’re a booster who figures his dues are going to take a considerable dip a year from now perhaps you go all in this year.
But I think schools are kidding themselves if they think collectives will go poof once revenue sharing kicks in. That $20.5 million cap is for the entire athletic department to divvy up as it sees fit. Even if football gets three-quarters of that, it’s still less than Ohio State is spending on its roster this year, and not much more than most of the other elite programs. And just like coaches’ salaries over the years, players’ NIL deals are only going to keep going up and up. This means they’ll still need collectives to raise money on top of the $20.5 million.
Think of it this way: Ohio State and Michigan are in direct competition for the same pool of talent, but both will have the same “salary cap” in this settlement. Do you think one or the other is going to sit back and let the other one spend more than them on players? Of course not. Ohio State’s collective will reach out to its donors for a little something to land the next Caleb Downs and Quinshon Judkins, and Michigan will be hitting up Larry Ellison’s wife for another check come the next Bryce Underwood.
What a completely sensible system this is.
Would Alabama have given Penn State or Notre Dame a better game than SMU or Indiana? — Mia-Do’ A.
Doubtful. They couldn’t even beat Tennessee.
Have a great holiday, everybody. Quick programming note: Because the quarterfinals fall on a Tuesday and Wednesday, the next Mailbag will run on Friday, January 3.
On that note: Happy early New Year’s!
(Top photo: Matthew O’Haren / Imagn Images)
