In the era of the expanded CFB playoff format, college football could evolve into six different levels.
The pinnacle of the college football world is increasingly being defined by the Big Two (rather than the Power Four). Even big 2 \ ‘is inaccurate enough to be called sqishhy.
Around the bottom of Dry and Big Ten, there is a university football program that is not at the first level for anything. The difference between the Power 4 and the Big 2 is determined primarily by the media rights agreements agreed upon by the conferences. The term “power of three” hardly applies when talking about national championships in the CFB Playoff era.
Six of the 10 national championships in the play -off era have won the SEC team. The Big Ten team won two and Kremson won two in the ACC. In the debate over expanding the playoff field, the words “fairness” and “parity” have often been used. These words will be reused when the number of teams increases to 14 or 16. Two other words better describe the value of an expansion field: enthusiasm and money.
More teams and more games would be a lot of fun for college football fans. A trove of dollars will follow.
My thoughts on the future of college football prompted the tweet below. The bottom row of teams that are partially shown are LSU, Oregon, and TCU.
The top tier of Alabama, Georgia, and Clemson have won 20 or 30 games in the playoffs. What if the enlarged fields of the game -off CFB bring small changes upstairs?
We can predict the future and any response to a hypothetical will take at least four or five years for more clarity. My bold prediction about what will happen going forward is that we will see six tiers of college football emerge.
Tier 1 includes the winners of the National Championship Game going back to the 2015 playoffs.
Currently, Tier One is Alabama, Kremson, Georgia, Ohio, LSU, and Michigan. Level 2 is a team that wins the CFB qualifying semi -final match. Currently Oregon, Washington, TCU. From 2024 to 2025. The third tier is for teams that win quarterfinal games. The fourth level wins elimination matches. The fifth level will be the playoff field.
The lowest tier includes all programs that have never made the playoffs. For many, the sixth tier could be a kind of college football Neverland, similar to the Peter Pan story where these programs are frozen in time. The bottom tier could also be called “the abyss” because there are no playoff programs there. All this is a crazy hypothesis – right? Maybe not. At some point, college football’s perennial underdogs will be defined by programs that never make the playoffs.
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