The expanded 12-team College Football Playoff is here — and there are already problems

IRVING, Texas – In the College Football Playoff meeting room at a resort hotel in the posh community of Las Colinas, the industry's most powerful executives were playing a game: a bracket game.

FBS commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director gathered around a table predicted a 12-team playoff round based on the 2022 rankings. Eight months before the historic 2024 CFP Selection Day – the first expanded playoff – bracketing training began to show executives the matchups, trends and perhaps even problems (we'll get to that later) that arise with a new format.

A few hours later, a handful of reporters were ushered into the room to do the same. They sat in the exact chairs the commissioners previously sat in as outgoing CFP Director Bill Hancock led the room through the process. Before us, a projection screen with a bracket flickered to life: a 12-team playoff for 2022, based on that year's rankings and taking realignment moves into account.

First-round matchups – at better seeded locations on campus – included No. 8 seed Tennessee against No. 9 Kansas State, No. 12 seed Tulane at No. 5 TCU, No. 10 seed Southern Cal vs. No. 7 Alabama and… No. 11 Penn State and No. 6 Ohio State.

The latter is a rematch.

This is problem No. 1: There is currently no CFP protocol to avoid first-round rematches.

But before we dive into all the problems that come with a 12-team 5+7 playoff format, let's go over some ground rules for a format that can be a bit confusing.

– Rule 1: The format. The top five ranked conference champions automatically receive qualifying spots in the field. This typically includes a representative from the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC and Group of Five (it is unlikely that a second G5 champion would overtake a P4 champion in the rankings). The four highest ranked champions – this is important – receive the top four seeds and byes for the first round. Overall spots will be allocated to the next seven best teams.

– Rule 2: The Ranking. These are still created by the CFP Selection Committee and do NOT necessarily match the seedings, as seeds 1-4 are reserved for conference champions only. There are many examples of a conference champion being ranked lower than the runner-up from another conference (we'll get to that later).

– Rule 3: In the New Year's Six Bowls, the quarterfinals and semifinals take place on campus after the four first-round games. Teams are paired with bowls in two ways: (1) by traditional relationships and (2) by geographic location.

Enough rules, let's get to the complaints – the most important of which is that there is no protocol for selectmen to avoid first-round rematches. This is a simple, solvable problem. Like NCAA basketball tournament selection, the CFP could adopt a protocol requiring first-round games to feature two teams from different conferences, whenever possible. Because the field (12) is so small and the number of conferences continues to grow, there may be times when this is not possible.

But for the most part it is. Such a protocol is necessary because modeling shows that this format, combined with realignment moves, creates many rematches. An entire conference folded, the Big 12 and SEC grew to 16 teams, and the ACC and Big Ten grew to 18.

While realignment was being considered, there would have been seven conference-to-conference first-round rematches in the CFP's decade – far too many.

Even commissioners admitted this after their classification exercise.

“A lot of rematches,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said.

Sankey dodged repeated questions about the CFP adopting a protocol to avoid rematches, citing current policy. But that's a simple answer: yes, avoid rematches.

Why are we replaying a game that took place several months, if not weeks, before?

In 2014, the 8-on-9 game would have been a rematch between Mississippi State and Ole Miss that took place three weeks earlier in the Egg Bowl. In 2018, Georgia and Florida would have been paired in the first round. In 2021, it was Baylor and Oklahoma State in the first round.

Don't give us a sequel in the first round. Save that for later. There are three more rounds in which there will undoubtedly be rematches. Avoid the easy. It's not complicated.

There are many other problems with a 5+7 model.

Teams in the top four of the final rankings that did not win their conference must play a first-round game, while weaker conference champions receive a bye. Is this a problem? It depends on who you ask. One of the goals of the format was to maintain the value of the regular season by rewarding conference champions.

For example, in 2022, fourth-seeded Ohio State — a non-champion — would have been seeded No. 6, while Big 12 champion Utah, ranked No. 8, would have gotten the fourth seed and a first-round bye. In 2021, No. 12 Pitt, the ACC champion, would have received a bye as the No. 4 seed despite being ranked lower than eight major teams.

Perhaps the most pressing issue that will arise with the new 12-team bracket, however, is the addition of a low-ranked G5 champion displacing a Power League team from the top 12. In the last 10 years, this has only happened three times with top 12 teams all making the field.

In 2022, Tulane, ranked 16th, would have made the playoffs as the highest-ranked Group of Five champion. The 12th-seeded Green Wave would have edged out 12th-ranked Washington. In 2019, No. 15 Memphis, the highest-ranked champion in the G5, would have received an offer ahead of Notre Dame, Penn State and Utah.

In 2015, Navy would have earned a G5 bid as the No. 21 team in the country. Last year, Liberty would have been ranked 23rd (Oregon beat that team 45-6 in the Fiesta Bowl, by the way).

The recent wave of realignment has left the G5 a weakened division. Its most resourceful programs — Houston, UCF and Cincinnati — are now in the Big 12. SMU is in the ACC.

The selection committee will face the real possibility that no G5 team – not even its best champion – will be included in the rankings. The question came up during the bracket exercise, and Hancock confirmed that protocol calls for the committee to select the best G5 champion among the five league winners – a sort of G5 ranking.

Imagine a G5 champion who isn't ranked in the top 25 receiving a bid from more than 10 power conference programs ranked higher than him? It could happen. Sankey reminded reporters after the bracket exercise that such a circumstance is the result of the format decision to award auto-bids to the top five conference champions rather than the top four.

Do you want to complain more? The top four seeds – all of which have a bye in the first round – are not allowed to host a playoff game. Bowl play begins in the quarterfinals, a point of criticism from some fan bases and athletic directors who want to extend on-campus games to the quarterfinals (there are no plans to do so, at least not in the immediate future).

Complaints, complaints, criticism, there is a lot to do. The bottom line: A real playoff with multiple teams and multiple rounds is coming in college football. This is historic, unprecedented and exciting.

But please let's avoid rematches!