Alternative Realities For 2020's College Football Postseason
Just ten days ago, the curtain fell on a remarkable, zany, unlikely success of a college football season. This year's postseason, including the bowl games was a fitting ending to this wild ride. There were slews of cancelled games and notable missing players, but also several thrillers and high-stakes matchup, and at the end of it all, Alabama cruised to a national title, because of course they did. And yet, despite the wonderful rollercoaster ride it was, I am left wondering what might have been different if we had a broader net of title contenders.
The call for an expanded playoff is not a new one. Pretty much since the announcement that the BCS would be supplanted by a 4-team playoff field, selected by a committee, there were howls that this change-- while welcome --would not be nearly enough. But up to now, those opinions appeared to be in the minority, at least publicly and vocally. Most seemed content just to have any semblance of a playoff in college football, and as Alabama and Clemson continued to dominate the landscape, most argued that the regular season was sufficient enough as 'play-in rounds,' especially if a playoff was going to give us the same couple champions every year anyway.
That changed this year. In a season amidst a raging pandemic, COVID-19 touched every facet of the 2020 college football season, forcing loads of cancellations and postponements every week, reduced-capacity or even empty stadiums, and perhaps most notably, a switch to almost entirely conference-only schedules. Even though the switch to conference-only was a universal move among all conferences, there still wasn't uniformity: due to staggered season start times and local COVID ordinances, some conferences played as many as 11 regular-season games, while others ended up playing as little as 4. This wide disparity, as well as minimal non-conference action, led many expansionists to come out of the woodwork and declare that, now more than ever, is the time for a playoff that invites more than 4 teams to compete for the title.
It's no secret that I don't subscribe to the theory that such a move would be futile and meaningless. For starters, for every season in which we have a "clear top 2 teams," there's one like just three seasons ago, wherein the Top 2 teams lost in the playoff semifinals and there were at least 4 teams left out of the playoff altogether that had a very legitimate case to be included. Furthermore, who's to say that the playoff would give us the same teams every year? That's the beauty of March Madness, isn't it? The reason it's so hard for teams to even play, let alone win, titles in College Basketball as effortlessly as Alabama has done and now Clemson is doing in College Football is because it's really freaking hard to string together 6 performances against the nation's best teams over the course of 3 weekends every year. If a selection committee handpicked the Final Four in basketball the way they do in football, we'd see Kansas and Duke trading off titles every season. Instead, despite those programs being consistently among the highest seeds in the tournament, they've won 3 championships amongst themselves in the last 18 years. A wider field means just that, a wider chance for everyone, and thus, less of a guarantee that we'd be seeing the same teams atop the podium year after year.
All this being said, I thought it'd be fun to examine how some of those playoffs would have transpired this year. Specifically, I thought we'd look at the NFL-Style, 8-Team, and 32-Team ideas, as those are the 3 formats the social medias seem to have spent the most time bandied about. In terms of how these alternate realities played out: I relied on a mixture of real bowl results and generated hypothetical matchups via whatifsports.com. It's imperfect, but it's hard to know what else to work with. If the bowl results were comparable, I looked for tiebreakers like home-field advantage, or, you know, ranking.
ALTERNATE REALITY 1: THE NFL-STYLE PLAYOFF
Brief refresher of the format
6 teams
5 conference champions + 1 at-large team (the highest ranked non-champion or Group of Five Conference champion
Top 2 teams would receive a first-round bye, while the next two highest-ranked conference champions host the play-in round
In the semifinals, the #1 team would host the lowest-ranked team left, while the #2 team would host the second-lowest-ranked team
Championship played at a neutral site
How it all went down
Play-in round: #6 Oregon @ #3 Ohio State, and #4 Notre Dame @ #5 Oklahoma
Oregon's defense keeps them around early, but ultimately gets rocked in the 2nd half of a cold Columbus night.
Notre Dame and Oklahoma play an evenly-matched thriller, but ultimately the Sooners' speed and home-field advantage is too much for the Fighting Irish to handle
Semifinals: #5 Oklahoma @ #1 Alabama, and #3 Ohio State @ #2 Clemson
Alabama's semifinal plays out much like their Rose Bowl semifinal in real life against Notre Dame; Oklahoma's defense and balanced offense helps them keep the scoreline somewhat respectable, but the Tide are clearly in a different league in a comfortable win.
A raucous, albeit reduced-capacity home crowd at Death Valley helps Clemson keep their game considerably more competitive against Ohio State than we were in their real-life Sugar Bowl matchup, but in the end, the Buckeyes accomplish their season-long goal of avenging last year's heartbreaking loss to Clemson.
No need to divy from the real-life example we had for this matchup this time: Alabama claps Ohio State in Miami, as we all witnessed. The only effect I will say that this playoff might have had on this particular title matchup is that maybe coming in off of two straight games would see the Buckeyes in a little bit more of a rhythm, and thus capable of hanging with Alabama for longer than they did. But all in all, this year would probably be the worst year to make an argument for this playoff style. If you're starting with such a small field, the only result is going to be Alabama domination. Besides, with how much of a stink Texas A&M and Cincinnati fans made over Notre Dame making the 4-team playoff over them, just imagine the hell they'd raise over their spots going to Oklahoma and especially Oregon instead.
ALTERNATE REALITY 2: THE 8-TEAM PLAYOFF
Brief refresher of the format
8 teams
5 Power Conference champions, plus 3 at-large teams
If a non-P5 team is unbeaten, they get a bid
Quarterfinal round played at the higher seed's home field, though if one of the teams is a Power 5 conference champion, they automatically get home-field advantage over an at-large side
Semifinals and Final use current format
How it all went down
Quarterfinals: #8 Oregon @ #1 Alabama; #5 Texas A&M @ #4 Notre Dame; #7 Cincinnati @ #2 Clemson; #6 Oklahoma @ #3 Ohio State
Alabama sets a 8-team playoff margin-of-victory record in their dismantling of overmatched Oregon.
In the ultimate battle to determine "who should have been the 4th team in the 2020-21 CFP?", Notre Dame grinds out an even, physical battle.
Cincy hangs with Clemson into the 4th quarter, largely due to their defense successfully containing the run game. But ultimately Trevor Lawrence and the Tigers prove to be too much to handle.
A massive game from Trey Sermon against his old team proves to be the difference as Ohio State pulls out a thriller vs. Oklahoma.
In this playoff scenario, the quarterfinal round yielded the exact teams-- in the exact bowl matchups --that populated the 2020-21 CFP field, so we don't need to bother with a hypothetical simulation to know how the latter stages would have played out. "Ah," you skeptics and cynics are likely crying, "if we only get to the exact same final four and championship we really had, what would have been the point of even having this additional round of games?" Well, because this round wouldn't always see the top 4 seeds winning, for one, but even in instances that they do, we at least get to enjoy a few highly competitive games before marching on to the trifecta of blowouts.
ALTERNATE REALITY 3: THE 32-TEAM PLAYOFF
Brief refresher of the format
32 teams
All 10 Conference Champions
22 at-large teams
Split into regions, a la March Madness
Normally, these "Regional Finals" would be held at bowl sites (for instance, the "South" Region would culminate at the Alamo Bowl, the "North" at the Pinstripe Bowl, the "West" at the Holiday Bowl, and the "Southeast" at the Music City Bowl), but in this COVID-affected year, the regionals would likely all be held at the campus of the top seed.
Semifinals and Final use current format
How it all went down
So this section of the article wouldn't take forever, I just picked up the simulation at the Round of 16. I did go through the first round though, I promise.
Round Of 16 and Quarterfinals (winning teams are in all caps)
Semifinals and Final (winning teams are in all caps)
The 2020 version of the 32-team playoff ended with close to the same playoff we actually got, with the exception of a red-hot Oklahoma team supplanting Notre Dame, who was doomed to the same bracket as eventual runners-up Notre Dame. But even if the Final Four looks awfully familiar, keep in mind that the fact that everyone would have played three games coming into that round, which could potentially change the dynamics. And besides, we would have had some fun on the way: upset teams like Liberty, Oklahoma State and Northwestern, and some down-to-the-wire matchups.
ALTERNATE, COVID-SPECIFIC REALITY 4: THE 16-TEAM BUBBLE
Brief overview of the format
16 teams
No automatic bids
Played in a single location in order to best replicate a "bubble"; we'll say somewhere like Dallas, due to warmer weather, multiple stadiums to use as venues, etc.
How it all went down
Round Of 16 and Quarterfinals (winning teams are in all caps)
Semifinals and Final (winning teams are in all caps)
It seemed fitting in a year as strange as this to bust out one more playoff possibility that really could have only worked this year. A bubble setup in the manner of the NBA would have been the smartest and safest way to see this season out, but while you couldn't invite too many teams in, you also would want to invite enough to make the tourney feel worthwhile. 16 seems like the ideal number for a bubble-hosted, single-elimination tournament. And though I am big on auto bids, as you can see from all the other proposed playoff methods, this would also be the year to forgo those in favor of the committee's top 16, what with the varying lengths and qualities of regular season games.
In terms of how the games played out, we (surprise surprise!) ended up with champions Alabama again, but hey, look at some of the surprises we got along the way! North Carolina upsets Notre Dame in a rematch of their regular season game, lower seeds Georgia and Iowa State get opening round wins, and Oklahoma, beloved by the hypothetical generator, makes a surprise championship run.
There you have it: different playoff formats might have created different champions or championship games. And even if not, they sure offer the possibility for a much more entertaining and satisfying route there. Will we ever see at least one of these postseason visions come to fruition? For the first time in my life as a college football fan, it feels inevitable, but the wait may be excruciating.
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