Alternative Realities For 2023's College Football Postseason
Just two weeks ago, the curtain fell on a remarkable, unpredictable, unexpected college football season with Jim Harbaugh and Michigan taking the title over Washington. If the bowl season in general had an abnormally small amount of entertaining results, this year's playoff was a fitting ending to this wild ride. For the second straight season, we had not one, but two thrilling semifinals. with down-to-the-wire finishes. And after a season full of unconventional frontrunners and many of the usual big dogs stumbling down the stretch (or in the case of a couple, out of the gates), we were treated to a championship between two teams that had never reached the title game since before the BCS era, and in fact had just a combined three playoff appearances between them before this year. And if all that wasn't enough, the madness hasn't halted since the end of the season, with player and especially coach departures shocking the landscape, none more so than the announcement that Alabama coach Nick Saban, perhaps the greatest to ever do it, was hanging it up.
But, back to the action on the field: this was the last playoff played before the expanded model will move from 4 teams to 12 in 2024. 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 until recent years, 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.
But I, for one, am happy that the majority opinion changed, and ultimately led to pressure on the committee to change their minds as well, because I simply don't subscribe to that theory. For starters, for every season in which we have a "clear top 2 teams," there's one like the very first year of the playoff, 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 Kentucky 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 20 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 the different playoff ideas would have transpired this year. Specifically, I thought we'd look at the real model beginning next year, but some alternate ideas as well, such as an 8-team, a 32-Team and a 'Super League' model. In terms of how these alternate realities played out: I generally would simulate the showdowns (using accurate home-field and weather conditions) via whatifsports.com, although when relevant, I just went on bowl results and/or real-life head-to-head showdowns. It's imperfect, I know, but it's hard to know what else to work with.
NOT-SO-ALTERNATE REALITY 1: THE FUTURE MODEL
Brief refresher of the format
12 teams
6 automatic bids from 5 Power 5 conference champions + 1 "Group of Five" Conference champion
6 at-large bids
Top 4 conference champions would receive a first-round bye, while the higher-seeded team hosts the first-round matches at their home stadium
The quarterfinals would be played at four "New Year's Six Bowl" sites, and the semifinals played at the other two
Championship would be played at a neutral site, based on highest-bidding stadium
How it all went down
1st round:
# 8 Oregon 40-37 (2OT) # 9 Missouri
# 5 Florida State 31-13 # 12 Liberty
# 7 Ohio State 17-31 # 10 Ole Miss
# 6 Georgia 45-10 # 11 Penn State
*One note here- I don’t know for sure how the committee will handle first-round regular-season matchups, but my guess is that they might try to avoid them if two teams are essentially on the same level. That’s why I bumped Penn State down to # 11 in this scenario, and Ole Miss up a rank to avoid two rematches against Ohio State and Georgia, respectively.*
The two highest-ranked at-large teams make easy work of their opponents, but the two more competitive matchups give us some drama. Ole Miss marches into Columbus to score the only upset of the round, but only because Oregon survives a double-overtime scare from Mizzou in Autzen Stadium.
Quarterfinals:
Cotton Bowl: # 3 Texas 34-27 # 6 Georgia
Fiesta Bowl: # 2 Washington 31-22 # 10 Ole Miss
Orange Bowl: # 1 Michigan 44-30 # 8 Oregon
Peach Bowl: # 4 Alabama 30-24 # 5 Florida State
The quarterfinal bowl games go chalk here, but not without some real drama. Michigan aren't tested all too much by Oregon in the Orange Bowl, but #2 Washington needs a big 4th quarter to put away upstarts Ole Miss in the Fiesta. Then in Atlanta, Alabama comes from behind to nudge a Florida State team that the simulation model was still high on even in the absence of Jordan Travis, and a thriller in the Cotton Bowl sees Texas knock out the defending champions on a touchdown with 13 seconds left.
Semifinals:
CHAMPIONSHIP (Houston):
Fortunately, the simulation of the previous results yielded an easy hypothetical outcome in this playoff format. The semifinal and national championship showdown proceed exactly as they did irl: two thrilling games in Pasadena and New Orleans, followed by Michigan dispatching of Washington with relative ease in Houston a week later.
ALTERNATE REALITY 2: THE 8-TEAM PLAYOFF
Brief refresher of the format
8 teams
5 Power Conference champions, plus 3 at-large teams
Quarterfinal round played at the higher seed's home field, except if one of the teams is a conference champion and the other isn't, in which case the conference champion gets home-field advantage regardless of seed
Semifinals and Final use current format
How it all went down
Quarterfinals:
Just like the quarterfinal round of the previous timeline, all the top seeds win at this stage, though this time without much drama at all. The model likes Texas and Alabama even more at their home stadiums against the likes of Georgia and Florida State than it did at the bowl sites in the last scenario. Weirdly enough, it likes Michigan slightly less at home-- must be that Ann Arbor weather --but the Wolverines still are hardly threatened by the tamed Ducks. The one intriguing showdown of the quarterfinal stage are the #2 Huskies hosting Ohio State, but despite it being a high-scoring, back and forth affair, Washington leads wire to wire and ultimately has too much firepower for the Buckeyes to contain.
Semifinals:
CHAMPIONSHIP (Houston):
And just as the first alternate reality did, this one yields the exact same 4-team matchups real life did on the first two Mondays in January, and therefore, why stray from reality? Michigan wins a thriller, Washington wins a thriller, the Wolverines take top honors in Houston.
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
"Regional Finals" would be bowl games held at neutral sites (typically existing bowls, though a few new "northern" ones may need to be added)
Semifinals and Final use current format
How it all went down
1st Round (winning teams are in all caps, conf. champions with asterisk)
Somewhat surprisingly, the simulation here yielded 0 upsets out of 16 games in the first round, with the Top 4 seeds progressing to the Round of 16 in each bracket. I highly doubt that is actually how it would have gone in real life, but in fairness, there were only a couple teams I identified as upset potentials (Penn State, Oklahoma, Louisville come to mind), and in each case, their opponent was a far cry from a sure thing themselves.
Round Of 16 and Quarterfinals (winning teams are in all caps, conf. champions with asterisk)
Where the first round was all chalk, the action picked up significantly in the Round of 16 and quarterfinals. All the top seeds won again, and in most cases, pretty comfortably, but Oregon was the only #2 seed to reach the quarterfinals, as Florida State, Ohio State, and Georgia all fell at home in increasingly shocking upsets.
Then, in the bowl games that represented the quarterfinals, the madness continued. Not, of course, on the left side, where just as they seem to in every universe (I'm getting Everything Everywhere All At Once flashbacks), Michigan and Alabama find their way to a semifinal matchup with decisive, if not runaway, victories over Oregon and Ole Miss. But on the right side of the bracket? The upsets are far from over. First, it was Mizzou taking down previous unbeatens Washington in L.A., then in a rematch of the epic Red River Rivalry, Oklahoma bested Texas again, upsetting their rivals in Dallas just like they did in October to end the Longhorn playoff dream.
Semifinals and Final (winning teams are in all caps, conf. champions with asterisk)
Michigan meets Alabama in the Rose Bowl....can you guess the result? That's right, we're sticking with a 27-20 Michigan OT win. In the other side of the bracket, though, it's Missouri winning the battle of the overachievers, with a surprisingly dominant win over former Big 12 foes Oklahoma in New Orleans. This set up a championship matchup likely nobody would have predicted before this 32-team tournament: top overall seed Michigan vs. the 10th-ranked, preseason unranked, third-best in the SEC, Missouri Tigers. The hypothetical championship did not disappoint! Much like they did in real life, the Wolverines got out to a fast start, scoring the first 17 points of the game, but a couple quick scores by Mizzou brought the underdogs back within striking distance, where they stayed, trading blows all the way until the clock hit four zeroes...but ultimately, the Tigers just couldn't get over that hump, and #1 Michigan held them at arms' length the whole way to salt away the national title.
ALTERNATE REALITY 4: THE SUPER LEAGUE PLAYOFFS
Brief overview of the format
6 teams from each conference
4 automatic bids for division winners, 2 at-large teams
Seeding (and at-large bids) based on CFP ranking
Higher seed hosts, 2 highest-seeded division champions in each conference get first-round byes
Conference championships and National Championship played at bowl sites and neutral-site, a la current playoff format
How it all went down
Yes, this is a shameless plug for my own wild proposal for College Football, from just before the 2021 season. I don't know that such a drastic shift is the best idea for the sport, but for a game that's increasingly starting to mirror both the NFL and club soccer in its money and exclusivity, why not combine the best of both NFL (regionalized divisions and quality postseason format) and European soccer (promotion/relegation, preservation of traditional rivalries)?
I have simulated the outcomes of the last three seasons based on real life head-to-head results when applicable, and final Sagarin rating when not. You can take a look at what the divisions and each team's standing looked like this year here. Here's how the 2023 Playoffs would have looked:
1st Round and Quarterfinals (winning teams are bolded)
For the most part, the first two rounds of the Super League playoffs were low on entertainment value. A Jordan Travis-less Florida State held tough against Notre Dame, and Bo Nix and Jayden Daniels put on a Heisman-nominated show in Oregon, but the only lower seed to win in the 1st round was Texas, who whooped up on the weakest team in the playoff field. The quarterfinals seemed to be going chalk too, with top seeds Michigan and Washington, as well as Alabama, all winning comfortably.
But, in the last conference semifinal of all, we finally got a can't-miss matchup, with two-time defending champion Georgia hosting Ohio State in a rematch of last year's epic Peach Bowl semifinal. In this timeline and this context, the Buckeyes finally got revenge; after a late Kyle McCord-to-Marvin Harrison touchdown and ensuing 2-point conversion sent the game to overtime, the teas traded blows in the first period and then the Bucks' defense held strong to seal the upset win in Athens.
Semifinals and Final (winning teams are bolded)
In the conference championships, we first get the classic Michigan-over-Bama Rose Bowl we got in real life. But we never did see runners-up Washington play Ohio State in real life, and in this multiverse Sugar Bowl, the Buckeyes' "Cinderella run," if you can really call it that rolls on. In a game that saw lead changes every single quarter, Ohio State struck late, struck last, and held off Washington to pull the upset in New Orleans...
...and set up THE edition of THE Game. Michigan and Ohio State in the national championship? Forget about it. Make the day after a national holiday. This would have so much breathless coverage and anticipation I'm actually mad we haven't gotten it in real life.
But the (hypothetical) game itself? I can't say it really lives up to the hype, and if you're a Michigan fan, this was a nightmare scenario rather than the dream that played out over the last month. After a very evenly-matched 1st half, 21 unanswered puts Ohio State out of reach for good, and gets Ryan Day and co. the ultimate revenge over their archrivals for the preceding 3 years of hurt. Shame, Wolverines fans, guess you'll just have to console yourself with the very real trophy you won in real life.
There you have it: different playoff formats this year may or may not have created different champions in our simulations, but they almost certainly would have resulted in different championship games. And even if they had not, they sure offer the possibility for a much more entertaining and satisfying route there. Next year we will see at least one of these postseason visions come to fruition, but will that be the last iteration? Or are even more major changes coming?
Comments