You’ve most likely been busy the previous three months going to work, paying payments, residing your life. You most likely haven’t been following each incremental improvement within the ongoing negotiations over the longer term format of the School Soccer Playoff starting in 2026. So, enable me to catch you up.
In February, the leaders of the Huge Ten and SEC held a joint assembly in New Orleans the place they earnestly mentioned what could possibly be described as a coup. They might flex their muscle to develop the CFP to 14 groups and assure themselves 4 berths every, no matter the place their groups are ranked. The ACC and Huge 12 would every get two, the Group of 5 conferences one.
Phrase received out, and the information was met with intense backlash from a public accustomed to postseason tournaments being based mostly on the outcomes of the season in query. People throughout the game figured they’d finally again down.
Nicely, three months later, that has not occurred. The format presently being mentioned is by some means extra nonsensical than that one. As The Athletic’s Ralph Russo reported Wednesday, the commissioners have now skipped previous 14 groups to 16, nonetheless with these slanted automated berths. And never even a clear, easy bracket the place No. 1 performs No. 16, No. 2 performs No. 15, and so forth.
“Extra probably, the CFP would look to start out per week earlier, on what has historically been Military-Navy weekend,” writes Russo, “with the 4 lowest seeds (13 by means of 16) enjoying their approach into the second weekend’s six-game bracket.”
Solely in faculty soccer, the place convention commissioners who serve on the behest of their league’s members additionally get to craft the postseason for your entire sport, might folks muck up a wonderfully good product this badly. It took a full season for the general public to determine how the primary 12-team CFP labored. The format will change once more in Yr 2 with this week’s (sensible) transfer to a straight seeding mannequin this fall reasonably than reserving the highest 4 seeds for convention champions. And now they’re speaking about altering it much more drastically, a 12 months after that.
Nobody requested for a First 4 of faculty soccer. Will the video games be performed in Dayton? These matchups final season (beneath the straight seeding mannequin adopted Thursday) would have been No. 13 seed Miami (10-2) vs. No. 16 seed Clemson (10-3) and No. 14 seed Ole Miss (9-3) vs. No. 15 seed South Carolina (9-3). Video games like this was once referred to as the Outback Bowl.
And to shoehorn two play-in video games into an ostensibly symmetrical 16-team subject, the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds would get a double-bye into the quarterfinals. Think about if the Detroit Lions and Kansas Metropolis Chiefs didn’t play their first postseason sport till the third weekend of the NFL playoffs. This may be that, however their hiatus could be even longer as a result of the hole between Military-Navy and New Yr’s could be so long as three weeks.
After which there’s these assured berths — the so-called 4-4-2-2-1 mannequin, routinely giving the Huge Ten and SEC probably the most bids. No main U.S. sport holds a postseason the place sure divisions or conferences are assured extra berths than the others. The hubris of the Huge Ten and SEC to even suggest this, a lot much less go ahead with it, is astonishing even by Huge Ten and SEC requirements.
These conferences will justify their rationale by citing historic information that claims their present members would have averaged much more than 4 bids yearly. They’re not incorrect about that. Which is why placing it in writing is pointless.
And but, they haven’t backed down from this nonsense. There’s a cause for that.
Almost everybody The Athletic has spoken to about this topic over the previous few months says this whole cockamamie scheme is the brainchild of Tony Petitti, the third-year Huge Ten commissioner who was once a tv govt. He wants these 4 automated berths for the Huge Ten so he can fulfill his dream of making his league’s NBA Play-In Event on convention championship weekend — No. 3 versus No. 6, No. 4 versus No. 5, with the winners going to the CFP. His No. 6 seed final 12 months would have been Iowa (8-4).
However he should have cause to imagine Fox, CBS, NBC or maybe certainly one of umpteen streaming providers pays good cash for the rights to those showdowns. As with each different resolution in faculty athletics, it’s all the time in regards to the cash.
And faculties are significantly thirsty for cash lately as a result of they may quickly must share a few of it with their athletes. They’re turning over each sofa cushion and shining a flashlight searching for any free change, lest they must cease giving their coaches unsolicited raises and contract extensions.
That’s the case amongst SEC members, too. Whereas commissioner Greg Sankey has not been the one driving the 4-4-2-2-1 push, he has not stepped in to cease it. It’s no secret he and his members will not be the world’s largest followers of the choice committee, and one of many promoting factors of automated berths is that convention standings, not ADs and retired coaches, would decide the groups.
Which sounds good in concept, however then, why play nonconference video games? Wouldn’t this 12 months’s Texas-Ohio State Week 1 mega-showdown turn into basically a preseason sport? When you’re Steve Sarkisian, what number of sequence earlier than you sit Arch Manning and get a have a look at your backups?
Maybe Petitti, Sankey and their members haven’t stopped to think about these kinds of ramifications. Extra probably they’ve, however an additional couple of million {dollars} per college has a approach of constructing every part else appear irrelevant.
I can’t emphasize sufficient how a lot harm a predetermined, nonsensical bracket will trigger for not simply the CFP’s credibility, however faculty soccer’s recognition. It is not going to herald new followers and it’ll flip off many present ones. To not point out, it is going to probably incur scrutiny from politicians and antitrust attorneys alarmed to see two conferences colluding to rig a nationwide match of their favor.
Anybody who lived by means of the BCS (1998-2013) has seen this film earlier than. The system for selecting the nationwide championship individuals was difficult to start with, using a set of manipulated laptop rankings and organizers tweaked the foundations seemingly yearly in response to no matter controversy arose within the earlier one. It was complicated, it was maddening and finally it crumbled beneath the load of congressional hearings and a e-book titled “Loss of life to the BCS.”
The easiest way to keep away from that destiny is for the commissioners to declare they’re shifting to a 16-team playoff, and it is going to be comprised of … anticipate it … the highest 16 groups.
However that may require the Huge Ten and SEC placing the nice of the game above their self-interests. Don’t trouble holding your breath.
(Photograph: Jason Miller / Getty Photos)
