In case you haven’t heard, the newest crackpot School Soccer Playoff enlargement concept was offered to Huge Ten athletic administrators lately.
It goes one thing like this (you’re forgiven in case you lose monitor): Both 24 or 28 groups, with the Huge Ten and SEC receiving six or seven computerized bids, the Huge 12 and ACC receiving two fewer and 4 slots designated for non-automatic qualifiers.
Come once more?
In current months, CFP enlargement has flooded the discourse, with the SEC and Huge Ten’s standoff over whether or not there ought to be a 16-team bracket with 5 convention champions and 11 at-larges or Huge Ten commissioner Tony Petitti’s plan, which incorporates 4 autobids every for his league and the SEC, two every for the Huge 12 and ACC, and one for the Group of 5.
That is all nonsense. Codifying favored standing for a convention right into a postseason format is now a four-decade faculty soccer custom, courting again to the Bowl Alliance and Bowl Championship Sequence days, however that doesn’t make it proper. Let’s course right, beginning with the subsequent iteration of the CFP.
There’s one Playoff format that has confirmed to work and would appease nearly everybody within the sport.
It may be discovered within the FCS ranks. And it’s fairly easy. Twenty-four groups qualify. Ten of them are convention champions. The remainder are at-large entrants chosen by a committee. The highest eight seeds obtain a first-round bye, the opposite 16 play one another, and off we go. Sounds loads less complicated than 4-4-2-2-1-3 or 7-7-5-5-4 or regardless of the heck else is floating round.
Earlier than you poo-poo the concept and decry a good greater function for the choice committee, contemplate the upside. This format gives a path to the Playoff for nearly each staff within the FBS. Win your league, and also you’re in.
It’s proper. It’s honest. And it could work.
Additionally, it permits the 2 wealthiest conferences — the Huge Ten and SEC — extra groups into the sector, by way of at-large choice. Upset that 9-3 Alabama didn’t make it final 12 months? South Carolina, Ole Miss, Missouri and Illinois — additionally all 9-3 final 12 months — would have made it in such a format.
So would Miami from the ACC and BYU from the Huge 12, a staff that by some means wasn’t even within the dialog regardless of a formidable 10-2 marketing campaign and a highway win over a staff that made the Playoff final 12 months, SMU. On the finish of the day, likelihood is the SEC and Huge Ten would gobble up a big chunk of these 14 at-larges, and the Huge 12 and ACC would get a number of extras, too. Everyone wins.
However the FCS format would additionally create alternatives for colleges in different conferences as nicely. As an alternative of getting 68 groups exterior the Energy 4 vie for one berth, the American, Convention USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12 (as soon as it has eight groups once more in 2026) and Solar Belt would every get one staff within the discipline. Although having a real Cinderella within the CFP is way much less prone to develop than it’s within the NCAA basketball event or different sports activities due to soccer’s bodily nature and the function depth performs, it’s nonetheless fairer than what we’ve now.
The truth that we’ve allowed faculty soccer as a sport to predetermine which conferences get autobids and which don’t with none formally said goal standards by no means sat proper with me. In case you purport to all be in the identical subdivision — the FBS — then each league’s champion deserves respect and a seat on the desk.
“Folks have been grandfathered in over the course of time and a few have a seat on the desk and a few don’t they usually’re deemed Autonomous 4 and everybody else shouldn’t be, and right here’s your one seat on the desk to get to the CFP,” Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey informed The Athletic in Might. “That simply doesn’t really feel proper.”
A system like this works in different sports activities as nicely, most notably in basketball each March. It really works within the NFL — division champions get an auto bid, then wild-card groups get the remainder of the berths (by way of data, not a committee, in fact).
The largest sport that has a system just like what the Huge Ten is proposing is European soccer, by way of the Champions League. Some leagues, just like the Premier League, get extra bids to the event annually than others. It’s wildly well-liked — I’m a fan and I watch it yearly — and a few could argue that one thing akin to the Huge Ten’s proposals is smart as a result of faculty soccer operates extra like European soccer than it does the NFL. They’ve a degree, however I nonetheless say, why not create a system that offers each equal entry to every convention and nonetheless permits the “large canine” the added alternatives they need?
A 24-team discipline, utilizing the FCS format, would have appeared like this final 12 months, utilizing the ultimate CFP rankings and a straight seeding format. For the unranked G5 champs, I used Chris Vannini’s ultimate 134 to get them organized.
Byes:
Oregon (B1G champ)
Georgia (SEC champ)
Texas (at-large)
Penn State (at-large)
Notre Dame (at-large)
Ohio State (at-large)
Tennessee (at-large)
Indiana (at-large)
Remaining seeds:
Boise State (MWC champ)
SMU (at-large)
Alabama (at-large)
Arizona State (Huge 12 champ)
Miami (at-large)
Ole Miss (at-large)
South Carolina (at-large)
Clemson (ACC champ)
BYU (at-large)
Iowa State (at-large)
Missouri (at-large)
Illinois (at-large)
Military (American champ)
Marshall (Solar Belt champ)
Ohio (MAC champ)
Jacksonville State (CUSA champ)
Now, I do know what you is perhaps considering. The Huge Ten isn’t doing this for equity — it’s doing it for cash.
It’s true. The concept of putting in a number of computerized bids for conferences is a cash play. I don’t see hordes of followers calling for conferences to get a number of bids. Solely convention commissioners — or their coaches, who observe their lead — are advocating for an even bigger piece of the monetary pie, which, by the best way, the Huge Ten and SEC already get. When is sufficient sufficient?
An expanded Playoff goes to imply extra money, it doesn’t matter what format it’s, autobids or not.
That’s to not say the FCS format is essentially the very best answer accessible. There are different options, like preserving the 12-team format (nothing flawed with that! We’re just one 12 months in!) or eliminating autobids, taking the highest 12/16/24 groups no matter convention affiliation. However that will increase subjectivity much more.
And in case you’re involved about going to 24 groups making a precedent that we’re all the time going to look to increase additional, I’m sorry to tell you: We obtained on that path as quickly as we established a Playoff. There’ll all the time be advocacy for enlargement so long as increasing the postseason equates to extra {dollars}. Even the FCS format has undergone enlargement a number of occasions, from 4 in 1978 (sound acquainted?) to eight in 1981, 12 in 1982, 16 in 1986, 20 in 2010 and the present 24-team format in 2013.
If we’re going to alter the School Soccer Playoff format, let’s do it in a method that doesn’t perpetuate an inherently unfair postseason system via a number of convention autobids. Let’s use one thing that has confirmed to work.
It’s proper there if the facility brokers are prepared to simply open their eyes and ears and, for as soon as, contemplate the larger good of the game.
(Picture of Cam Miller: George Walker / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
