FanPost

Deregulating the Conference Championships

There is no need to go to an 8-team playoff. The best solution is staring us right in the face.

NCAA rules require a conference to have a minimum of 12 teams split into two divisions in order to stage a conference championship game, with the two division winners meeting in the game. This rule is the root of playoff controversy because an elite team in the conference is sometimes forced to play a 6-6 champion from the other division, which devalues the conference championships in many fans' eyes. It is the primary reason many fans downplay conference championships when advocating for playoff participants. The pinnacle of controversy was probably the Big XII in 2008, when 3 teams in the same division were tied with 1 conference loss each, and an obscure tie-breaker was used to decide who played a 4-loss team in the championship game.

But all this can be fixed by deregulating conference championships. Without a 12-team requirement or the requirement to split into divisions, conferences would be free to select their 2 best teams for the conference championship game, regardless of how many teams were in the conference. This would add meaning to the conference championship game that would feed right into the 4-team College Football Playoff.

This is not a new idea. In the last off-season, the ACC submitted proposed legislation to deregulate the conference championship.

So I wanted to put out an example of how conference championship deregulation and a 4-team playoff would compare to an 8-team playoff. If we had an 8-team playoff this year, we might see the following 8 teams.

8-Team CFP

Florida St. (ACC)
Alabama (SEC)
Ohio St. (B1G)
Oregon (PAC)
TCU (B12 co-champ)
Baylor (B12 co-champ)
Arizona (at-large)
Michigan St. (at-large)

Three P5 conferences have 2 entrants each and two P5 conferences have only 1. While no independent is competitive this year, years in which an independent is competitive means another P5 team is left out. Notable omissions this year are Mizzou, Ole Miss, Mississippi St., Georgia Tech, Wisconsin, and Boise St.

With deregulation, we would likely have the below conference championship games leading into the 4-team field. I would expect the B1G (Michigan St. instead of Wisconsin), Big XII (gets a CCG even though they have only 10 teams), and MWC (Colorado St. instead of San Diego St.) all to have different CCGs with deregulation than they do in the current format. TCU and Baylor get to settle their argument on the field in the Big XII CCG. Mizzou has only 1 conference loss, so I kept them there, but if SEC rules put Ole Miss or Mississippi St. there instead, that's their prerogative. I even threw in an independent championship game to illustrate the extent of flexibility with deregulation.

Deregulated CCGs Feeding a 4-Team CFP

ACC Florida St. v. Georgia Tech
B1G Ohio St. v. Michigan St.
Big XII TCU v. Baylor
PAC 12 Oregon v. Arizona
SEC Alabama v. Missouri
MWC Boise St. v. Colorado St.
C-USA Marshall v. Louisiana Tech
Independents Notre Dame v. BYU

Each team in the championship games of the P5 conferences is a legitimate playoff contender - the potential for a 6-6 division champ in the conference championship game is gone. The selection committee would choose four teams after the first round, and they can choose smarter because of that. Now there are effectively 10 legitimate P5 teams in the 1st round of the playoffs - all decided on the field, not by a selection committee. Five P5 winners will be available for the selection committee to choose the 4-team field, with any G5 champs or independents available for selection, too, for years in which they are competitive.

There are still omissions of contender schools (Ole Miss, Mississippi St., and Wisconsin, in this example), although in this case it is conference rules that are deciding such omissions, not the selection committee. If the games go as we expect, the final four is the same in both formats, but the deregulation format allows for greater flexibility in chaos years. And the best part about it is that deregulation is very easy to change - It can be done in this off-season.


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