In 2014, the first year of the four-team College Football Playoff, the selection committee made a controversial decision: The group left out not just one but both Big 12 co-champions, TCU and Baylor.
The committee instead put into the field Big Ten champion Ohio State, which, thankfully for the committee, won the national championship that year. The Buckeyes are still the only No. 4 seed to do it — justification, in the end, for the decision.
But TCU and Baylor were left at home to stew over what many believe was the reason for their snub: The Big 12, then, did not play a conference championship game.
TCU and Baylor lacked a 13th game that all other participants had. The absence of the infamous “13th data point” sparked the conference to revive their championship game three years later.
Now, a decade later, a question looms amid an expanded 12-team playoff: Will a 13th data point help at all?
In fact, in at least one situation playing out this weekend in Charlotte, it may only hurt. And if it does hurt — SMU missing the playoff field entirely with a loss in the ACC championship game — there are more than a few people who believe conference title games are in line to be abolished.
“How can it be a detriment for someone to play in a conference championship game?” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “If you want to kill the conference championship games, have somebody who is within the top 12 play for a championship and have them fall out and be leapfrogged.”
Tuesday night's latest CFP selection committee rankings potentially set the stage for this to happen.
SMU, 11-1 and ranked No. 8 in the CFP selection committee’s latest poll, meets No. 17 Clemson (9-3) in the ACC title game. While an SMU victory would leave the projected playoff field mostly unchanged, a Clemson win could cause big problems. Not currently in the playoff field, Clemson represents the College Football Playoff’s first bid-stealer, as a victory likely assures it one of the automatic bids designated for five highest-ranked conference champions.
According to statements from selection committee chair Warde Manuel, the Michigan athletic director, an SMU loss could put the Mustangs in jeopardy of missing the playoff field entirely by sliding behind Alabama, currently the last at-large berth into the playoff.
“Potentially, yes,” it could happen, Manuel told reporters Tuesday night after the latest rankings reveal.
At No. 8, currently safely into the field, SMU could be out on Sunday morning with a loss?
“You talk about the future of championship games,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart said. “Well, I do think how this plays out could shape that. It doesn’t make sense for a team in the playoff field when the regular season ends to play a 13th game if it’s going to be used against that team. How this plays out will shape the future of conference championship games.”
Why ACC title game is the focal point
The ACC championship game has perhaps turned into the most intriguing matchup of the weekend.
An upstart, former Group of Five school having a magical year in its first season at the power level, some 40 years after the infamous death penalty shuttered the program, against a long-standing conference powerhouse with gobs of talent, led by one of only two active coaches to have won a national championship.
At stake: a trip to the playoff and a result that may change the college football postseason forever.
“If the committee treats our league like the SEC and the Big Ten — which, I agree, they should get in both of their (championship game) participants — then the championship games are great,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said.
“If not, you will start to see people that do not want to play in championship games.”
Some already believe that conference championship games in an expanded playoff era are destined for, at the very least, serious evaluation and, eventually, complete elimination.
Over the last six seasons — excluding the anomaly of 2020 — 42 of the 60 teams that participated in their conference title games would have secured a berth in a 12-team playoff before championship weekend.
This weekend’s title matchups offer more proof that, perhaps, these games be reassessed. Five of the eight participants in the four power conference championship games this weekend are currently in the playoff field, and a sixth team, Boise State, is in the field too. Two of those teams, SMU and Boise State, risk tumbling from the field with a loss.
Meanwhile, those participating in the Big Ten and SEC championship games are comfortably in the playoff and are battling in an extra game that some might describe as unnecessary.
“There is a risk-reward,” said former Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, one of the architects of the 12-team playoff format. “I think each conference is gonna have to look in the mirror, ‘The model has changed. I’d rather be in a 12-team playoff than the conference championship.’”
On the line in Indianapolis as No. 1 Oregon meets No. 3 Penn State, and in Atlanta as No. 2 Texas plays No. 5 Georgia is, yes, the reward of a conference championship and a first-round bye in the playoff.
But is that enough to put a team through an additional, high-stakes, exhausting game against a highly ranked opponent?
“It depends on who you ask,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “When you ask a guy that's been in the SEC for about 30 years, has only been a part of five or six of them, five or six national championships, it's equal to that to me because it's just as hard, it's just as elusive. It's an extreme honor to make this game with the schedule that you have to go through, then with an opportunity to win it… I mean, we put the SEC championship on a wall and it's there forever.”
But, what if you lose? The losers of the championship games, having expensed physical and emotional energy likely against a top-flight opponent, must play a first-round game two weeks later, possibly not even on their home field and against an opponent that did not play a 13th game.
Or, in SMU and Boise State’s case, they are eliminated from the field completely.
“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches: They don’t want to be in it,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said last month. “You know, the reward to get a bye versus the risk to get knocked out completely, that’s a really big risk.”
The risk of injury before the onslaught of a four-round playoff is obvious, too. A year ago, in projecting the future, then-American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco told Yahoo Sports, “The only thing that can happen in (title) games next year is somebody getting hurt.”
His replacement, current American commissioner Tim Pernetti, has suggested that the entire college football postseason be “re-evaluated,” including bowl games and conference championships. “We should be talking about looking at everything,” he said.
But for some, under this model, conference title games could be the only way into the playoff field. Though Boise State is currently in the field at No. 10, the Broncos may have to beat UNLV in the Mountain West championship game — played at Boise State — to secure a berth. A loss at home could doom them.
The same goes for the Big 12 title game featuring No. 15 Arizona State and No. 16 Iowa State — neither of which is in the at-large group of the playoff field. They must earn one of the automatic bids for the five highest-ranked conference champions.
“It’s playing out that our championship game is critically important to both of our schools,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said. “It’s a tentpole event and we’re committed to it. For this particular season, it’s going to matter. Win and you’re in.”
Bloated conferences, bad tiebreakers
Conference championship games are not deeply rooted in college athletics.
Many of them have started just in the last decade, including the Sun Belt (2018), Big 12 (restarted in 2017) and AAC (2015).
The SEC owns the original, started in 1992. And while the league has held discussions over the future of the championship game, commissioner Greg Sankey says his membership believes it to be the most appropriate way to crown a champion.
“We are going to have a championship game and determine a champion. We’ve told our coaches the system is predicated on determining a championship,” Sankey said. “There are probably a lot of people right now that would love to be in a championship game and won’t be.”
Of all the drawbacks of eliminating title games, the most troublesome may be determining a conference champion based only on regular season results. Leagues are expanding to greater numbers and have eliminated divisions — both of which could cause problems.
In such large divisions, it’s impossible for each team to play every other team in a single season. Imagine a conference using a convoluted tie-breaking procedure for a three-team tie at the top of the regular season standings. The tiebreaker would determine which team earns the league’s automatic bid and first-round bye into the playoff.
Already, tiebreakers have created messy problems.
Penn State won a tiebreaker over Indiana — both teams tied at 8-1 in the conference — to reach the championship game against Oregon. The teams did not meet in the regular season, resulting in the league determining the championship game participant by using the fourth of six tiebreakers. The Nittany Lions had a higher cumulative conference winning percentage among its opponents — a strength-of-schedule metric that left IU coach Curt Cignetti miffed.
“We would have been better off just flipping a coin between the two second-place teams to see who played in that game,” he said.
In the Big 12, the league had a four-way tie for two spots in the title game. Iowa State and Arizona State won similar tiebreakers over Colorado and BYU. The Cougars, at 10-2 and with the league’s strongest CFP resume, are not playing in their championship game.
Another drawback to eliminating conference title games: money.
Championship games are often incorporated in a conference’s television package. The SEC and Big Ten championship games are estimated to hold a television value of more than $40 million, experts say.
Ticket revenue from championship games is not insignificant either, though prices have dipped this year. The get-in price for the Big Ten championship game is less than $15. Even the SEC title bout between Texas and Georgia — $120 — is one-third of what it was last year when Alabama met Georgia.
Either way, couple the television value with ticket revenue from a sold-out venue and such an event is hard to replace financially. However, there are ways. The CFP, if it were to expand to 14 or 16 teams, could use new television revenues from a playoff to compensate leagues that choose to end their championship games.
It is doable, says Jack Swarbrick, the former Notre Dame athletic director who sat for years on the CFP leadership team. “It’s going to happen,” Swarbrick contends about the elimination of title games.
Could CFP calendar shift help?
Perhaps the biggest incentive to ending them is the calendar. The move could alleviate a cramped December where officials are attempting to play eight new playoff games while going head-to-head with the NFL. That’s problematic for broadcasting windows.
For now, the four CFP first-round games are scheduled to kick off the third week of December. One game will be played on Friday night, Dec. 20, and three games on Saturday, Dec. 21, which pits college football against the NFL. In the third week of December, the NFL begins playing games on Saturday, as well as their traditional Sunday and at night on Monday and Thursdays.
Prime-time television windows are clogged.
With the elimination of conference title games, could college officials shift the Army-Navy game to what is now championship weekend and begin the 12-team playoff on Week 2 of December?
“The second weekend of December is a gold mine,” Swarbrick said. “The NFL can start to go on Week 3. We are starting on Week 3. Figuring out how to capture the second weekend in December has to be a high priority for the future leadership of the CFP.”
Cutting the 13th game would also make it more possible to further expand the 12-team playoff to 14 or 16. In that case, there would be plenty of room, for instance, for an SMU that loses the ACC championship game to get into the field.
Phillips believes the result in Charlotte shouldn’t matter. The Mustangs should be in if the committee stays consistent with its decision last year to keep Florida State out of the playoffs. Alabama was selected over the Seminoles with the committee using FSU starting quarterback Jordan Travis’ season-ending injury as a reason.
This season, SMU is undefeated (9-0) after switching starting quarterbacks from Preston Stone to Kevin Jennings.
“It really cuts both ways,” Phillips said. “If you are going to hold it against a school one year, you have to pay attention to the change at quarterback this year too. I’ve told the committee that and have asked them to keep that in the discussion.
“That was heavily used, '(FSU) isn’t the same team!’ Well, SMU isn’t the same team since they made a quarterback change.”