Dear Andy: A much better way to seed the College Football Playoff

The first on-campus College Football Playoff game kicks off Friday, and you, the listeners and viewers of Andy & Ari On3, have questions. Let’s dive into the latest edition of Dear Andy to answer your college football questions.

From Jake in Fort Worth:
At this point in college football there are no bad ideas in terms of what is unequivocally an ENTERTAINMENT product, but the main logistical complaint I’ve seen with the playoff format is that the teams with the byes have unfair matchups waiting for them (e.g. Oregon has to play the winner of Tennessee–Ohio State despite being the No. 1 seed).

Considering it is already a Gladiator/Bachelor-esque reality show, what if instead the teams with the bye got to PICK on a broadcast who they wanted to play out of the winners? There would be a live selection show draft in order of what seeded bye team you were to pick from the teams that won in the first round. Oregon would have first pick and could say “We want to play Indiana” or something, thus eliminating getting an unfair seeding since THEY were the ones that picked it, and the other side would have bulletin board material and a chip on their shoulder! “They wanted to play us!” says Dabo Swinney as Georgia says they want to play Clemson again on live television!

Thoughts?

I love this, but I don’t think it will work with the current format of quarterfinals in bowls. When the CFP eventually moves to campus sites for those games, it would be logistically possible because the idea of on-campus games is to have a partisan crowd. You wouldn’t have to worry about half the people in the stadium making their travel plans on a moment’s notice. It would be more like a tenth. (Unless the rumors about Tennessee fans turning Ohio Stadium orange on Saturday turn out to be true.) 

There is a way to make it work with the current format, though. It would be highly entertaining and far more fair to the teams that weren’t handed top-four seeds because of rules that deliberately mis-seed the tournament. Here’s how it would work…

When the seeds are set, allow the No. 1 seed to choose the matchup it would like to feed into its quarterfinal. The No. 2 seed would get the next choice. Then the No. 3 seed and the No. 4 would take whatever is left.

This might actually be more fun than Jake’s already-great idea. You’d have two teams instead of one getting thoroughly insulted by the coach of the No 1 seed — who in my format would have only five minutes to decide before announcing his choice on live television. You’d also have some intrigue as the No. 2 wrestles with the idea of which potential opponent is more dangerous.

Let’s imagine how that would have gone this year…

The CFP selection committee’s rankings would have been revealed on screen, allowing Rece Davis to announce the top four seeds and the four first-round matchups. Immediately, a five-minute clock would begin counting down. 

When the clock expired, Oregon coach Dan Lanning would appear onscreen.

Rece Davis: OK, coach. Which first-round matchup do you want to play the winner of?

Dan Lanning: [Squirming, sweating] Rece, we’ve decided we want the winner of SMU-Penn State.

The shot would then shift to Athens, where Kirby Smart would have five minutes to determine which of the remaining three matchups should feed into the Sugar Bowl. 

Rece Davis: Kirby, who would you like to play?

Kirby Smart: Rece, give us the winner of the two teams we’re a combined 3-0 against. We’ll take the winner of Clemson-Texas.

This would be far more fair to Oregon than making the Ducks play the Tennessee-Ohio State winner, which likely would be the one matchup that wasn’t selected because either alternative seems like a nightmare.

Or, they could just seed the tournament straight and don’t artificially lift conference champions into higher seeds than their rankings unless it’s at the bottom of the true seed list. And that’s probably what they’ll decide to do after watching this season play out. 

Because they already know they messed up.

From Brian: 
Which team that did not make a bowl game this year has the best chance of making the College Football playoff next year?

This is not a silly question. Indiana went 3-9 in 2023 and then went 11-1 and made the CFP. 

The turnaround Curt Cignetti engineered has the highest degree of difficulty, though. Because of guaranteed berths for conference champs, there is a magical place where a team can far more easily go from home for the holidays to the CFP: the Big 12.

Utah went 5-7 this season because of quarterback injuries and offensive issues. But is Utah usually that bad under Kyle Whittingham? Of course not. The Utes won the Pac-12 in two of the league’s final three years as a power conference. In the four seasons between 2019 and 2022 that didn’t include a global pandemic, Utah won 40 games. It’s entirely reasonable to imagine the Utes return to form and compete for the Big 12 title.

Oklahoma State also just had a terrible season that followed a 10-win season and was only three years removed from a 12-win season. Mike Gundy took a salary cut to stay — with the difference going to pay players — and replaced his coordinators. His history suggests a potential turnaround as well.

Scott Frost returns to UCF — which went 4-8 in Gus Malzahn’s final season — after a disastrous tenure at Nebraska followed by two years of coaching exile. The last time Frost coached the Knights, he went 13-0. If he can come anywhere close to that, his team will be in contention for the Big 12 title game. Get in that game and you’re a win away from the CFP.

The Big 12 truly is the place where hope springs eternal.

From Oscar:
Have you seen the new proposed Super League/Unify League for big soccer clubs in Europe? Do you think anything similar is on the horizon for college football?

Oscar is referring to yet another attempt to cobble together a league of the biggest brands in international soccer. One almost formed in 2021, but fans, clubs and leagues revolted and the plans were scuttled. The new proposal would create a 64-team men’s league and a 32-team women’s league made up of clubs from across Europe. These groups would then be split into divisions that feature promotion and relegation.

I definitely think a super league is on the horizon in college football, even though it probably isn’t in the best interest of the sport. The problem is that every time someone wishes for balanced conference schedules or a more objective way of determining CFP participants, they’re really wishing for a super league that probably would contain about 40 programs — most of them from the Big Ten and SEC. 

That would be highly lucrative for those programs and terrible for everyone else. Hopefully, the fight against that seeming inevitability will continue. And hopefully the opposition will be voiced like it was this week from LaLiga president Javier Tebas, who posted this about the proposed new league: “Those from @A22Sports are back with a new idea: they produce formats as if they were churros, without analyzing or studying the economic and sporting effects on the competitions. The television model they propose only favors the big clubs, (and they know it…) while endangering the economic stability of the national leagues and their clubs.”

I’m a fan of anyone who can relate a current issue to churros.

A Random Ranking

Reader/viewer Matt wants me to rank fictional bars and restaurants, and his best example is a doozy: Stupid Nick’s Wing Dump from the (semi?) fictional version of Gainesville, Fla., described by character Jason Mendoza in The Good Place. I’ve long wanted to grab a pitcher and a bucket of Gator Piss wings from Stupid Nick’s. That it is in my town and I can’t seem to find it is endlessly frustrating.

1. Satriale’s Pork Store, The Sopranos
2. Mos Eisley Cantina, Star Wars
3. Stupid Nick’s Wing Dump, The Good Place
4. Cheers, Cheers
5. Los Pollos Hermanos, Breaking Bad
6. The Original Beef of Chicagoland, The Bear
7. Moe’s, The Simpsons
8. The Three Broomsticks, The Harry Potter series
9. Charles Mulligan’s Steakhouse, Parks and Recreation
10. The Peach Pit, Beverly Hills 90210