Paul Finebaum: College Football Playoff format has to be tweaked for next year

This is the first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff format. Already, it has created some controversy, in particular for how the format has worked out in the initial bracket for seemingly giving an easier path to some teams that may be less deserving than others.

One person who has been highly critical of the format is Paul Finebaum. In an appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning, he shared that the format needs to be tweaked before next season, even if that requires the SEC and Big Ten throwing their weight around.

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“I think they have to try to tweak it for next year,” Paul Finebaum said. “It’s a glaring weakness, especially if you look at what Penn State‘s root to the semifinals is. It’s ridiculous. Somebody was gonna get that path. I don’t know how you get that path after losing a game, but that’s okay.”

In the current format, the top five ranked conference champions get into the Playoff with the top four of those teams getting a bye. That’s even if they’re ranked behind other teams who are making the field as an at-large. In turn, this seems to have given some teams an easier path by playing teams perceived to have easier draws in the bracket.

One of the teams that seemingly benefited the most was Penn State, who despite losing the Big Ten Championship Game will now play SMU. The winner of that game gets Boise State. Meanwhile, Big Ten champion Oregon will get a bye but the Ducks’ first game is against Ohio State or Tennessee.

“Ultimately, they can do whatever they want. This is not law. It is just a formula,” Finebaum said. “If [Greg] Sankey and [Tony] Petitti go in there and say, ‘We’re changing it, or if we don’t change it we’re getting x-number of guaranteed automatic bids,’ then what are these other conferences going to do? Because I know a lot of threats are being made today from changing schedules to pulling out. That’s not gonna happen. But the rest of the conferences are going to do whatever the SEC and the Big Ten want.”

In order to make the kind of tweaks that Finebaum would like to, it would require cooperation from all of the conferences. However, as he also mentioned, the weight of the SEC and Big Ten could be enough to create pressure and force changes through if that’s what they want to do.

The media contracts, however, do make it more difficult to create significant change within the College Football Playoff. Last year, the College Football Playoff and ESPN reached a six-year $7.8 billion media deal for the rights to broadcast the expanded Playoff.