Paul Finebaum shares his take on potential Group of Five playoff

A potential Group of Five playoff exclusive from the CFP could be a reality and Paul Finebaum doesn’t think it’s outrageous.

Despite the playoff expanding to 12 teams this coming season, the Group of Five could still be at a disadvantage in the 5+7 model and realistically only one of the schools makes the CFP. Heck, likely at a low seed.

While it;’s complicated and it would dramatically change the sport, again, Finebaum said there’s pressure of Group of Five schools to feel like they belong with some of the blue bloods of the sport.

“It’s the open ended question and I see it, and you see it,’ Finebaum said on McElroy and Cubelic. “This is a little bit of a different example, but why do certain players go to Alabama when they should go to a smaller school? Because they feel like, I think it’s peer pressure, right? They want to say hey, I can go over there and half the time they’re gone. It’s like you’re an average golfer but you say I’m gonna play from the back tees and you shouldn’t.” 

While more eyes might be on the regular playoff, naturally, a G5 playoff might not be the worst idea considering it gives those schools with less resources a bigger platform.

Everyone knows there’s quality football at the Group of Five level. SOmetimes those schools upset the “big dogs” of college football.

But overall, if you do the math, it doesn’t happen a majority of the time.

“There are a lot of things that schools shouldn’t be doing in this regard, but I think because they know that the big dogs are always on ESPN and they’re playing at 11:30 on some other off-brand network that they need to do it,” Finebaum said. “And they go I mean, there are a lot of great success stories in the pantheon of college football, where you can win at another level and I think this might help that, but at least they’ll have somewhere to go as opposed to you jumping up and down and trying to get noticed every couple of years.”

A move that has been called the “tipping point” for Group of Five administrators, change could be coming.

“Group of 5 administrators have had preliminary discussions in recent months about a G5-only postseason playoff or even wide-scale G5 realignment with the involvement of private equity,” Chris Vannini of The Athletic reported.

“The initial idea circulated among administrators earlier this year, but once the Big Ten and SEC threw around their weight to reshape the new College Football Playoff contract and grant themselves far more guaranteed revenue and almost all of the control, that served as the tipping point for many administrators to chart their own future sooner rather than later.”