Rece Davis points out 'major flaw' with 12-team College Football Playoff bracket, seeding
Tuesday night, the penultimate College Football Playoff rankings dropped. That means we’re just a few days away from the first 12-team CFP bracket becoming official – but ESPN’s Rece Davis sees a “major flaw” with the new format.
Under the new-look CFP, the five highest-ranked conference champions receive byes, and the top four of those teams receive first-round byes. The next seven highest-ranked teams will round out the field, and first-round games will be at campus sites.
Davis argued there’s a way to simplify the system. He doesn’t think the byes should be based on winning conference championships. Although he thinks league winners should be in the field, he wants the selection committee to simply seed the bracket based on the rankings.
“I’m gonna keep pounding this drum. Just seed the field,” Davis said on Tuesday’s rankings reveal show. “Enough with this conference champions and the byes.
“Look at Penn State. I mean, Arizona State’s a good team, Boise State’s a good team. You want that to get to the semifinals? Or if you’re Oregon, the No. 1 team, [do you want] Tennessee or Ohio State? That’s a major flaw in this thing that needs to be corrected immediately – not for this year. For next year.”
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The 2024 season is the first with the expanded field, and the bracket has been projected by giving the highest-ranked teams in each league the bye. For example, Oregon was the top team in the Big Ten and, therefore, came in as the No. 1 seed in the latest 12-team bracket.
In short, the selection committee has an extra step in its process. The main goal is to rank the teams. From there, it will seed the teams based on the final rankings.
“[The committee’s] role hasn’t really changed that much over what they did in the past,” said College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark, speaking on a media webinar prior to the first rankings release. “Their main job – their No. 1 job, their prime directive – is to pick and rank the 25 best teams in college football, plain and simple. They have to get that right. That, then, leads to everything else.”