The 12-team College Football Playoff and the fallacy of it all being settled on the field

One of the top selling points for the 12-team College Football Playoff field was this sport, for the first time in its history, would fully decide its national champion on the field. Fully?

Here’s some bad news for you: that’s not true.

It’s Nov. 1 and we probably have the most unpredictable month of college football ahead of us. Upsets and shocking losses are coming because that’s what makes this sport beautiful. But On3 calculated Thursday there are 31 teams still alive in the CFP race, which is almost triple the amount of spots there are in the field. And while many of them still play each other and some will lose games we don’t expect, there is a high likelihood the committee is going to have to make some tough decisions at the end of the year. Who is in and who is out? Yes, those decisions are going to be made in a boardroom.

This isn’t a column arguing whether the 12-team field or the four-team field is superior. We’ve been around that track 100 times and there’s no point in relitigating it. It’s all personal preference, anyway. The purpose of this column is to illuminate the reality that there is going to be more rampant controversy over snubs in this era than there ever was in the past. That, in turn, will promote the concept of further expansion and around and around we go.

Cracking the four-team field was hard. It demanded excellence during the regular season. The vast majority of teams couldn’t live up to the standard of what that took. The percentage of teams who made the Playoff in college football was (is) much lower than in other sports, but the percentage of teams equipped to win it all has traditionally been commensurate with that percentage.

And because of that, there hasn’t been much debate about which four teams should be in, outside of the debacle with Florida State last year.

But now? The transfer portal and NIL have made a higher percentage of teams good. And the College Football Playoff is now open to the sport’s second tier. That means there will be a ton of 10-2, and maybe 9-3 teams, with legitimate cases to make at year’s end. There are more teams, obviously, able to go 9-3 or 10-2 than undefeated or 11-1. There are more of those teams than additional spots in the field.

Not everyone worthy of a spot is going to get in this year. There are going to be a handful of teams who feel snubbed when the beauty contest resumes in December.

Here’s a taste: What does the committee do with a one-loss Indiana team if it finds itself compared head-to-head with a two-loss Alabama team with a win over Georgia? No matter who is chosen, someone gets jobbed. People in a boardroom are going to decide who is better based on helmets, quality wins, strength of schedule and statistics.

There are so many other examples of situations like this that can arise.

What if Iowa State and BYU meet in the Big 12 Championship Game and the loser is pitted against a 10-2 SEC team with more quality wins and a tougher schedule? Boardroom decision.

What if there are four one-loss Big Ten teams at the end of the season? All that may take is Ohio State winning out — beating Penn State and Indiana along the way — and delivering Oregon a loss in the Big Ten title game. Boardroom decision.

Chaos scenarios aren’t new to November discourse in college football. But those chaos scenarios may be more likely to come to fruition with more teams in the mix and a higher percentage of really good rosters than ever before.

There are going to be more boardroom decisions now than ever.

This is a reality because there are more teams in the mix right now than we anticipated. Nobody thought BYU was going to be in the mix. Nobody thought Iowa State, Colorado, SMU or Pitt would be, either. There are more examples than that, too.

Some would argue that’s a feature of the sport, not a bug. And they’d be right. More good teams, more drama, more debate, more podcast views. That’s what makes college football special.

But the feeling of teams being treated unjustly is also going to be more rampant, which was the problem the 12-team CFP was supposed to help solve.

We don’t know how the season is going to play out. Maybe it’ll all clean itself up before December. But there are so many teams still alive who have relatively clean paths. Even if 16 of those 31 teams on the On3 list lose more, you’re going to have a collection of four or five teams who have a real case to get in and are not because of a boardroom decision.

That’s not being decided on the field. This new format is actually going to leave more teams feeling unjustly spurned than any other point in college football history.

The stakes are lower because you won’t feel as bad for No. 13 as you did for Florida State last year. If you finish No. 14, then cry the world a river about how you didn’t get in. Maybe some of us won’t be kept up at night the way we were when an undefeated Power 5 champion was left out of the dance a year ago.

This is crunch time. The first College Football Playoff committee’s first rankings reveal is Tuesday. We’re finally going to see how the committee views teams in order, which will give us a clearer idea of the danger that can arise later.

But if you’re a fan of a bubble team, protect your heart now. There are going to be some boardroom decisions that ruin your holiday season.