UNLV's Barry Odom states Mountain West champion should have 'a seat at the table' in College Football Playoff

In the new College Football Playoff format, teams like UNLV theoretically have a shot at making it into the big dance and competing for all the marbles.

That’s a recent change, one that many programs at the Group of Five conference level is still grappling with. But it’s an exciting prospect, to say the least, especially for a competitive program like UNLV.

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“It’s amazing that the things that we talk about as a team in January through our winning edge program in the winter months, and then you get into spring ball, I’m very open about having those conversations with our team on what’s out there,” coach Barry Odom said on the College GameDay podcast. “Any competitive arena or an environment, I want to be the best and I want our team to shoot for that.

“So for us understanding now there’s hope with the 12-team playoff — which there is for a lot of teams now — but I think it’s exciting, it’s great for the game of college football.”

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UNLV is off to a 3-0 start to the season, having racked up impressive road wins over Houston and Kansas. Still, Odom knows his team will have to be near-perfect this year if it hopes to take the Group of Five slot in the College Football Playoff.

“For us we know that our margin for error is very, very slim when looking in that context,” Odom said. “We know that we have to win the conference championship, we understand that. And whoever wins our conference championship should have a seat at the table. I looked at last year, we went to the championship game, we came up short. Had we won that game, where would have we ended up ranking wise, analytically, getting as much information as we can? We would have been just outside of that because of our strength of schedule.”

Thinking ahead, Odom worked with UNLV administrators to try to shore up that potential hole. The goal was to not have anything that could stand in the way become an issue.

The UNLV head coach explained.

“So how do you fix those problems?” Odom said. “Well, you go schedule at Houston, you schedule at Kansas, you have Syracuse come in here, another Power Four team. You go to Oregon State. Then you don’t leave it to chance. And we understand that our league is so strong. We have Fresno, we’ve got Boise coming up. There’s a number of games that will be marquee games for us, and we understand if we take care of business every single week then after the first week in December we’ll have a spot.”