The new 12-team playoff proposal and what it could mean for Texas

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In recent weeks, the College Football Playoff returned to the spotlight after Name, Image, and Likeness and the recruiting dead period dominated the conversation surrounding the sport since Alabama topped Ohio State in the national championship on January 11.

The College Football playoff has been a four-team event for seven seasons. At some point in the future, it could become a 12-team event.

A working group composed of CFP management committee members Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, presented a proposal on June 10 to change the playoff format to a 12-team event.

“The four highest-ranked conference champions would be seeded one through four and each would receive a first-round bye, while teams seeded five through 12 would play each other in the first round on the home field of the higher-ranked team (The team ranked #5 would host #12; team #6 would meet team #11; team #7 would play team #10; and team #8 would meet #9.)” a CFP statement on the proposal announced in June. “Under the proposal, the quarterfinals and semifinals would be played in bowl games. The championship game would continue to be at a neutral site, as under the current format.”

Those four presented their ideas to the rest of the CFP management committee, who endorsed the idea and sent it along to a different entity, the CFP board of managers. That group includes a president from one institution from each FBS conference plus Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, and holds ultimate authority over the playoff format.

The board of managers announced yesterday they authorized the management committee to engage in a “summer review phase” where they would speak with student-athletes, athletic directors, faculty athletics representatives, coaches, university presidents and chancellors, the bowl games, and, of course, ESPN.

“I caution observers of our process not to rush to conclusions about what this board may decide,” Mark Keenan, Mississippi State president and CFP board of managers chairman, said in a statement Tuesday. “The working group has presented us a thorough and thoughtful proposal. There is more work to do, more listening to do and more information needed before we can make a decision. We look forward to hearing more and learning more in time for our next meeting in September.”

The playoff is in a 12-year contract between the NCAA and ESPN that runs through 2025. According to ESPN’s Heather Dinich, “CFP executive director Bill Hancock has reiterated that the playoff will not change this season or next, though it could happen as early as the 2023 season.”

What does this mean for Texas?

So, you’re saying there’s a chance? Right… right?

As the following graph illustrates, the playoff era has coincided with a down era of Texas football. Even in 2018, when Texas finished in the top 10 of the AP poll and won the Sugar Bowl, Texas entered the New Years Six contest ranked No. 15 in the final CFP rankings.

If a 12-team playoff existed since the CFP’s first season in 2014, Texas never would have been a participant.

Here it is! How the CFP’s 12-team proposal would have played out the last 7 yrs.

There were 4 instances of a team ranked outside the top 12 making it:
2019: 17 Memphis
2016: 15 W. Michigan
2015: 18 Houston
2014: 20 Boise

A combined 22 teams ranked inside the top 12 missed it. pic.twitter.com/kQB7Pwh4Mc

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) June 10, 2021

Texas’ trilateral commission of UT board of regents chairman Kevin Eltife, UT-Austin president Jay Hartzell, and Longhorn athletic director Chris Del Conte are behind their guy, Steve Sarkisian. They think the disciple of both Pete Carroll and Nick Saban can put Texas in a position to be one of the top 12 teams in the country.

Del Conte is on record saying the goal for every sport the Longhorns sponsor is to finish in the top 10. Championships, like the ones achieved this spring in rowing, men’s swimming and diving, and women’s tennis, are more than welcome, too.

If Texas is where it expects to be every year, it will be in the 12-team playoff every year. It seems like an uphill climb to reach that point after covering Texas and seeing Big 12 institutions Baylor, TCU, Kansas State, Oklahoma, and Iowa State all finish the regular season in the top 12 before the Longhorns during the playoff era.

But that uphill climb is made flatter by expanding the playoff from four to 12. Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and a handful of other schools may continue to have a stranglehold on the top of the sport, but they’ll face tougher competition in order to maintain that stranglehold (they’re more than capable of doing so).

How does it relate to the Big 12? The conference enacted a championship game after the “thirteenth data point” debacle with Baylor and TCU in 2014. Every year since the Big 12 reinstated the championship game in 2017, the winner (and it’s always been Oklahoma) has reached the top four.

But two of the runners-up – Baylor in 2019, and Iowa State in 2020 – would have made the playoff under the new format. Three Big 12 teams would have made it in 2014 in the days of “one true champion.”

It appears that a conference title game appearance, in the current iteration of the Big 12, would put a team like Texas in strong position to get into the playoff. The only thing left to do for the program in an 11-season conference title desert and two-season title game appearance drought is to get there with a respectable record.

Photo courtesy of the CFP