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Keeping the Group of 5 in the CFP is Important and Good, Actually

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Heading into this year’s College Football Playoff First Round matchups, all eyes were not on the games. Rather, much internet ire was directed toward the CFP Committee and the entire process for selecting participants. Could it be because there are too many teams? Are there too few? No, it’s because two teams were blown out, something that has apparently never happened in the history of the CFP. Tulane and James Madison (in its FOURTH season at the FBS level) earned their way into the CFP field thanks to winning their respective conferences, plus the ACC having a convoluted tiebreaker that resulted in 8-4 Duke playing for and winning the conference.

The law of the land is that the top five highest-ranked conference champions get automatic bids. When the initial expansion was announced, it was on the minds of a few that, wait, what if the champions of the American and Sun Belt are both ranked higher than a “Power” conference champion? Well, in year two of the 12-team iteration, it happened. And all Hell broke loose.

Now that the Tulane Green Wave were beaten by Ole Miss (41-10) and James Madison lost to Oregon (51-34), obviously, the Group of 5 (Group of 6 when you include the diet Mountain West aka Pac-12) doesn’t deserve an opportunity to play for a CFP national championship, right? Obviously, the G6 isn’t even on the same plane as the P4. Legitimately, there were concerns online that these matchups are “safety concerns.”

You know what these concerns and arguments are? Malarky. Balderdash. Hogwash. UnAmerican.

This is not a direct response to our other great writer, Craig McMichael, but rather an attempt to take a stand. College football is the greatest. Why should certain conferences be disallowed from winning national championships?

Keeping the Group of 5 in the CFP is Important and Good, Actually

There are 136 teams at the FBS level. This year, 67 programs call the Group of 6 home, 67 programs are in the Power 4, and two are Independent. We all know what has been going on regarding Notre Dame and its independence. Of course, the Fighting Irish was able to get its own little carve-out to guarantee it gets into the CFP if it ends up ranked 12th or better in the final rankings.

But the issue is what kind of system do you have if 50% of your teams don’t have a legitimate shot to play for a title? All 136 programs are at the FBS level, but, yes, there is a divide between the good and bad programs.

But where we draw that line is an issue. The Big Ten, for example, sent three teams to the CFP. Does Purdue deserve a more tangible path to the CFP than a program like Tulane or Boise State, even?

Arguing that the G6 doesn’t deserve a spot in the CFP because a three-loss P4 team that couldn’t beat one of the many non-bowl-eligible teams on the schedule is wrong. Tulane and James Madison did their jobs. They played by the rules. Why should they be punished?

Money Talks

There are three reasons to keep the Group of 5/Group of 6 in the CFP. First, money. Second, exposure. Third, imagine the chaos when there’s an upset. Leading a G6 team to the CFP creates a groundswell of support, both from fans and from recruits/transfers. Look at Indiana. For 100+ years, the Hoosiers were a G5 team with a Big Ten logo on their chest. Then, Curt Cignetti comes in, wins 10 games and makes the CFP last year, continues to recruit and bring in transfers, and they’re the top-overall seed this year. Indiana! At the same time, imagine Twitter if James Madison had gone into Eugene and beat Oregon. Or if Boise State had beaten Penn State last year.

Those are all hypotheticals, of course. Let’s talk about the tangible effects: money. Money is what powers college football, like it or not. NIL and TV deals make the decisions now. If you truly love college football, you would support more programs getting bigger slices of the pie. This year, the Mountain West and Sun Belt earned $4 million each. More money in the G6 would help raise the floor of college football. Excluding them would effectively kill off half of the programs.

What is the recruiting pitch for a G6 program if you cut off its access? “Come here to Bowling Green. Yeah, we know you can’t play for a real national championship, but maybe, if you’re good, a real program like Northwestern, Boston College, or Arkansas will try to poach you through the portal.”

Even for CUSA and MAC teams, therein lies a small chance of the CFP. You take that away, what incentive do those programs even have to field teams? You think Kent State is going to keep playing at the FBS level?

“But The Blowouts!”

This is the best argument, in this author’s humble opinion. We can’t let G6 teams in because they don’t stand a chance and will be blown out of the stadium. Well, it’s a good thing there haven’t been a single blowout between P4 programs in the short history of the CFP, or else this argument would be shallow and casual.

Let’s look at the history of the CFP and games decided by eight points or less. Including this year’s first-round matchups, there have been a total of 45 CFP games. How many of those have been decided by one score? 13. Less than 29% of all CFP matchups have been close. But, it’s obviously a Group of 6 problem, right?

Seven of the eight first-round matchups thus far have been decided by multiple scores. James Madison lost by 17, so it doesn’t belong, but Tennessee losing by 25 is nothing, naturally. How about last year’s quarterfinals? Oregon shouldn’t have been allowed back in the CFP because it was down, *checks notes*, 34-0 with three minutes to go until halftime. Semifinals? Admittedly, the semifinal round has the fewest beatdowns by percentage, but Ohio State should never be allowed to touch the CFP after that 31-0 loss to Clemson in 2016. Or, conversely, Clemson shouldn’t be allowed since the Tigers have lost by 23 to the Buckeyes in 2019.

Naturally, the national championship should be competitive, right? For the first three of the first four years, it was. But if you weren’t aware, Georgia beat TCU 65-7.

Blowouts are not a G6 issue; it’s a “there are not 12 teams good enough to win the title” problem.

A Better System?

Naturally, because social media allows random folks to buy checkmarks to make it look like they are experts, everyone has a solution. “Just form your own tournament, like the NIT!”

So, you want to cut off G6 programs from the CFP funding, give them a participation trophy tournament, and act like everything is okay? Do you hear yourself?

Just because Toledo has the wrong patch on its midnight blue jersey doesn’t mean it’s less of a football program than Syracuse. Why does Arkansas get to reap the benefits of the top of its conference while doing absolutely nothing? Nick Saban (a coach who lost to UL-Monroe and MWC member Utah) likened the G6 to Triple-A baseball. “Look, would we allow the winner of the Triple-A baseball league … in the World Series playoffs?” Okay, let’s play that game. Did you know there is a plurality of MLB clubs that are not actively trying to win? They’re just trying to make money and go home.

Saban is right in that aspect. There are plenty of P4 programs uninterested in contending at an elite level. Should Oklahoma State have more of a shot at a title than Western Michigan or Tulane? Should they get to cash the checks written by Texas Tech’s success while 15 of the 16 Big 12 teams are at home, weighing down the couch?

In a pie-in-the-sky scenario, we could have a promotion-relegation system in college football. However, that would have to be approved by the programs skirting by, cashing those checks. Those same programs are the ones at risk of hypothetical relegation.

We had a whole proposal in March of 2024.

Just Stop

We understand the calls to get rid of the Group of 5 (G6) when it comes to the CFP.  Nobody likes to watch boring games. It might be time to wake up, however. Most college football games are lopsided. It’s not the NFL where games are decided by less than a touchdown every week.

Locking out the G6 would kill what we know as college football. It’s not right, and it’s frankly not about what we should be about as Americans. What is more “American Dream” than the underdog beating all odds and slaying the Goliath that is Alabama, Georgia, or, God forbid, Ohio State?

The way the CFP is set up, it’s a weird in-between bastardization of a tournament and an invitational. A real tournament would have automatic bids for every conference, like the NFL or March Madness. If you want an invitational, just say that. But then, you need to deal with the consequences when the ACC gets one team and the SEC is rolling up with seven for no reason other than that special patch.

The G6 isn’t going to break away from the P4, so you might as well get used to this conversation. We need to work to bridge the divide between the ceiling and floor of the FBS, not work to pry a chasm. Keeping the G6 in the field is important to the health of the game. People whine that NIL and the transfer portal have killed college football. If you lock out the G6 by stealing its AQs or expand to 16 and don’t allow for a path, that’s what you’re doing.

If you don’t want the G6 included, honestly, that’s fine. But if that’s the case, you can’t say you love college football; you just love brands.

 

Main Image: © Lauren Witte/Clarion Ledger / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The post Keeping the Group of 5 in the CFP is Important and Good, Actually appeared first on Last Word on College Football.