With his team destined to land outside the four-team College Football Playoff for the second consecutive year, TCU coach Gary Patterson is, naturally, campaigning for a bigger playoff.
“I’m not going to be a person who’s going to be an advocate of the four after this season,” Patterson said at a press conference Tuesday. “I think you need to take the winner of all five [power conferences] and then you have an at-large or three more and have either a six or an eight [team playoff]. I think we need to take people’s opinions out of this and what you do during a season is what gives you the opportunity to play yourself into it. Then I think it’s a lot easier. Then I think a lot of people would be a lot happier.”
Though the two-loss Horned Frogs’ resume is nowhere close to Playoff-caliber this season (they stand 19th in the latest CFP rankings), Patterson is likely still stinging from last year’s rejection. In 2014, TCU went 11-1 but was left out of the playoff despite ranking third entering the final week of the season.
The Big 12 again stands in some danger of being the odd-conference out of the playoff, with Oklahoma currently ranking third but facing No. 11 Oklahoma State on Saturday. If the Sooners lose to the Cowboys and No. 6 Notre Dame beats No. 9 Stanford, the Big 12 will likely be excluded from the playoff. No. 7 Baylor, which faces TCU this weekend, could sneak in if several of the teams ahead of them lose.
Patterson’s frustration is understandable. The Big 12 is at an inherent disadvantage relative to the other Power Five conferences due to not having a championship game, and it’s easy to imagine conference-wide fear of being excluded becoming an annual ritual.
Patterson reiterated that he wants to eliminate some subjectivity from the playoff-selection process, saying, “You’re dealing with kids’ lives on just people’s opinions.” But although assigning five playoff spots to conference champions would add an objective measure to the selection process, it’s certainly not a perfect solution. Under that system, there are still one or three at-large bids being distributed subjectively, so someone will feel spurned regardless. Plus, an automatic-bid system allows for, say, a three-loss Big Ten West team to reach the playoff by winning its conference championship game, taking the spot of a program with a better resume.
Still, appeals for a bigger playoff — particularly from coaches on the outside looking in — won’t go away any time soon.
[Star-Telegram via NBC Sports]
