The College Football Playoff is set to kick off on Saturday when SEC champion Alabama and Pac-12 champion Washington square off in Atlanta in the Peach Bowl, and ACC champion Clemson takes on Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl later on New Years Eve. As the big boys get ready to compete for a national championship, there appears to be at least some talk about starting up a second playoff format in FBS college football, specifically for Group of Five schools.
Brett McMurphy of ESPN.com reports there is “a growing number of Group of 5 officials that favor adding a playoff” that would be just for Group of 5 programs, an idea we have explored in a hypothetical sense previously (and will undoubtedly revisit). With a glut of bowl games already with well-publicized attendance issues at hand, it makes sense to try and find a way to make the postseason more meaningful (and more revenue-generating) for the Group of 5, which you can argue are the have-nots in college football, with a divide growing larger and larger by the year.
“It’s time to have a realistic conversation about creating a playoff for the Group of 5,” Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier told ESPN. “Why not?”
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“There is absolutely no ability for us (teams in the Group of 5) to be in that national title conversation,” Frazier said. “That’s just reality. Anyone that says we can: that’s a flat-out lie.”
“Every division of college football has a national championship — Power 5, FCS, Division II, Division III and NAIA — every division, that is, except the Group of 5,”
It is worth pointing out that the Power 5 and the Group of 5 are a part of the same NCAA division, the Football Bowl Subdivision (or FBS). Frazier’s comments demonstrate, however, that there is a clear divide within the FBS. It is one that is not technically an official division but is commonly accepted as the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC have gained so much power to make decisions on their own, while the other conferences are left behind to play catch-up.
Not everybody is on board with the idea, of course, and Frazier’s stance is not necessarily representative of the entire group. One anonymous Group of 5 AD told McMurphy they “[absolutely] would not want a separate playoff, and I can’t put enough exclamation points behind that.”
“You mean compete for a junior varsity championship?” another Group of 5 AD said to ESPN. “No thanks.”
Under the current structure, one Group of Five conference champion is given an automatic spot in the College Football Playoff bowl rotation within the New Years Six bowls. This year, it is MAC champion Western Michigan, at 13-0, getting a chance to play in the Cotton Bowl against Wisconsin from the Big Ten. Last year it was AAC champion Houston against Florida State, and the year before it was Boise State taking on Arizona in the Fiesta Bowl. None of these Group of Five teams played against a power conference champion, and even an undefeated Western Michigan team this year never stood a chance of sniffing the College Football Playoff.
But would setting up a separate playoff for the Group of 5 be a step forward, or an admission that they will never be able to step foot on the same field as the powers of college football? Would a team like Western Michigan pass on a chance to play in the Cotton Bowl in order to compete for a lower-ranking “national championship?”
The only way to make a separate playoff mean anything would be if the Group of 5 conferences worked with the NCAA to set up an official FBS-NCAA playoff, with the prize of an officially-recognized NCAA national championship going to the winner. The NCAA crowns the national champions in FCS, Division II and Division III, but not in the FBS, where the bowl system run by the conferences essentially obliterated that opportunity decades ago. If the Group of 5 can get enough support from within and work with the NCAA to sanction an official NCAA national championship playoff, then all systems could be go.
Getting enough support from within should be difficult too, because the AAC is standing firm on the idea that they are already a power conference, without the official power conference recognition.
AAC commissioner Mike Aresco has stated time and time again his conference considers itself a power conference, as evidenced by teams in the conference wearing “P6” stickers on their helmets this season.
“The answer is an emphatic no,” Aresco said to ESPN. “We compete for national championships like anyone else in FBS, including the Power 5, and have no interest in any kind of separate championship.”
That statement would have a few more legs to stand on if the AAC wasn’t 1-5 this bowl season, with AAC champion Temple to Wake Forest and the conference owning losing records against Conference USA (0-2), the Mountain West Conference (0-1) and the Sun Belt Conference (0-1). But this just goes to show that getting everybody on board for this may not be easy, unless this plan has a way of moving forward without the AAC’s involvement. Perhaps if this new playoff comes about and an NCAA championship is on the line, the AAC will come around to the idea and ask to join the party.
[ESPN]
