The Coaches Have Spoken: AFCA Board Voices Support for Key Changes to College Football Playoff

The future of the CFP will be formally discussed this summer.

The future of the College Football Playoff will be discussed this summer. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The only constant for the College Football Playoff since its inception is change.

First it was the four-team playoff—which quickly turned into a conversation about expanding to 8 (or more). 

The “more” ended up being a 12-team playoff that has now existed for two full seasons. There will be at least one more season of the 12-team playoff before the CFP expands again, with many expecting the next move to be to 24 teams—a proposal that has been championed to much aplomb by Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti—while being received with mixed reactions elsewhere.

However, with spring football behind us and the season quickly approaching, the coaches have spoken, according to a report from Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports. The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) met and voted on several key initiatives surrounding the CFP, voicing its support for changes to format, scheduling, and other measures.

Here are three recommended changes to the current format that the coaches are championing as conversations regarding the future of the CFP continue.

Recommendation 1: It’s time to expand the CFP (again)

The AFCA membership body voted to implement a CFP with “the maximum number of participants.” Reading between the lines there, the membership is comfortable with the potential for a 24-team playoff, which could be voted upon by decision-makers in the near future. 

The initial 24-team playoff idea was initially championed by Petitti, and was initially met with a degree of skepticism from other conferences. However, in recent months, Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and ACC commissioner Jim Phillips have all voiced their support of the model. 

The 24-team model that has been most widely discussed is an all at-large field, with one automatic spot for the Group of Six. This would add one playoff round and 12 additional games to the postseason tournament. The top eight teams would earn a bye, and the teams ranked No. 9 through No. 24 would play in first-round games on college campuses across the country. 

Recommendation 2: It’s time to eliminate conference championship games, allowing the postseason to begin earlier (and end earlier)

If the playoff were to expand from 12 teams to 24, the AFCA recommends an elimination to conference championship games. This would allow the playoff to start immediately following the end of the regular season on the weekend that was previously booked up by a handful of conference title games.

With a 24-team playoff, there is no longer a need for the conference championship game weekend. The Power Four title games would only be for pride and seeding implications, as both the winner and loser of the league championships would very likely be in position to make the playoff field. There could still be some juice to some of the Group of Six title games, as the highest-ranked G6 team would earn an automatic bid into the field. However, the juice likely isn’t worth the squeeze to keep the conference championship games—which were money grabs since their recent inception and can be done without.

If the CFP begins earlier, it would open up a path for the national championship to return to the second Monday in January. In the last couple of seasons since the inception of the 12-team playoff, the national championship has fallen on the third Monday in January. Gone would be the couple week gap between conference title games and the start of the CFP, and in its place would be the immediate start of the playoff following the end of the regular season.

Recommendation 3: Keep the standalone time for Army-Navy, with a catch

As discussions regarding the CFP playoff and the season’s schedule as a whole have intensified in recent years, Army-Navy has come under the microscope. The game has been a standalone Saturday afternoon contest for decades, and some have questioned whether or not that should still be the case with the season ending later than it ever has.

In an era where the makeup of conferences make little sense, where regional rivalries have been trampled and traditions largely ignored, it would be a shame to see Army-Navy fall victim to a similar fate due to an expanded CFP that would be nothing more than a participation trophy for most teams earning a bid.

So the coaches voted.

Ultimately, AFCA believes that other games should be played on the same day as Army-Navy, but that the standalone time of the game should be preserved. No other games should be played during the same window as Army-Navy—allowing all eyes to be on the game between the two service academies on that late Saturday afternoon.

The coaches voted for two bye weeks rather than one throughout the course of the regular season, with a minimum of six days in between games. If the double-bye structure were to be implemented, most teams would have their final regular season games on the same weekend as Army-Navy.

What is AFCA and why does this matter?

AFCA has no direct voting power to change the format of the CFP or the college football schedule. However, the association is made up of prominent coaches with influence over high-level decisions that are made by the decision-makers in college football. 

The AFCA board is made up of coaches like Illinois’ Bret Bielema, Oklahoma’s Brent Venables, Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea, SMU’s Rhett Lashlee, Texas Tech’s Joey McGuire and Michigan State’s Pat Fitzgerald, among others.

Their voices will be heard—and their opinion on these topics will carry significant weight when the future of the playoff is discussed later this summer.

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