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What a 24-Team Playoff Might Have Looked Like Last Season: All Things CW

College football is going to a 12-team playoff in 2024, but does anyone really think it'll stop there? We look to the FCS as a model for a 24-team tournament.

Author:
Christopher Walsh
Publish date:
Jun 26, 2023 7:00 AM EDT

In this story:

Alabama Crimson Tide

One of the arguments for establishing and expanding the College Football Playoff was, of course, that every other sport and every other division had a playoff or a tournament of some sort to determine its national champion.

Thus, the creation of the Bowl Championship Series, which had the simple objective of pairing the No. 1 vs. the No. 2 team. That led to the four-team playoff, and now it's being expanded to 12 teams.

Those of us who have followed Division I-AA football, now known as the Football Championship Subdivision, have seen this before. We also know what's coming even before the first 12-team playoff is held.

Division I-AA never had a bowl system, so during its inaugural season of 1978 a four-team playoff was established. It featured the top team from three regions (East, West and South) and one at-large team.

Three years later, the playoff was expanded to eight teams. A season after that, 1982, it grew to 12 teams. In 1986, the brackets were bumped up to 16 teams. That lasted until 2010, when 20 teams participated, and in 2013 the field was expanded to its current format of 24 teams.

Seriously, does anyone think the CFP will stay at 12 teams for long? The Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and the FCS (13 conferences with 125 teams) have almost the exact same number of participating programs, and no matter where the line is drawn expanding the playoff will always be a topic of discussion.

So while everyone was quick to point out what a 12-team bracket would have looked like last season, this is a simplified look at 24 with FCS-type rules.

Why simplified? For one, the FCS playoff has 10 automatic spots and 14 at-large teams determined by a selection committee. Yes, the FBS has 10 conferences, but they're obviously not all on the same level and there's no way the Power 5 will allow for equal representation.

The guess here is that if and when the playoff reaches that point there will be some sort of mandate that the field must include at least three non-Power 5 teams every year.

For this, the 24 teams will be almost the same as what the CFP selection committee had for it's final rankings after the conference championships:

What a 24-Team, FCS-Type Playoff Might Have Looked Like Last Season

College football is going to a 12-team playoff in 2024, but does anyone really think it'll stop there? We look to the FCS as a model for a 24-team tournament.

Step 1: Selecting the 24-team Field

For this, the 24 teams will be almost the same as what the CFP selection committee had for it's final rankings after the conference championships:

Georgia 13-0
Michigan 13-0
TCU 12-1
Ohio State 11-1
Alabama 10-2
Tennessee 10-2
Clemson 11-2
Utah 10-3
Kansas State 10-3
Southern California 11-2
Penn State 10-2
Washington 10-2
Florida State 9-3
Oregon State 9-3
Oregon 9-3
Tulane 11-2
LSU 9-4
UCLA 9-3
South Carolina 8-4
Texas 8-4
Notre Dame 8-4
Mississippi State 8-4
Troy 11-2
UTSA 11-3

The only change is North Carolina State (8-4) gets bumped in favor of Conference USA champion UTSA.

Reminder: How a 12-Team Playoff Would have Looked

Using last year’s College Football Playoff rankings, this is what the bracket would look like:

Round of 16:

No. 5 TCU vs . No .12 Tulane
No. 6 Ohio State vs. No. 11 Penn State
No. 7 Alabama vs. No. 10 Southern California
No. 8 Tennessee vs. No. 9 Kansas State

Quarterfinals:

No. 1 Georgia vs. Tennessee/Kansas State
No. 2 Michigan vs. Alabama/USC
No. 3 Clemson vs. Ohio State/Penn State
No. 4 Utah vs. TCU/Tulane

Step 2: The Great Eight

This will shock a lot of people, but the FCS doesn't do straight brackets based on seeding. A lot of it has to do with geography and trying to minimize costs as most programs make little or no money. So it doesn't make sense to have, say, New Hampshire play Eastern Washington in the early rounds.

Plus, remember when Alabama had to play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on December 29, 2018, and then faced Clemson in the title game just outside of San Francisco on January 7, 2019? Yeah, not fun, and those kinds of situations need to be minimized as much as possible.

Here's how the FCS does it:

"Once the full field of 24 teams is completed, the committee seeds the top eight teams. This begins with committee members recommending teams for the top-eight seed pool. A team must receive at least 30 percent of the votes to be included in the seed pool. Once this is done, each committee member ranks the teams in the seed pool via poll vote. The committee reviews and discusses this preliminary ranking before voting again. This final vote produces the eight seeded teams, in order."

"The seeded teams receive a first-round bye in the tournament."

For our purposes, we're going with the top eight teams in the final playoff rankings as they include all Power 5 champions.

Georgia 13-0
Michigan 13-0
TCU 12-1
Ohio State 11-1
Alabama 10-2
Tennessee 10-2
Clemson 11-2
Utah 10-3

Step 3: The Rest of the Field

Going back to the CFP Playoff rankings, an immediate problem jumps out as the final 16 teams include five from the Pac-12, in addition to its champion, Utah.

Again, to quote the FCS rules:

"The remaining 16 teams play first-round games and are paired according to geographic proximity and then placed in the bracket according to geographic proximity to the top eight seeds.

"Teams cannot travel more than 400 miles via ground, and teams from the same conference that played each other during the regular season will not be paired for first-round games."

That's pretty much impossible in this situation because most of the Pac-12 teams couldn't play each other and no one else is within 400 miles. (For a little perspective, Louisville is just under 400 miles from Tuscaloosa. So is Shreveport to the west, and Asheville, N.C. to the east).

So, assuming home field for the first two rounds and neutral sites for the quarterfinals on, the trick would be minimizing the travel overall, possibly at the cost of some very desirable matchups.

Step 4: The Pairings

In a pure bracket the pairings would have been as follows:

1. Georgia vs. winner of No. 16 Tulane vs. 17 LSU
2. Michigan vs. winner of 15 Oregon vs. 18 UCLA
3. TCU vs. winner of 14 Oregon State vs. 19 South Carolina
4. Ohio State vs. winner of 13 Florida State vs. 20 Texas
5. Alabama vs. winner of 12 Washington vs. 21 Notre Dame
6. Tennessee vs. winner of 11 Penn State vs. 22 Mississippi State
7. Clemson vs. winner of 10 Southern California vs. 24 Troy
8. Utah vs. winner of 9 Kansas State vs. 25 UTSA

Three things stand out:

1) Tulane vs. LSU would be great geographically, but the possible second-round rematch of the SEC Championship Game isn't very appealing.

2) Oregon vs. UCLA played during the regular season.

3) Both Oregon State vs. South Carolina and USC vs. N.C. State involve matchups across three time zones, which obviously isn't ideal.

So here's where we alter from the FCS model due to necessity: Even though the FCS has no seedings after the first eight, we kept the 9-16 teams intact (which strangely worked pretty well) and opted to move the final eight around as those teams would be on the road regardless. We're also going to be ambitious and declare no rematches in the first two rounds unless absolutely necessary.

Oregon State vs. UCLA worked since they didn't play each other in the regular season, so that's the lone all-West Coast matchup.

If you start with the remaining Pac-12 teams and pick the closest team in terms of geography, and worked your way eastward, it might end up with something like this: