Unbalanced Power in a Broken System: Examining the CFP’s Semifinal Round

(Photo of College Football Playoff Trophy: John David Mercer/USA TODAY Sports)

GRAPEVINE, Tx. - Seven years into the College Football Playoff's reign as the system which determines the participants for the chance to win a national championship, and most people, from college football diehards to casual observers of the sport, can tell you that it is far from a perfect system.

On paper, this should be a system which is able to determine the best four teams in any given year. The 13-member selection committee makes their picks "using conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, and comparison of results against common opponents".

Instead, in a year that has been wildly unpredictable, we ended up with a Playoff that most have predicted since before the season even started, in Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Notre Dame.

How does Cincinnati, which won the AAC and went 9-0, get ranked behind a three-loss Florida team and not even have a real shot at the field? Why did 8-3 Iowa State, which has a loss to a common opponent when compared to 11-0 Coastal Carolina, get the nod for a New Year's Six bowl over the Chanticleers?

In a year in which the committee had the chance to do something different and it would have been largely justifiable, they chose to stick to their guns. This would have made a little bit of sense if they had the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality regarding the playoff, but it's very clearly in need of fixing.

Case in point: the semifinal round of the CFP. Excluding the wild year that was 2020 where the eye test was undoubtedly the dominating selection factor, the committee has left out 13 P5 Champions or other one-loss teams, and seven zero-or-one-loss G5 champions.

In fact, just 11 different programs have been awarded the 28 semifinal berths handed out by the committee. You would think that excluding that many worthy teams would lead to there being the perfect "Final Four", but as most college football fans can tell you, that has been for from the case.

Semifinal #1	Semifinal #2	Margin of Victories (#1, #2, avg.)
2014	Ohio State 42, Alabama 35	Oregon 59, Florida State 20	+7, +39, +23
2015	Clemson 37, Oklahoma 17	Alabama 38, Michigan State 0	+20, +38, +29
2016	Alabama 24, Washington 7	Clemson 31, Ohio State 0	+17, +31, +24
2017	Alabama 24, Clemson 6	Georgia 54, Oklahoma 48	+18, +6, +12
2018	Alabama 45, Oklahoma 34	Clemson 30, Notre Dame 3	+11, +27, +19
2019	LSU 63, Oklahoma 28	Clemson 29, Ohio State 23	+35, +6, +20.5
2020	Alabama 31, Notre Dame 14	Ohio State 49, Clemson 28	+17, +21, +19

Of the now fourteen College Football Playoff semifinal games, only three have been decided by single digits, while seven have been decided by over 20 points and 10 have been decided by 3+ scores. In fact, the average margin of victory in a CFP semi is 20.9 points.

For the rounds as a whole, 4 of the 7 have decided by an average margin of victory of 20 or more, and 6 of the 7 have been by an average of three scores or more. The only CFP semifinal round to not be decided by an average of over three scores was in 2016, when Alabama bested Clemson mainly by their defense and Georgia took Oklahoma to double overtime.

Of course, the committee's selection practices does play a large role in this, but you would be remiss if you did not mention the very clear grasp of power at the top by college football's elite.

Sure, just 11 programs have been invited to the CFP since its inception. But out of the 14 teams who have made it to the championship game in the current system, that has been divided up amongst just six programs: Alabama (5), Clemson (4), Ohio State (2), LSU, Georgia and Oregon.

Who knows, if Dabo Sweeney didn't give the Buckeyes bulletin board material ahead of their matchup this year, then you could see a situation in which 10 of the 14 berths have gone to the Crimson Tide & Tigers.

Many times in the last decade, you can almost predict who will get to the national championship before we even reach the midway point of the regular season. Head coaches Nick Saban & Dabo Sweeney have, for the most part, really made it Alabama & Clemson and everybody else throughout most of the CFP era.

The College Football Playoff, without a doubt, needs some sort of expansion. Should it be six, eight or even ten teams? Should there be automatic qualifiers for P5 conference champions? Should the high-ranking G5 get a bid? Who knows what the change would look like, but many experts, pundits and fans are in agreement that the CFP needs reform.

Will that change the outcome at the end of the national championship? Maybe, maybe not. But, out of the six previous College Football Playoffs, the No. 4 seed has won it twice (OSU '14, Bama '17) and the No. 1 seed has done it just once (LSU '19).

Who's to say a No. 6 seed couldn't pull off a miraculous run? At the very minimum, expansion would, by default, break the yearly monotony given to us by the selection committee and give us something fresh to watch.

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