It’s college football bowl season and we’re approaching the fifth edition of the College Football Playoff. This is the second straight year that the Big 10 and Pac 12 have been left out. So there’s lots of talk of playoff expansion. I don’t love the idea of playoff expansion. One of the best things about college football is how every game means so much. As you let more teams into the playoff, the regular season becomes less important. Of course in college basketball, the regular season is pretty much meaningless. The good teams just have to do well enough to get into the NCAA Tournament (which might mean .500 in conference play in the best conferences). For teams that aren’t in major conferences, all that really matters for most of them is winning their conference tournament to get to the NCAA tournament. I don’t want to diminish the college football regular season. But if the College Football Playoff is going to expand (and it probably will at some point), I’ve put a lot of thought into how to do it. I had a first attempt at a playoff expansion proposal at the end of last season. There were some issues with my proposal. The Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl wouldn’t be equal to the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Orange Bowl. They’d only be playoff bowls one out of every three years and people wouldn’t care about them when they’re not playoff bowls. Here’s what it would have looked like this year under my first proposal: Rose Bowl: Ohio State vs. Washington Sugar Bowl: Alabama vs. UCF Orange Bowl: Clemson vs. Georgia Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, or Peach Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Notre Dame Another problem is that you’d end up with weird matchups. Why does Ohio State get to play the lowest ranked team? So yeah, I could live with a system like that, but I never thought it was that realistic anyway. I’ve modified that idea and come up with something much more realistically possible. I don’t anticipate that this is how playoff expansion will happen, but I would love to see it happen this way: The basic idea is that you have a four team playoff after the bowls. That’s kind of what my first idea was, but now I’m making all six major bowls matter. How cool would it be if you had two days with three bowls each that could actually matter? That would restore some of the tradition of the bowls. For example, in the 1977 college football season, Notre Dame went into the bowls ranked number 5. We beat Texas who was ranked number 1 in the Cotton Bowl. Number 2 Oklahoma lost the Orange Bowl and number 4 Michigan lost the Rose Bowl and Notre Dame won the National Championship. You had three bowls that had a hand in determining the National Championship.
So my new idea is that you have six major bowls. Four of the winners of those games will advance to the playoff after the bowls: Rose Bowl: Big 10 vs. Pac 12 Sugar Bowl: SEC vs. at large Orange Bowl: ACC vs. at large Cotton Bowl: Big 12 vs. at large Fiesta Bowl: Group of 5 or highest ranked at large vs. at large Peach Bowl: Group of 5 or highest ranked at large vs. at large You’d have conference champions plus a Group of 5 representative plus the highest ranked at large team filling up seven of the 12 spots. So this year Notre Dame and UCF would be assigned to the Fiesta and Peach Bowls. I’d give the higher ranked team between the highest ranked at large team and the Group of 5 representative the choice of which bowl they want to go to. So this year Notre Dame would get the choice. Notre Dame might prefer playing in the Peach Bowl because it’s closer. But maybe they’d prefer playing in the Fiesta Bowl based on the opponent. The at large teams would be the highest ranked teams that aren’t are left after those first seven spots are taken. So the question would be how do you assign the at large teams? I think I would just do it randomly. I would avoid rematches from the regular season. I could live with Alabama and Florida playing because they didn’t play in the regular season. But if you wanted to make it so that there wouldn’t be any conference matchups, I’m cool with that too. So I used a random number generator to hypothetically fill out what it could look like this year: Rose Bowl: Ohio State vs. Washington Sugar Bowl: Alabama vs. Penn State Orange Bowl: Clemson vs. Georgia Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Michigan Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Florida Peach Bowl: UCF vs. LSU I assume Notre Dame would choose to play Florida in Arizona rather than Georgia, but if we had drawn Penn State, maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference where we played. If there had been an at large team from that Pac 12 that we drew, we’d almost certainly prefer to play in the Peach Bowl. So they play the games and then rank the winners. The top four go to the playoff with the semifinals happening on the campuses of the two highest ranked teams. Obviously, if the top four teams won with the match ups I have, they’re going to the playoff. If you get some upsets, then it gets interesting. You’d also have a situation where UCF is hoping to draw the best possible team. Beating LSU wouldn’t do much to help their chances of getting to the playoff. If there’s one upset of the top four teams, the Rose Bowl winner probably gets in. But if UCF played Georgia and won, that might get them in ahead of the Rose Bowl winner. So you’d have six major bowls that all have the possibility of mattering. You don’t necessarily have 12 teams with a chance of winning a National Championship, but you have at least eight. LSU likely has no chance with the matchups that I have. They would have been much better off drawing Clemson or Notre Dame. As the lowest ranked team to get in, Penn State likely doesn’t have a chance, but drawing Alabama would be their best case scenario. Let’s say Penn State, Florida, and LSU all won. At least one of those teams would be going to the playoff. Beating Alabama would probably be enough for them to jump Florida and LSU. One problem with my plan would be potential conflict with the NFL Playoffs. I’ve long advocated for pushing back the Super Bowl to the day before Washington’s Birthday. I’d also greatly prefer having the National Championship Game on a Saturday. With the calendar this year, my college playoff system, and the Super Bowl on February 17, that would put the National Championship Game and the Wild Card round on the same weekend. My answer to that would be to work out some TV deal where you have two NFL Playoff games that afternoon and then the National Championship Game in prime time. Another possibility would be having the National Championship Game on the weekend between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl. I’d make a couple other changes to college football. I’d probably get rid of conference championship games or at least get rid of divisions. Getting rid of conference championship games would eliminate the possibility of a team like Northwestern or Pittsburgh this year being a conference champion. As for divisions, if you look at the SEC and ACC for example, with eight conference games and two seven-team divisions, you’re playing everybody in your division and then only two of the seven teams in the other division. There’s been a move toward nine conference games, but I’d prefer eight conference games and then more good non-conference games. As for getting rid of divisions, you’d be playing some teams in your conference on a much more regular basis. Of course, you wouldn’t be playing the teams that were in your division as much. My answer to that would be to have each team have one or two protected rivals that they play each year, but then you rotate your other conference games each year. I’d actually be for keeping divisions if you have a conference with 12 teams as long as there are no protected rivalries across the divisions. You could play every team in your division every year and then you play every team in the other division once every two years. But the Pac 12 is the only major conference with 12 teams right now anyway. The other change is that I’d want to get rid of teams playing FCS teams. That might be difficult. Some states might have political stuff involved with state schools playing each other. But I’d definitely make it so that you can’t play an FCS opponent after the second weekend in October (no more of this SEC nonsense of playing FCS teams the week before Thanksgiving). And I’d at least try to limit it to like two FCS opponents every five years or something. Anyway, I’d love to see playoff expansion happen this way. I’ve heard the possibility of an eight-team playoff with the first round on campus. Then you’d have two playoff bowls (which is what we have now), but the other bowls would be even more meaningless. Would the losers of the quarterfinal games go to bowls? If they do, is there any reason to care about the outcome? If they don’t, now you’re taking four of the best teams out of the bowls. My plan would make the bowls matter more. Go Irish!
Notre Dame has made it to the College Football Playoff. I meant to do this post last week, but I’ve been busy. Much like in 2012, it came down to a game on the road against USC. I definitely expected to win. I thought it would be pretty easy, but we got off to a bad start. USC went up 10-0 in the second quarter and the score stayed that way until the last three minutes of the quarter. We finally scored a touchdown on a nice pass from Ian Book to Chris Finke. Finke seemed like the only Notre Dame player who came to play in the first half. We got the ball back before halftime, but some bad clock management by Brian Kelly cost us a chance to get at least three more points. The half ended up on a completed Hail Mary inside the five yard line. We had a timeout that we didn’t use on the possession. If we had used it, we could have run another play or two to either set up a field goal or have a better shot at a touchdown. I was pretty annoyed at the start of the game. People from work were texting about bringing in ornaments for the Christmas tree in the office. I did not care one bit about that when we were playing terribly in our biggest game in the last six years. But when we went into halftime down only three after playing a terrible first half, I felt very good. All we had to do was play one good half and we were going to win. I had confidence that USC wouldn’t play as well in the second half because they just weren’t very good this year. Dexter Williams gave us the lead early in the second half on a 52-yard run. We never looked back. A field goal made it 17-10 late in the third quarter. We were totally outplaying USC in the second half, but it was still a one possession game. That changed when Tony Jones took a short pass 51 yards for the touchdown with 3:09 left. It didn’t look like it was going to be a huge play right away, but it got to a point where only one defender had any chance and Jones had Miles Boykin as a blocker. I was calling for Jones to cutback as the play was happening and when he did, Miles Boykin took out the last defender with a great block. At that point, the game was pretty much over. I was watching the game with my brother Sean. He was lying down. I think it was after the Jones touchdown that Sean put his hands up in the air and I just slapped one of his hands without thinking. It made me think of how the high five was invented spontaneously at Dodger Stadium in 1977. Anyway, USC scored a touchdown, but we finished the regular season with a 24-17 win over USC, the same score that we beat Michigan by to start the season.
So we are going to our first College Football Playoff. Strangely, we’re the first team to wear blue to make the playoff. We are a big underdog against Clemson and we should be. I don’t really expect to win, but I do think we have a chance. Everybody remembers what happened when we took on Alabama six years ago for the National Championship. Nobody seems to remember three games that were more recent than that: October 18, 2014: Florida State 31, Notre Dame 27. Never have I been less upset with Brian Kelly about a loss. We deserved to win that game and some terrible officiating killed us at the end. That Florida State team went 12-0 before losing to Oregon in the playoff (they’d say they were 13-0, but I refuse to give any of the teams I’m about to talk about any credit for beating FCS teams). October 3, 2015: Clemson 24, Notre Dame 22. The game was played in a huge rain storm. We got off to a bad start and made a valiant effort at a comeback. Brian Kelly went for two before he needed to and we didn’t get it. We scored with seven seconds left and failed at another two point conversion. Kick two extra points and we’re going to overtime (this wasn’t the first or the last time that Brian Kelly has made this mistake). That Clemson team went 13-0 before losing 45-40 against Alabama in the National Championship Game. September 9, 2017: Georgia 20, Notre Dame 19. Georgia never led by more than one in this game. It was close for the whole game, but we couldn’t pull it out. That Georgia team went 12-1 before losing 26-23 in overtime against Alabama in the National Championship Game. Three games against teams who made the playoff in our four previous seasons. All three were highly competitive. We just haven’t come out on top yet and I’m not going to believe that we will until we actually do. I think Brian Kelly will have the team ready to play a competitive game, but I’m going to predict a loss. You think you know how much I want to be wrong, but most of you probably don’t understand. I’ve had a complicated relationship with Brian Kelly as Notre Dame’s head coach. I wanted him fired after 4-8 in 2016 (his seventh year). That would have been totally defensible, but keeping him has worked out. If we compare this season to 2012, it feels very different. 2012 felt like a magical season and we were a team of destiny. It looked like we might go undefeated and not make it to the National Championship Game because Oregon and Kansas State were ahead of us. And then they both unexpectedly lost on November 17. We were number 1 and all was good in the world. But that might have been what cost us a National Championship because that meant we had to play Alabama instead of one of those two teams. Still, I thought we would beat Alabama (crazy in hindsight, I know). This year has been fun. After 2012, I didn’t know if we could get back to this point. And now here we are. But the big difference is that I have no expectation of winning it all. I think we have a chance to beat Clemson, but if we do, I’m definitely not expecting to beat Alabama. Going back to Brian Kelly, I wanted him fired after 2016. After 2017, I said that he needed to make a major bowl this year. Well, we’re not going to the Peach Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl (which I would have been satisfied with), we’re going to the Cotton Bowl in the College Football Playoff. If he loses to Clemson, there’s no shame in that (I really don’t want to get blown out, though). But we need to get to where Clemson and Alabama are. They are clearly the best two programs in college football. I mean, I guess Ohio State is pretty close, but I have have no desire to have anything in common with Ohio State other than beating Michigan all the time and winning lots of games every year, but Urban Meyer will be gone soon and they’ll most likely take at least a little bit of a step back. Winning a major bowl has to happen soon. It’s been far too long. And then we need to win a National Championship (also far too long). Just some quick thoughts on Oklahoma making the playoff and some silly thoughts we’ve heard this season. I don’t want to see Oklahoma in the playoff. Their defense is terrible. Like really, really bad. They’re going to lose to Alabama 56-24. I’d rather see UCF get a chance (even though they’d probably lose 63-10). I’d rather see Georgia play Alabama because as we’ve seen, Georgia can give them a game. However, Georgia doesn’t deserve it. While I definitely think Georgia is better than Oklahoma, the games have to matter. Georgia lost by three scores against LSU. They had their chance against Alabama and blew it. If you’re not going to give UCF a chance, Oklahoma is the most deserving team. Along those same lines, we heard for two months that even though Notre Dame beat Michigan and was undefeated, Michigan was better. Fortunately, Ohio State put an end to that. Obviously there are lots of factors to consider, but when two teams played each other and there are no other losses between the two of them, no other factors really matter besides head to head. We play Oklahoma in basketball tomorrow night at Madison Square Garden. Tickets are weirdly expensive. It is a doubleheader, but it’s December and the four teams are Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Florida, and West Virginia. It’s not like we’re talking about Syracuse, Villanova, and Duke, and somebody (there’s a lot more interest in Notre Dame football than Notre Dame basketball in New York). So it looks like I’m not going. But maybe I’ll be totally wrong about football and we’ll be playing them in football next month for the National Championship. Go Irish!
