Coach wants to expand the College Football Playoff with a pre-Playoff playoff

The idea is cool, but its execution would be hard.

The four-team College Football Playoff could expand someday, and if it does, an eight-team model would be a natural place to start.

SB Nation’s Bill Connelly, in his campaign platform to be college football’s commissioner, proposes one way of going about it: slots for the five power conference champions, a slot for the best Group of 5 league champion, and two at-large bids for the best of all the rest. The “best Group of 5 champ” has been a subjective assessment made by the Playoff’s selection committee. There’s no playoff between those teams.

Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun thinks that playoff should exist, he tells The Colorado Springs Gazette’s Brent Briggeman. Calhoun proposes an eight-team Playoff just like Connelly’s, but he thinks the Group of 5 rep should be spawned from its own event.

“I think it would, really, bring a wholeness that would be splendid for the spirit of college football,” Calhoun, whose Falcons play in the Mountain West, says.

Right now, only the top-ranked Group of 5 champion has a spot reserved for it in a New Year’s Six bowl game. And we’re not talking about the prestigious Rose or Sugar, which are reserved for power conferences when they’re not Playoff games.

Because there’s no mid-major playoff, reasonable people might disagree in any given year about the most deserving team. A Playoff would clear up any confusion.

Here’s what a Group of 5 playoff might actually look like, with 2016 as an example.

You could build one using the same structure as the big Playoff. In a four-team G5 playoff, the higher seeds would host. That might’ve given us these games last year:

No. 4 USF at No. 1 Western Michigan in Kalamazoo, Mich.
No. 3 Boise State at No. 2 Temple in Philadelphia

Western Michigan was undefeated out of the MAC. Temple was the champion of the consensus top Group of 5 league, the AAC. Boise State was the top-ranked G5 team for a while, and USF could’ve snuck in because of a strong finish and a dominant offense.

This design didn’t come together with the idea that it’d be a pre-Playoff playoff:

Doesn't that sound like more fun than playing the "who is motivated today" question as two teams play in a half-empty stadium? And wouldn't we rather see these Group of 5 teams flex their muscles against one another instead of 10-3 Wisconsin and a trio of 6-6 bowl opponents from Power 5 leagues (Baylor, South Carolina, and Wake Forest)? Don't we want to see one of these coaches hoist a trophy that means something?

Playoffs are super, but a pre-Playoff playoff would stretch the calendar.

In the same article in which Calhoun brings up the idea, Colorado coach Mike McIntyre calls it a “great idea” but raises an obvious, understandable concern:

“It’s just as you keep extending seasons, how does that work out?”

To expand the big Playoff to eight teams, college football would have to make its season one game week longer. There’s enough downtime in early December that expansion could probably happen without pushing games too deep into January.

But as it stands now, the Playoff National Championship is around Jan. 8-10. National Signing Day is the first Wednesday in February, and coaches will always want time to hit the trail. This year, there’s another signing period in December, which is already going to fall in the thick of bowl season.

In a world where players, coaches, and students weren’t doing other things in July, we could start the season then and have all kinds of time to stage playoffs on top of playoffs on top of mega-tournaments between December and January. But as it’s structured, this sport only has so much flexibility in the winter months.

Plus, a system like this one would require an elite Group of 5 team to play at least 18 games to win the national championship — 12 in the regular season, a conference title game, and at least five playoff contests. (That’s assuming the Group of 5 playoff includes just four teams.) It seems unfair, to say nothing of the impact such a long schedule might have on players’ wellbeing and off-the-field lives.

For now, that makes a pre-Playoff playoff close to impossible.

It’s good to hear ideas, and a day might come where college football can fit several extra playoff weeks. That day is not right now.