It’s been over a week since Ohio State cruised to the first National Championship under the new 12-team playoff model. I’ve left some time for the confetti to settle, and I have a lot of thoughts about the season and how the new format affected things, but I couldn’t get away from one main takeaway.
The 12-team College Football Playoff was awesome.
You’d think a time with so much uncertainty in the sport would be the worst time to introduce a new, radically different postseason. However, NIL, the transfer portal, conference realignment, and all the other modern twists facing the sport couldn’t stop the 2024 season from being one of my favorites in a long time.
The reality is that the aforementioned twists, mixed with the debut of the new playoff, resulted in a unique environment where the gaps between the haves and have-nots were and still are much slimmer than they used to be.
Some people might be uncomfortable about this Irish car bomb of a college football environment, but I love it. The ingredients don’t make sense together, and some people may not like how it tastes, but true ball-knowers out there only demand more and more.
Did I just compare modern college football to the iconic Guinness/Jameson/Baileys combo? You bet your sweet bippy, I did.
But let’s be honest with ourselves. The 12-team playoff worked exactly as designed. The widened margin of error for teams resulted in more major upsets while simultaneously keeping the long-term hopes of said teams alive. More programs got a bite at the apple, and in the end, the best team still won.
Don’t get me wrong: Controversy was certainly plentiful along the way. Playoff seedings were wonky, conference biases reared their ugly heads, and some teams received easier paths than others. However, the 12-team playoff still yielded a great regular season, as well as some instant classics in the playoff itself.
Only one team finished the regular season undefeated, and it didn’t even win its playoff game. Both programs that played in the National Championship were able to overcome program-crippling losses to make deep playoff runs. Heck, #1 Alabama lost to Vanderbilt.
Vanderbilt.
The 12-team playoff ultimately accomplished all its goals in the end.
Here is a balanced list of the legitimate aims I would have for any college football postseason format:
- Generate value for media partners to explain large investment
- Create a compelling regular season that holds interest every week
- Protect high-caliber brands throughout the sport
- Promote equity among power conferences and the G5
- Give the best teams a chance to win the National Championship
Point to me exactly where this 12-team format failed to deliver on any of those points.
1. Sure, overall viewership was down. 53 games in 2024 reached the vaunted four-million-people viewership mark, 12 games fewer than 2023 per SportsMediaWatch. Additionally, the semifinal and championship games experienced double-digit drops in overall viewership, per ESPN. Still, that’s over 212,000,000 sets of eyeballs on college football’s peak games. Plenty of potential revenue to go around there.
2. Was the regular season compelling? Hell yeah! The SEC was dominated by Texas, but the Longhorns had a Georgia problem. The Big Ten would have been controlled by Ohio State if the Buckeyes hadn’t had a Michigan problem. The team widely considered the ACC’s best didn’t even make the conference championship game. And how about the Big 12? The team picked to finish last in the preseason ended up winning it, and three of the four bottom finishers were all expected to be playoff contenders. Oh, and the G5 champion was led by a bonafide Heisman candidate. That’s all pretty compelling if you ask me.
3. Eight of the 10 teams in the College Football Playoff with known revenue figures were among the 20 highest revenue-generating programs in the country. Only Boise State was outside the top 35, and I’d be willing to bet that Notre Dame and SMU wouldn’t be far from the top of the list if they made their metrics public. Four massive college football brands made the semifinals. Big brands were well advantaged here.
4. The ACC was likely the fourth-best conference in America this year and got two teams into the playoff. The Big 12 champ got a first-round bye and was one play away from the semifinals. The G5 champ was competitive in its playoff game and looked every bit the part of a playoff team. You could argue that none of those four teams (Clemson, SMU, Arizona State, and Boise State) would have even sniffed a four-team playoff under that format. Instead, they all had a chance.
5. Ohio State won the National Championship. Despite the Buckeyes’ shocking loss to Michigan, they were by most accounts and metrics the best team in the country this year. And Ohio State wouldn’t have even made a 4-team field in all likelihood. Runner-up Notre Dame was second or third in the country depending on your thoughts on Oregon. To say the 12-team playoff delivered the best teams would be an understatement.
I went out of my way there a little bit, but you get the point. This new system delivered at the highest level for all involved. I know some games were blowouts, but we’ve had lopsided postseason games in college football under multiple formats for as long as I can remember.
Sure, there are a few things to fix.
I’m fine with giving the five conference champions an automatic bid. It acts as a natural guardrail against conference biases and adds more meaning to each conference race throughout the season.
But I have a hard time thinking those teams should get an automatic bye. A good compromise would be to seed the teams 1-12 regardless of conference champ status, but if any of the five conference champions end up seeded 5-12, they would get to host a first-round game against an at-large team. Just an idea.
It’s also probably fair to say that the playoff dragged on longer than it needed to. Fan fatigue certainly could explain the downed viewership numbers on the playoff games. Even moving the whole thing up a week would help. And why are the semifinals on a Thursday and Friday? Is dodging the NFL really that important?
Nonetheless, I couldn’t be more pleased with the trajectory of the 12-team playoff era. Things feel more compelling and balanced than they have in the past. And yet, the usual big boys have still maintained control. It feels like a situation where everyone is at least content. No system will ever be perfect, but I see real promise with this one.
Also, never forget that Ohio State won the National Championship barely a month after losing to the worst Michigan team this decade. The four-team era could never.
Follow Nick Hedges on X @nicktrimshedges or Instagram @nicktrimshedges
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