Oklahoma football: Expanded Playoff a plus with Sooners’ impending move to SEC
By Chip Rouse
The way the College Football Playoff is today, winning your conference is the only way a Big 12 team can make it into the playoff, but it’s not a guarantee. The Oklahoma program has won six conference titles in the history of the CFP, but only made four playoff appearances.
That’s largely the result of there being just four playoff spots and five major college conferences. Last season a Group of Five team, Cincinnati, crashed the party for the first time in the relatively short history of the playoff format.
A year ago, there was a proposal to expand the playoff format, but the CFP Board of Managers voted it down. The idea of expanding the playoff was brought forward again this year, and this past Friday, the Board of Managers, a group of college presidents and chancellors that oversees the College Football Playoff, voted in favor of an expanded format.
The way it will work is six spots will be guaranteed for the highest ranked conference champions, with six at-large spots awarded to the six highest ranked teams in the final College Football Playoff ranking that are not conference champions.
The top four teams in the CFP rankings will receive a first-round bye. Teams seeded 5 through 12 will be matched up in an eight-team bracket to be played on the campus site of the higher-ranked team. The winners in the opening round will move on to the quarterfinal round against the teams that received first-round byes, and so forth. After the first round, the games will be played at four of the major bowl sites that are part of the CFP rotation.
The new 12-team playoff format is not expected to be implemented until the 2026 season, although there is talk about putting it into effect as early as 2024.
With Oklahoma moving to the SEC no later than the 2025 season, the expanded format gives the Sooners a considerably better chance of making the playoff than would be the case under the current four-team structure.
Under the present four-team CFP format, in order for the Sooners — or any Big 12 team, for that matter — to earn a playoff berth as one of the country’s top four team, they must win the Big 12 Championship, and even that doesn’t make them an automatic qualifier. In moving to a stronger, more competitive conference in the SEC, Oklahoma’s chances of winning the SEC are much lower than in the Big 12, but the Sooners could earn one of the six at-large spots with the expanded playoff format.
Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables was asked during his weekly press conference this week how he felt about the College Football Playoff being expanded to 12 teams.
"“That’s great. Good. Alright? the OU head coach said. “Nobody’s asking me what I think. So, literally, I’m very sincere when I say this, and I say it with all due respect, I could care less. I really could care less.“I don’t even know what that means,” he said. “But I do know it doesn’t have anything to do with today’s practice, and it has nothing to do with Kent State (the Sooners’ next opponent).”"
Since the College Football Playoff replaced the previous Bowl Championship Series beginning in the 2014 season, Oklahoma has made four playoff appearances, the only Big 12 team to do so.
In an expanded 12-team format, the Sooners would have made six playoff appearances, The Sooners would have gotten in as an at-large team as a 7 seed in 2016 and as a 6 seed in 2020.
The only two years OU would not have made the playoff was in its first season, in 2014. However, three other Big 12 teams would have made it in: Baylor at No. 5, TCU No. 6 and Kansas State as the No. 11 seed. The Sooners also would have been outside of the top 12 last season, when they finished 16th in the final CFP rankings.
Max Olsen of The Athletic has done a deep dive on how many teams would have made the College Football Playoff had a 12-team format been in place for the past 10 years. You can read his article by clicking here.