We’re Going 7-5, But Hoping for 8-4

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Imagine a College Football Championship playoff that includes the 2011 Georgia team in the brackets. You remember, it was this one:

Well, that’s exactly what you’re getting now. Great isn’t it?

Well, let’s look at a short list of teams with 4 losses that would make the 24 team CFP format now:

4-LOSS TEAMS: Dating back to the beginning of the CFP in 2014, if you put a 24-team format in place 37 4-loss teams would’ve made a playoff appearance.

2014

  1. Auburn
  2. Utah
  3. LSU
  4. USC

2015

  1. Tennessee

2016

  1. Auburn
  2. Florida
  3. Utah
  4. LSU
  5. Tennessee
  6. Virginia Tech
  7. Pitt

2017

  1. Stanford
  2. Mississippi State
  3. NC State

2018

  1. Texas
  2. Utah
  3. Mississippi State
  4. Texas A&M
  5. Northwestern
  6. Missouri
  7. Iowa State

2019

  1. USC
  2. Virginia

2020 – NONE

2021

  1. Arkansas
Yeah, THAT Arkansas. Although the team did have a good season, by Arkansas standards.

2022

  1. LSU
  2. South Carolina
  3. Texas
  4. Notre Dame
  5. Mississippi State
  6. NC State

2023

  1. Oregon State
  2. Oklahoma State
  3. Tennessee
  4. Clemson

2024 – NONE

2025

  1. Iowa
  2. Duke

Good stuff, huh.

I’d be excited about this if I were a Mississippi State fan.

But I’m not.

11 thoughts on “We’re Going 7-5, But Hoping for 8-4”

  1. The 24 team playoff makes each SEC game less important but the UGAA will probably increase the cost of fans to attend. The cost to attend a less meaningful SEC home game including increased Hartman Fund cost, ticket price and parking in 2027 is greater than the cost to attend a more meaningful game in 2025 was. College Football version of shrinkflation.

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    • Yep, but don’t say that to the bros online. They’ll tell you that aren’t a real football fan.

      This is the part that I wonder if the brass in Athens has really thought about. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they think we’ll monetarily (Hartman/Magill) support the program no matter what (Pate uses the only restaurant in town comparison). They do know that Georgia fans aren’t going to become Alabama fans overnight as a result. Have they thought about whether their customers will select other options (travel, golf, spending time with family, great restaurants, other entertainment options, other hobbies … hell, even work) as ways to spend their fall Saturdays?

      Substitute your favorite college town and school, and that’s the real problem facing those in charge.

      Said differently, the competition is walking away and finding other things to do and spend my money on for 3+ months a year.

      The value of the experience is getting dangerously close to the combination of the cost of the money & time spent for the product.

      As the NASCAR example has shown, once people walk away, they aren’t coming back.

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      • Yep. And like NASCAR they wont learn their lesson or course correct when it happens because that would require them to admit they were wrong and they will never do that.

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  2. Yeah it sucks. I enjoyed following the nearly every day bowl season as part of the end of the year holiday tradition. Not that I watched all the games it did often form a background noise. I did follow the results as a habit knowing CFB season that I loved was about to go into hibernation again.

    I’m curious to see the programming schedule for the first eight games. If tv is the cash cow you can’t play them all in a day. Who gets rewarded with extra rest. Week day games on campus. I’m sure the committee with fix everything like always.

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  3. Like many others Josh Pate lamented that the lack of any true centralized leadership in CFB is a terrible business model prone to bad decisions by committees of various interests. Talk about a rudderless ship.

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