What do we see in the 12-Team CFP, Retrospectively?

The new College Football Playoff proposed format has been released, and we know the details of how the contest will work. In this article, I take a look back at the last 7 seasons (as far back as the CFP Committee goes), and placed the teams in the correct bracket format. (The individual brackets are all displayed at the bottom of the page).

In summation, this new playoff structure would give us 38 different participants, with 19 (half) of them appearing multiple times. The biggest beneficiaries are Penn State and Georgia, who each appear in the Playoff now 4 times, with 1 of those years being a bye for winning their conference. Previously, Georgia made the CFP once, and Penn State has yet to appear. Wisconsin and Florida also add 3 appearances, with none in the previous format. Plenty of other teams with 0 appearances add 1.

I am making an assumption that the round 1 games would be played on-site, with the higher seed (5-8) hosting the lower seed (9-12).

Here is the breakdown of team-by-team appearances, and where they are seeded each year:

While the bye week teams remain almost unchanged, they would have to defend their old playoff spot against a winner of the lower seeds, sometimes in regular season rematches. (which is my personal gripe against this proposal).

When looking at conferences as a whole, these are our results:

The ACC is carried by Clemson, otherwise they have 1 bye and 2 away games from Florida State, and an away game appearance from North Carolina and Miami. The ACC Champion has always received a bye.

The Big Ten sees 7/14 teams appear, Ohio State representing in each season, but never a year with less than 2 (2020, 2014). All other years the Big Ten sent 3 teams into the 12-team playoff. They lead with the most appearances by a conference (20). The Big Ten Champion has always received a bye.

The Big 12 is carried by Oklahoma, who received a bye in 5 years, and a home game in their 6th appearance. 4 other teams have shown, Baylor and TCU twice, but Oklahoma’s dominance of the conference has kept their rankings low.

The Pac-12 has seen 7 different appearing teams, but only receiving a bye twice (2014 Oregon and 2016 Washington). They have seen their numbers down, as their teams have lost on the big stage in recent memory. They’ve only sent 4 teams in the last 3 years, 2020 Oregon relying on the 6th Champion spot to qualify.

The SEC holds the highest amount of different appearing teams, 8, and their Champion has always received a bye. While Alabama appears 6 times, Georgia, Florida, and LSU each appeared multiple times. As the conference has shown its power recently, the SEC’s lack of appearances happened in 2015 and 2016, where only 1 team would show. In 2017, they would have had 4, the highest of any conference.

The 6th conference champion (which earns an auto-bid) belongs to the American conference 5 times, (with 4 different winners), while the MAC (2016 Western Michigan) and Mountain West (2014 Boise State) take it each once. These teams have never received a bye, but 2020 Cincinnati and 2018 UCF would have hosted a game.

In all, this accomplishes the goal of putting more teams in the running for a National Championship, and the College Football Playoff will no longer be an exclusive club/recruiting tool, as many more teams can claim contention. If you want my full thoughts on the expansion, check out this article.

Brackets:

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014