If playoff expansion is coming, Auburn should be one of its biggest winners
If playoff expansion is coming, Auburn should be one of its biggest winners
The Tigers currently face the toughest path to championship contention in college football. A 12-team format would be huge for the program.
It’s not the CFP trophy, but the winner still gets it. (Todd Van Emst/Auburn Athletics)
When the news of a proposed 12-team College Football Playoff broke late last week, the biggest cheers should have come from the Group of Five conferences — which would finally get a seat at the table when it comes to playing for a national title.
The next-loudest ones should have come from Auburn.
The current four-team CFP format was running full speed into a real problem. In seven years, only 11 programs have made it to the final four. That’s less than 17% of the Power Five conferences and only 8.6% of the FBS as a whole.
Clemson has made it six years in a row. Alabama went five straight years, winning it twice, before an LSU-caused pause in 2019 and a revenge tour title in 2020. Ohio State and Oklahoma have already been four times.
Contrast that with the BCS National Championship Game, the controversial and supposedly too-closed format that only had two teams make it four times in 16 years. The ratio…
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