College Football Playoff Blowouts and a Modest Proposal for Future

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This past weekend was the first round of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoffs. We witnessed four games between the teams ranked 5th through 12th in the playoffs, with the winners of each game going on to face one of the top four teams on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.

The College Football Playoff Committee set up the first round as a home game for each of the higher-ranked teams; thus, each home team had a decided advantage. This weekend’s games were two blowouts and two definitive victories, albeit closer ones.

On Friday night, Notre Dame trounced Indiana 27-17. On Saturday, Penn State decimated SMU 38-10, Texas handled Clemson 38-24, and Ohio State embarrassed Tennessee 42-17. In all of these games, the home team won handily, and the Penn State and Ohio State games rank in the top 10 margins of victory in College Football Playoff history.

“All four first-round matchups were decided by double digits,” writes Matt Baker at The Athletic. “Over 120 combined second-half minutes, the score was within one touchdown for all of 55 seconds.”

Some wags questioned whether the committee put the right teams into the playoffs. It’s easy to argue that Ole Miss should have had a place, and, of course, some people believe that the Crimson Tide should get an automatic berth in the playoffs because it’s Alabama.

“Fans and members of college football’s punditry (and Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin), largely from SEC country, have used the two results to argue that the Hoosiers and Mustangs didn’t belong in the field after all,” writes Dan Lyons at SI.com. “There is certainly a chance that Alabama, the first team out of the field, would have performed better in South Bend or Happy Valley, although the Crimson Tide’s rough outings at 6–6 Vanderbilt and 6–6 Oklahoma don’t lend much confidence.”

“The same people complaining about these games being blowouts would lose their minds if we actually put the 12 best teams in the country in the Playoff,” wrote someone who goes by “Big Tennessee” at Barstool Sports, but he also admitted, “To get to 12 teams, you’re always going to have to decide between those who don’t deserve to be in the Playoff and those who will almost certainly get killed once they get there.”

On the other hand, The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel posted on X, “I’m officially over all your ‘Indiana/SMU shouldn’t have been in’ tweets.”

I don’t have a dog in the fight when it comes to any of the first-round games since my Georgia Bulldogs received a first-round bye, but these weren’t compelling games. I’m wondering if the first-round home games aren’t fair to the other teams.

So here’s my modest proposal for future playoff first-round matchups: instead of home games for the higher-ranked teams, why don’t we have neutral-site games? Since we have too many bowl games already, we should have the top four teams host the neutral-site first-round games.

Hear me out: the committee could use a random draw to determine which of the top four schools would host which first-round game. The higher-ranked team would still be the home team at the neutral site, which could give that team a slight leg up since some schools have better locker room facilities for the home team than for the visitors.

Hosting the neutral-site games at the top four schools would reward those teams and their communities with tourism revenue, and it could get rid of the massive advantage that these teams received by hosting their first-round games at home.

Conferences and folks at the NCAA love to talk about parity and leveling the playing field, and this move might get rid of some of the blowouts like we saw this past weekend. Alas, nobody will listen. But a fan can dream, can’t he?

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