Calls mount for College Football Playoff to make drastic changes after Saturday’s games

ESPN analyst and former head coach Nick Saban ruffled a few feathers earlier in the week, but could not hand out some “I told you so” takes.

Saban is one of many advocates of some significant change in the College Football Playoff system who saw Saturday’s results validate a point he was making all week. The system, fairly obviously, is broken.

Two Group of Five teams reached the CFP after the ACC stumbled, fumbled, and tumbled to 8-5 Duke winning the league. After Saturday’s results for Tulane and James Madison, it’s fair to wonder: what on Earth were they doing in the Playoff?

Ole Miss waxed Tulane 41-10 in a game that wasn’t even as close as its lop-sided score. Oregon likewise easily controlled JMU, rolling up a 34-6 halftime edge before taking the easy victory. After an fairly electric Oklahoma/Alabama showdown on Friday and a defensive battle between Miami and Texas A&M on Saturday morning, the CFP suddenly fell very, very flat.

Enter Saban having built a solid base for his “I told you so” platform. Back on Thursday, on The Pat McAfee Show, Saban rebuked the entire idea of G5 teams in the Playoff. “Would we allow ther winner of the AAA baseball league… in the World Series playoffs?” asked Saban. “That’s the equivalent of what we do when JMU gets into the College Football Playoff and Notre Dame doesn’t.”

Likewise, Urban Meyer made similar arguments last week. On The Triple Option podcast, he advocated for a qualification test for G5 teams– they should play three teams in the top 50 to qualify. “You’re telling the [Notre Dame] Fighting Irish to sit home and James Madison’s going?” asked Meyer. “The better team is supposed to be in the game.”

It was certainly clear on Saturday that the better team was not actually in the game. Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer actually made that point clearly in broadcasting the Ole Miss/Tulane blowout.

“This has been a completely non-competitive game,” Tessitore said. “If this were Notre Dame, what kind of game would we have had?”

Jesse Palmer stated, “Imagine how big this environment already is… and what that would have looked like if Notre Dame had that opportunity…. I think this is something that the committee needs to continue working out as they press forward.”

Palmer and Tessitore made a more moderate case, essentially adovicating allowing one team to make a Playoff appearance, but not a second.

That said, considering the trouble that both G5 teams had, a separate bracket might be the only way to make the Playoff experience tenable for Group of Five schools.

With power conferences going to nine-game schedules, it’s also less and less likely that big schools will want to play top Group of Five foes.