Rece Davis states ‘there’s no such thing as right’ in College Football Playoff expansion

On Thursday, the College Football Playoff management committee announced that the 2026 playoff would follow a straight-seeding format. However, the updated seeding methodology may be far from the last change made to the CFP.

There’s been a large push from conference commissioners and coaches across the country to expand the 12-team format to include 14 or even 16 teams. On the College GameDay Podcast, ESPN analyst Rece Davis weighed in on the demands being thrown at the CFP management committee.

“No matter how many good intentions there are, and no matter how many hours they spend in committee, and no matter how many studies they do and data points of data they analyze, they’re not going to get it right, because they can’t. There’s no such thing as right,” Davis said.

Many of the college football coaches arguing for CFP expansion claim that too many deserving teams are being excluded from the postseason format due to its size. This argument never rang truer than in 2023, when 13-0 Florida State was excluded from the CFP.

In turn, the management committee expanded the CFP from a four-team format to a 12-team bracket. Nonetheless, fans of teams like Alabama and Miami — who narrowly missed the CFP — still complained that the 12-team format was too exclusive.

These sort of complaints back up Davis’ argument that the CFP management committee will never be able to “get it right.” Davis pointed out that even if the CFP expands to 16 teams, the 17th team in the country will be unhappy.

Of course, it’s easy to point out the issues with the College Football Playoff without offering any solutions. Thus, Davis proposed how he would fix the seemingly endless debate surrounding the CFP’s size and selection process.

“The BCS formula changing every time somebody got mad about what the formula spit out was its biggest problem. It wasn’t all the other stuff… It undermined the credibility with the public,” Davis said. “The best way to do this would be to have conference champions — how many ever you decided — and then after that, you assign a criteria, almost like the old BCS.

“The subjectivity of the people in the room would be a certain percentage of the formula. And the best set of data — compilation of various computer rankings, strength of schedule, whatever you want to use, becomes a certain percentage of the ranking. How you fair to your conference becomes a certain percentage of the ranking.

“And then there the subjectivity, more so than the old poll system in the BCS, where that factored in, but the actual evaluation of the committee maybe carries a huge percentage of that. And then you come out with the top 16. In some years, the Big Ten might get seven. And some years, they might get three, and that would be best for the sport.”