The new 12-team College Football Playoff format will make its debut this season, bring wide-ranging changes to how we talk about, analyze and ultimately decide the champion in the sport.
Proponents of the format routinely point to the benefit that increased access will have for all of college football: more teams being in the mix to make the playoff later in the season will drive increased interest deep into November; the presence of seven at-large bids allows for teams to remain in the hunt even if they are out of their respective conference title races.
The logic makes sense, but increased opportunity to remain in the playoff race will also be paired with increased expectations to make the playoff. Any reasonable fan could look at the playoff monopoly held down by just a half-dozen power programs — Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, Ohio State, Michigan and Oklahoma have combined to account for 72.5% of the CFP bids — and adjust their expectations for their favorite team’s chances of making the playoff.
Throughout the 10 years of the four-team format, we saw teams (and coaches) put together strong campaigns that fell short of the playoff but ended in a New Year’s Six bowl. Such a season may have had some disappointing moments along the way, but at the end of the day, they were viewed as a success. With expansion, those at-large spots for the New Year’s Six are now at-large spots for the CFP, so programs that have been falling just short in years past are now going to be expected to make the field moving forward.
And it’s with that premise that we take a look at seven coaches who are leading programs that have come close but failed to make the the CFP in the first 10 years of its existence. These are coaches leading programs who…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/lane-kiffin-james-franklin-among-college-football-coaches-facing-new-expectations-in-expanded-cfp-era/
Author : Chip Patterson
Publish date : 2024-05-23 16:20:11
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