First Round Byes

By Derek Lee

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Do We Need To Have A Conversation About First Round Byes?

I think it is time we have a conversation about teams having a first round bye in the College Football Playoff. We have now seen 8 quarterfinal games and in 7 of them, the team with the bye has lost. Teams who have had a bye are being outscored 113 - 59 in the first half and 223 -162  overall. Maybe it isn’t smart to give the top 4 seeds almost a month off. Think about the first games of the season… They are messy, sloppy, full of mistakes and have lots of room for growth. Although this isn’t 9 months off, or whole new rosters, a month off will cause any team to be rusty. Is it really best for the “best” teams to have a whole month off, just to get rusty and struggle?

This encapsulates a larger issue in college football. There is no reason that the national championship should occur in mid to late January. College football is not meant to be played that late. The playoffs need to be moved earlier in the year if this is going to be the format going forward. Dan Lanning mentioned this in his postgame press conference following this year’s Orange Bowl by saying “Every playoff game should be played every single weekend until you finish the season.” This would essentially end the season right around January 1st. I could be okay with one bye week after the conference championship game, as asking some teams to play for 8-10 weeks without a bye would be a bit much. But having 10 days between the first round and the quarterfinals, or having a top seed wait 20+ days between games is ludicrous. 

In the first two years of the 12 team playoff, the 4 teams with a bye are averaging only 20 points per game, far below all of their averages for the season. Texas Tech, in their game vs Oregon was held to 0 points and barely 200 yards of total offense. This was a team that was averaging about 40 points a game during the regular season. Did Oregon’s defense have a lot to do with this outcome? Yes, but Oregon’s defense is not the 1985 Bears. The Red Raiders were sloppy, careless and mistake ridden. They did not have the crispness that was seen all year, most likely a component of having nearly a month off. 

You could say the same thing about Oregon in last year’s playoff. They were ran out of the Rose Bowl before fans had even found their seats. The second half was much closer played and if the scoreboard read 0-0 at halftime, Oregon may have won that game. But they came out slow, sloppy and full of mistakes. Most likely due to nearly a month off. 

In this year’s Cotton Bowl, Ohio State managed only 14 points. This is a team that averaged over 30 points for the season. Yes, Miami has an elite front seven and a very good defense in general. But for Ohio State to score less on Miami than the likes of SMU, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Notre Dame is embarrassing for the Buckeyes. Julien Sayin was running for his life for most of the game and never looked comfortable, the Buckeyes could not get a run game going and Miami just flat out physicalled them.

The common denominator in all of these games is that the team with a bye had nearly a month off, and came out to a slow start either offensively, defensively or both. There are 2 lone outliers in this those are this year’s Indiana team and this year’s Georgia team. Indiana looked like world beaters vs Alabama, they did come out somewhat slow in the first quarter offensively, but by halftime they were pedal to the metal. Georgia actually did come out sharper than most of these other teams but eventually fell apart in the second half, leading to one of the biggest upsets in recent College Football Playoff history along with Miami over Ohio State. 

There is no perfect playoff system. There will always be people who are unhappy, or view it as unfair. But this current system is unfair to the teams who have earned a first round bye, who have earned a top 4 seed and who have proven that they are 4 of the best teams in the country. Forcing them to take nearly a month off prior to playing a win or go home game is definitely not how we want to decide a national champion. The playoff will always be changing, but it is important that the next major changes address this so that teams do not try to purposely lose to get a 5 seed rather than a 2 seed. There is enough shadiness in college football today, we don’t need more.