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The decision to expand the College Football Playoff to 12 teams has already made the regular season much more intriguing as we wait to see which schools will end up making the cut. However, that tweak could have an unintended impact on conference championship games based on what Lane Kiffin had to say about the current state of affairs in the SEC.
The SEC is widely viewed as the gold standard for talent when it comes to college football, and that reality is reflected in the fact that six teams in the conference currently have a realistic shot of punching their ticket to the College Football Playoff.
We’re still a few weeks away from learning which teams will earn the right to compete for a national championship when the list of the dozen contenders gets revealed on December 8th, and there are a number of games that have the potential to throw a serious wrench into the current picture.
That includes the conference championships that will be played the day before the CFP lineup is finalized, which have a couple of major implications. The five highest-ranked conference champions will receive an automatic bid (with the top four in that group getting a bye), but the teams who end up walking way with a loss could see their title dreams officially dashed as a result.
According to On3, those changes have sparked some literal game theory among teams in the SEC based on what Lane Kiffin had to say about discussions he’s had with coaches who’ve realized making it to the conference championship game could do more harm than good in the grand scheme of things:
“I’ve talked to other coaches, so I’ll just kind of give you the feeling from some other coaches that. They don’t want to be in it.
You know, the reward to get a bye versus the risk to get knocked out completely. I mean, that’s a really big risk…There’s a cost and benefit to everything.
There’s great benefits to this playoff system and so many people being excited and fans and programs and more games, and then there’s cost, too. The conference championships don’t mean as much.”
Kirby Smart addressed this potential scenario prior to the start of the season while saying he was worried teams would attempt to game the new system, and it would appear those fears have been realized.
As things currently stand, it’s a bit too early to predict who will end up playing in the SEC Championship. With that said, Texas is the only squad that could enter the game with a single loss, which hinges on their ability to beat Texas A&M on November 30th to cap off the regular season.
As a result, there’s a very real chance the team that ends up losing in that game is handed their third loss of the year, which could be a make-or-break result that keeps them out of College Football Playoff contention.
It’s still a bit too early to determine if the expanded CFP has the potential to spark discussions about the merit of playing an additional game to determine a conference champion, but don’t be shocked if that ends up being the case in the not-so-distant future.