It comes as no surprise to me that playoff opponents have adopted the Arizona Cardinals as the poster child for their stand against college football instituting an expanded playoff system. Their argument is that allowing the college football equivalent of the Arizona Cardinals to qualify for the playoffs and “just get hot” over a four week stretch would severely undermine the importance of the regular season. I believe this argument is disingenuous due to the odds against this ever occurring. Let me be clear that my preference for a 16-team playoff is not about any desire to see the college equivalent of the Arizona Cardinals succeed in winning the national title. I’m simply not bothered by the possibility given the probable path any such team would face in doing so.
That said, among the problems with using the Arizona Cardinals in their fight against a college playoff is that playoff opponents project the NFL format on to college football. However, the NFL format makes it easier for a 9-7 team to make the playoffs and reach the Super Bowl than it needs to. For example, if the NFL playoffs included the top 12 teams straight up, the Arizona Cardinals could have only been the 12th overall seed if they made the playoffs at all. Assuming the NFL still used a flexible bracket, Arizona’s path to the Super Bowl would have included games at the five seed, one seed, and two seed in that order assuming no upsets but their own. The Cardinals would have had no chance of hosting a playoff game much less the two home games afforded to them under the NFL format. While NFL may not be inclined to change its format for its own reasons, the point is that a format exists that would make things much more difficult for a 9-7 team to make the playoffs and reach the Super Bowl. As it is, the Arizona Cardinals are only one of two 9-7 teams to reach the Super Bowl. The other is the 1979 Los Angeles Rams. Given that only two 9-7 teams have ever reached the Super Bowl with neither winning, I doubt any NFL team (except, perhaps, the Detroit Lions) would take a 9-7 record if offered to them before the start of the season.
As for college football, the 9-4 ACC Champion Virginia Tech Hokies have been offered as the college equivalent of the Arizona Cardinals. If I applied my desired playoff format to this past season while including the official conference champions, Virginia Tech would have been a 13 seed. As such, the Hokies’ probable path to the national title would have included games at Utah, at Oklahoma, at Texas, and versus Florida on a neutral site. Since I-A was established in 1978, only nine teams (based on power points standings) have even beaten two top four teams in the same season. Under my proposed format, Virginia Tech would have to beat the top four teams consecutively including three on the road assuming no upsets but their own. If we accept Virginia Tech as the college equivalent of the Arizona Cardinals, we might only expect two such teams to even reach the title game every 43 years. Of course, that does not account for the fact that the Hokies will not benefit from two home games like the Arizona Cardinals did nor the fact that college football’s parity is unlikely to ever mirror the NFL’s. As such, there is no reason to believe that any college football team that expects to compete for the national title would ever settle for a 13 seed based on the ridiculous implication offered by playoff opponents that “just getting hot” against the top four teams is such a simple task that college football should deny that possibility even at the expense of several teams with equal or fewer losses than the two teams voted into a championship game.
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