Just four teams’ national championship hopes are still intact, as we’ve reached the semifinal round of the 2024-25 College Football Playoff.
Penn State and Notre Dame are set to get things kicked off with the Capital One Orange Bowl on Thursday night, while Texas and Ohio State will play in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic on Friday night.
While discussing the opportunity to play Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff, Penn State head coach James Franklin said that games like this are about “representing out schools and our conferences.”
Then, he caught himself, realizing that Notre Dame doesn’t have a conference.
“Or our conference, excuse me,” Franklin said, with Marcus Freeman sitting right next to him.
Franklin’s sixth-seeded Nittany Lions will be representing the Big Ten Conference in tomorrow’s game, while seventh-ranked Fighting Irish got in despite playing one fewer game. Franklin then went on to suggest that the path to the CFP should be consistent across college football.
“It should be consistent across college football,” Franklin said. “This is no knock at [Freeman] or Notre Dame, but I think everybody should be in a conference. I think everybody should play a conference championship game, or nobody should play a conference champion championship game. I think everybody should play the same number of conference games.”
As it stands, the Big Ten and Big 12 are the only Power Four leagues that play a nine-game conference schedule. The ACC and SEC, meanwhile, play an eight-game conference schedule.
Franklin is right, too.
How can we say that the conferences all present a similar path to the playoff? If the Big 12 played and eight-game conference schedule and had three teams finish with 11-1 records in the regular season, would the field have looked different?
If the ACC or SEC played one more conference game, might they have had more three-loss teams that wouldn’t have gotten in?
If Notre Dame had to play a Big Ten or ACC schedule with nine league opponents, and a conference title game on top of that, would they look like the same team?
Whether it’s eight, nine, or even ten games, teams across different conferences should be playing the same number of conference games and should have the same requirements and opportunities to make the College Football Playoff.
However, getting uniformity in college football in easier said than done — which is ultimately the case for anything involving Power Four conference leadership getting in a room and agreeing on something.
“How do you put those people that are in that room to make a really important decision that impacts the landscape of college football, and they can’t compare apples to apples or oranges to oranges?” Franklin said. “I think that makes it very, very difficult.”
The Orange Bowl is scheduled for a 6:30 p.m. CT kickoff on Jan. 9, with coverage provided on ESPN.
