As college football tinkers with different formats and brackets, we thought we’d play the what-if game with a radical idea: structuring the CFP like the Club World Cup.
As the College Football Playoff era continues to twist and turn, there is continued uncertainty about the future of the sport. This biggest change made this offseason is a move to a straight-seeding model rather than rewarding conference champions. However, college football is just scratching the surface when it comes to different formats.
That got us thinking — what if college football used the common format seen in soccer around the world?
Let’s take the FIFA Club World Cup as an example, as it’s currently the largest tournament going on (sorry, Gold Cup fans). How would the 2024 college football season have turned out if they used the structure of the Club World Cup?
Who would have qualified?
Let’s get wild.
A whopping 32 teams qualified for the Club World Cup. Among those, UEFA (Europe) was awarded 12 spots. CONMEBOL (South America) was given six. AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), and CONCACAF (North America) were all given four, while OFC (Oceania) and the host nation were given one. For our comparison, let’s match up the conferences to a confederation:
- UEFA: SEC
- CONMEBOL: Big Ten
- CONCACAF: Big 12
- CAF: ACC
- AFC: Mountain West
- OFC: AAC
- Host Nation: Independents
With apologies to the MAC, C-USA, Sun Belt and the Pac-12 remnants, we had to find a way to include the independents (i.e. Notre Dame).
Within each confederation, the way the teams were chosen was generally by taking the winners of each competition between 2021-24. If additional clubs were needed, they would be determined by an overall club ranking over the four-year period.
For the CFP this would mean that the following teams would clinch berths:
- SEC: Alabama (2021 and 2023) and Georgia (2022 and 2024)
- Big Ten: Michigan (2021, 2022, and 2023) and Oregon (2024)
- Big 12: Baylor (2021), Kansas State (2022),
Texas (2023), and Arizona State (2024) - ACC: Pitt (2021), Clemson (2022 and 2024), and Florida State (2023)
- Mountain West: Utah State (2021), Fresno State (2022), and Boise State (2023 and 2024)
- AAC: Army (2024) since there is only one slot available
For the host nation, we are going to arbitrarily assign Notre Dame as the participant.
To fill in the remaining slots, each confederation used a four-year club ranking. As no such ranking exists for college football, let’s fill them in via the CFP rankings as of the end of the regular season in 2024, and the conference standings if needed beyond that.
- SEC (12 slots, two taken already): Texas (No. 2), Tennessee (7), Ole Miss (13), South Carolina (14), Missouri (19), LSU, Texas A&M , Florida, Arkansas, Vanderbilt
- Big Ten (Six slots, two already taken): Penn State (No. 3), Ohio State (6), Indiana (9), Illinois (21)
- Big 12 (Four slots, three already taken): Iowa State (No. 16)
- ACC (Four slots, three already taken): SMU (No. 8)
- Mountain West (Four slots, three already taken): UNLV (No. 20)
We now have our field of 32 teams. Notable teams to not be included are Miami, BYU, Syracuse, and Colorado.
How are groups and pots assigned?
In the Club World Cup (and most other soccer tournaments, for that matter), clubs are split into groups of four, which they then play round-robin style to determine the top teams from each group.
They do a random draw to determine which team is in each group, but it is by ranked pots. The teams are ranked by FIFA (in our case, we’ll use the CFP rankings again) and split into four pots. The first pot is the best eight teams, the second pot is teams ranked 9-16, etc. One team from each pot is then placed in each group.
However, there are constraints to this process, with the main example being that no two teams from the same confederation (i.e. conference) can be in the same group with the exception of UEFA (i.e. the SEC), so that one group isn’t loaded up on teams who have all played each other before.
I used a random draw to come up with the following groups that meet these guidelines:
- Group A: Oregon, Arizona State, UNLV, Arkansas
- Group B: SMU, South Carolina, Missouri, Utah State
- Group C: Tennessee, Alabama, Baylor, Pitt
- Group D: Notre Dame, Ole Miss, Michigan, Vanderbilt
- Group E: Texas, Boise State, Illinois, Florida State
- Group F: Georgia, Indiana, LSU, Fresno State
- Group G: Ohio State, Clemson, Kansas State, Florida
- Group H: Penn State, Iowa State, Army, Texas A&M
How would the tournament play out?
After the round-robin pool play portion, the top two teams from each group move on to a 16-team bracket. In the first round, the winner of Group A would play the runner-up of Group B, the winner of Group B would play the runner-up of Group A, the winner of Group C would play the runner-up of group D, etc.
Now we get to the incredibly subjective portion of this experiment. It’s time to pick some winners based on the 2024 season.
I’d have Oregon easily winning Group A, with Arizona State dispatching UNLV and Arkansas to be the runner-ups. In Group B, Utah State wouldn’t win a game, but it would be tight between SMU, South Carolina, and Missouri. Give me SMU to win the group, with South Carolina narrowly in second.
For Group C, Tennessee and Alabama are clearly the top two teams and would advance, with the Volunteers as the group winner. In Group D, I desperately want to have Michigan or Vanderbilt causing chaos, but I just can’t do it. Notre Dame was too fundamentally sound and would win the group.
In Group E, Texas and Boise State win in a landslide, with the Longhorns narrowly winning the group. I have Georgia and LSU both advancing from Group F in a bit of an upset, as I like LSU over Indiana on a neutral field.
For the last two groups, I have Ohio State winning Group G, while Penn State easily takes care of Group H. In bracket-play it would look like this in the first round:
- Oregon (1A) over South Carolina (2B)
- Tennessee (1C) over Ole Miss (2D)
- Texas (1E) over LSU (2F)
- Ohio State (1G) over Army (2H)
- Arizona State (2A) over SMU (1B)
- Notre Dame (1D) over Alabama (2C)
- Georgia (1F) over Boise State (2E)
- Penn State (1H) over Clemson (2G)
That would give us these quarterfinal matchups:
- Oregon over Tennessee
- Ohio State over Texas
- Notre Dame over Arizona State
- Georgia over Penn State
The semifinals would then feature Oregon beating Ohio State and Georgia beating Penn State before Oregon claimed the national championship. The results may have been different in the real life CFP, but I’m not granting Ohio State a championship in my purely subjective hypothetical world.
Would a format like this ever happen for college football? Absolutely not. There would be too many games, as the National Championship participants would have played seven postseason games in addition to their 12-game regular season. However, the idea of breaking down college football teams into pots and groups by conference sure sounds intriguing to create never-before-seen matchups.