Syracuse football: new CFB Playoff format announced

The new format appears to be advantageous to the Orange’s chances of qualifying.

Around mid-day on February 20th, the College Football Playoff Board of Managers revealed to the world from Irving, Texas, that the format for the first-ever 12-team playoff will be tweaked from the original proposal.

In this new format, the five highest-ranked conference champions will qualify for the play-off accompanied by seven at-large bids to the other highest-ranked teams in the country. In the previous proposal, the six highest-ranked champions would qualify along with the six other best teams.

Although the CFP Management Committee had accepted the 5+7 model a few months back, the Board of Directors unanimously voted to instate the ruling today. At face value, it appears that this new development should generally aid the Syracuse Orange’s prospects of qualification over the next few seasons.

If Syracuse emerges as the ACC champion (which seems unlikely as they are projected to finish middle-of-the-pack), then they will receive the benefit of only having three or four teams to compete with for the top five seeds. Three seems more adequate as the ACC, SEC, BIG 10, and Big 12 will almost certainly each get a qualified team as a top conference.

With the partial disbanding of the PAC 12, this means that the lucky fifth conference will get an automatic bid for a widely-dubbed ‘Cinderella’ team to join the other four. It is unlikely that this school would outrank any of the schools from the other four major conferences.

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This format essentially means that the ACC Champion will almost always get a bye to the quarterfinals. Of course, this development would be of great benefit to the Orange should they win the conference.

Even if Syracuse is forced to battle for an at-large bid, they still benefit. With one less conference gaining an auto-qualification in the 5+7 format as compared to the 6+6, the teams competing in the elite conferences (ACC, SEC, BIG 10, Big 12) will most likely hoover up the remaining seven qualification spots.

Last season, the highest-ranked team outside of the elite four conferences that wasn’t Notre Dame (and the de-horned PAC 12) was #22 SMU, demonstrating the gulf in talent. Essentially, the 5+7 format will give big schools in big divisions a better chance of qualification as they take up the majority of top seeds.

Overall, this development appears to be one that will generally benefit the Orange rather than hurt their chances. Stay tuned for future updates on the state of the football program at Syracuse University.