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December 24, 2019 By: Terry Frei

With Power 5 vs. Group of 5 gap widening, there should be a Group of 5 CFP, too

The debate over the four selections for the College Football Playoff ultimately wasn’t all that much fun.

Everything sorted itself out.

If Oregon had finished with only its opening loss to Auburn, the arguments would have been heated, but leaving out the Pac-12 and going with the other four Power 5 champions makes perfect sense.

So we’ve got No. 1 LSU vs. No. 4 Oklahoma in Atlanta; and No. 2 Ohio State vs. No. 3 Clemson in Glendale, Arizona, on Saturday in the CFP semifinals.

The Group of 5 is nowhere to be seen.

If the system stays the same, that won’t change.

The chances of a Group of 5 team cracking the four-team CFP bracket are slim … and will get slimmer.

Beyond that, the chances of a Group of 5 team both making the field and winning the championship will become infinitesimal.

NCAA modifications, including recently implemented cost of attendance stipends and the upcoming compensation for use of names, images and likenesses, will widen the gap between, say, the Auburns and Fresno States.

The Boise State phenomenon isn’t happening again.

The Western Athletic Conference Broncos after bowls were 13-0 in 2006 and ranked fifth in the country; 14-0 in 2009 and rated fourth; and 12-1 in 2010, finishing at No. 9 after rising to as high as second in the AP poll early in the season.

I’ll concede that Central Florida in 2017, sixth in the final AP poll, was close to that.

Yet it couldn’t get a sniff for the CFP.

And the Power 5 will dominate even more in the foreseeable future.

Under the current setup, Memphis drew the Group of 5’s guaranteed New Year’s Six Bowls berth and will face Penn State in the Cotton Bowl. But the Tigers were only No. 17 in the final CFP rankings.

An expansion of the elite CFP field to eight is inevitable at some point and, yes, some will argue that one spot should be reserved for the highest-ranked Group of 5 entrant as the likely No. 8 seed. But that’s condescending. It would amount to a quarterfinal walkover for the No. 1 seed. This year, that would be LSU vs. Memphis.

Keep in mind that also this year, Ohio State, the CFP’s No. 2 seed, beat Cincinnati, a division winner in the Group of 5’s American Athletic Conference, 42-0.

There’s a better way. I first started pondering something like this when I spent most of the 2014 season, the CFP’s inaugural year, chronicling the Jim McElwain-coached Colorado State Rams of the Mountain West. CSU went 10-2 in the regular season and was ranked 21st in the country before a final-game loss to Air Force.

Five years later, with the gap widening, its time has come.

I know I’m not alone in thinking that.

Call the existing setup the Power 5 College Football Playoff.

Call the additional tournament the Group of 5 College Football Playoff.

(Other suggestions welcome.)

Continue to use the CFP selection committee and ratings as the process to fill out both fields.

Crown champions in both.

This season’s four-team Group of 5 bracket, based on the final CFP rankings (which, remember, came out before bowl games and Pac-12 also-ran Washington’s rout of Mountain West champion Boise State in the Las Vegas Bowl), could look something like this:

SEMFINALS, Friday, December 27

No. 1 seed Memphis (17th in CFP) vs. No. 3 Appalachian State of the Sun Belt Conference (20th), Holiday Bowl.

No. 2 Boise State (19th) vs. No. 4 Cincinnati (21st), Pinstripe Bowl.

The traditional 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 pairings have been tweaked because Memphis and Cincinnati, both from the AAC, already have met twice this season, in the regular-season finale and the conference championship game. Memphis won both.

(Those sites are just suggestions.)

CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: Friday, January 3:

Winners at Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas.

It also might help out the Group of 5 in the recruitment of prospects in gray areas. Would you rather get hammered at a lower-tier Power 5 program or have a chance to raise a national championship trophy overhead at a strong Group of 5 program?

Plus, it would be fun.

So Division I would have three champions:

— Power 5 CFP.

— Group of 5 CFP.

(Both still would have an 85-scholarship limit.)

— Football Championship Subdivision (or come up with a better name), the former Division I-AA, with a 63-scholarship limit. North Dakota State has won that title seven of the last eight seasons, and this season’s championship game is scheduled for January 11 in Frisco, Texas.

The NCAA for many years also has held Division II and III national playoffs.

All the winners feel like champions.

Add one more.

In addition to games that decided which team would be anointed the national champion at the most elite level of college football¸ I’ve been to a couple of D-2 championship games.

They were played in the Muscle Shoals area of northern Alabama — specifically in Florence — and I can testify that a fun time was had by all dispatched to cover them.

At the game, too.

Although it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd country, I’m pretty sure Freddie Mercury’s “We Are the Champions” played on the P.A. system as North Dakota State and Northern Colorado held aloft the Division II championship trophy. (Both programs have since moved up to I-AA/FCS.)

I’ve always been struck by how genuine, fervent and (for the participants) unforgettable the celebration of high school championships for both genders and all sports in all classifications.

That’s true, whether they’re Class 6A for big schools from metro areas or Class 1A small schools from no-stoplight towns.

Or in between.

My point?

Championships are championships.

We celebrate them. We embrace them, at the time and at reunions, when that 6-yard run for a touchdown in the Class 2A state title game becomes an 87-yard weave through the defense of the largest school in the state.

It’s time to stop trying to pretend that the Football Bowl Subdivision’s Power 5 and Group of 5 really are on the same level.

Formalize it with a separate playoff.

About Terry: Terry Frei is the author of seven books. His novels are Olympic Affair and The Witch’s Season, and among his five non-fiction works are Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming; Third Down and a War to Go; and ’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age. Information is available on his web site, terryfrei.com. His woodypaige.com archive can be found here.