This latest round of conference realignment has turned into a struggle for College Football Playoff access primacy. The current Mountain West is regarded as the best of the Group of Five conference and its champion would likely earn an automatic CFP bid in most years under the current format.
That was before the Mountain West was raided by the Pac-12 earlier this month. What’s at stake in the future is essentially the fifth automatic bid to the new 12-team College Football Playoff.
The current CFP format will award the top five-ranked conference champions an automatic bid with the four highest-ranked conference champs earning a first-round bye. Most years, those byes will go to the champions of the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12.
The reinvention of the Pac-12 has made it a mad scramble for that fifth spot because no one below it is guaranteed anything.
That’s not to say the other Group of Five conferences will be excluded from the CFP. There are, after all, seven at-large bids. But the Big Ten and SEC are expected to overwhelmingly dominate access to those 12 spots annually in the playoff based on previous seasons, according to CBS Sports research.
CBS Sports plugged in the teams over the past 10 years as if a 12-team bracket had been in place. An average of 7.73 teams each season combined would have come from the Big Ten and SEC.
That essentially leaves four spots for around 100 remaining FBS schools after the Big Ten and SEC get their share.
Following last week’s raid of the Mountain West, the new Pac-12 and American Athletic Conference are basically at a standoff in realignment to see who comes out as the fifth league champion to receive a berth to the CFP each season. …
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