If the College Football Playoff started with a 12-team format in 2014, B1G would be leader in total appearances
The B1G might be the greatest benefiter of the College Football Playoff’s proposed expansion model to a 12-team format. Based on some recent digging, it certainly would’ve assisted the conference in the past.
Stadium’s Brett McMurphy looked at the numbers from the past seven years, and no conference would’ve had more teams included in the College Football Playoff than the B1G under a 12-team model. With the four-team format, the B1G has seen Ohio State reach the field four times and Michigan State appeared once.
Ohio State’s title run in 2014 was the conference’s only national championship. Alabama has won three titles, Clemson has claimed two and LSU won one.
Based on McMurphy’s numbers, the B1G would’ve had 20 teams reach the 12-team field since 2014, the inaugural year of the College Football Playoff. The conference would’ve received 13 at-large bids and produced one of the six highest-ranked conference champions every year — a qualifier for an automatic bid under the proposed expansion model.
Here’s how the other conferences stacked up:
Number of @CFBPlayoff bids by conference in past 7 years using proposed 12-team playoff format:
Big Ten 20
SEC 19
Big 12 12
ACC 11
Pac-12 11
AAC 5
Notre Dame 3
MAC 1
Mountain West 1
Sun Belt 1
C-USA 0— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) June 10, 2021
Obviously, just including more teams doesn’t necessarily translate to national championships for the conference. Still, it would’ve been interesting to see how some of those teams fared under the new proposed model.
It’s also interesting that the B1G would be leading the way as it was not included in the 2017 and 2018 College Football Playoff bracket. The biggest contender, Ohio State, was excluded both years, leaving the conference without a representative in consecutive seasons.
That doesn’t appear to be much of a concern under this new model.