The College Football Playoffs quietly had a rule change for next season regarding the Group of Five representative, and that could affect the Tulane Green Wave's chances.
The College Football Playoff has simply been unable to exercise any patience as the format changes by the year. It expanded to a 12-team format, which allowed the Tulane Green Wave football team to make their first-ever CFP appearance this last season. In the first year of expansion, the top four seeds went to the highest-ranked conference champions, along with a first-round bye. Then that changed to be the top four highest-ranked teams overall, making the path harder for Group of Five teams without the bye. Now, things seem to have gotten a bit weirder, with Chris Vannini of The Athletic reporting on a tweak for next season that, apparently, wasn’t known to G5 leaders until recently.
Next year’s playoff will remain at 12 teams, but it will now guarantee every Power Four champion an automatic bid, after the unimaginable horror of last season that saw a five-loss Duke team get snubbed. There is still a guaranteed spot for the G5 rep. However, it no longer has to go to a conference champion – it will simply be the highest-ranked G5 team.
Now, that could be a good or a bad thing for Tulane, depending on how things would shake out – especially when looking at how the committee dropped some conference championship losers last season. It would be one thing if there was a guaranteed conference champion spot, and then an additional highest-ranked G5 team. A possible theory of removing that is to avoid a much higher ranked team being upset in their conference championship, sending a team who may not be “qualified” to play with the big leagues to the CFP.
It’s even weirder when considering that multiple G5 conferences, including the American, use CFP rankings to determine who plays in and hosts their title games, which the Green Wave directly benefited from last season. Will removing this requirement devalue that game? Will that lead a domino effect of removing conference championship games altogether? The Power Four has certainly been fighting for that. Vannini also reports that the G5 leaders who were largely unaware of this rule change plan to discuss this change and possibly ask to alter the language in the memorandum of understanding. It’s unclear how or why this rule change happened and went mostly unnoticed until recent reports.
It’s hard to envision a scenario that leads to an American championship between lopsided teams, particularly with the CFP tiebreaker, and the fact that the CFP ranked both Tulane and North Texas last season to all but ensure a ranked champion. The Green Wave were ranked higher, but there was a lot of discourse that felt the Mean Green were the most poised for a playoff run. They were all but exposed in the championship game loss, but suppose that hadn’t changed perceptions? Tulane could’ve won their second American title, with a sustained track record of success, and still be left out of the dance. That can’t be good for the sport.