Ryan Day knows a 24-team College Football Playoff would be great for the 137 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision. But there’s a 138th team that may not stand to gain much, if anything.
“It’s debatable whether it’s best for Ohio State — you can go back and forth on that — but it’s certainly best for the conference and great for college football in general,” Day told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg on Monday. “It engages more fan bases late in the season.”
If a 24-team CFP had existed since the start of the BCS era in 1998, Ohio State would have made the playoff in 26 of 28 seasons. The only other program in the same ballpark was Georgia, which would have made 23 appearances. Alabama, Oklahoma and LSU each would have made 21 appearances, while Florida (20), Penn State (19), Oregon (19), Michigan (19), Clemson (18), Texas (18) and Wisconsin (17) also would have been frequent participants.
Dan Lanning, who has led Oregon to back-to-back CFP appearances (including one as the No. 1 overall seed in 2024), agreed with Day that the Ducks don’t necessarily benefit from a larger postseason field. Still, he compared the 24-team format to March Madness and said it would be “good for our sport.”
“Ryan’s in the same similar situation, (Indiana coach) Curt (Cignetti) as well, similar situation,” Lanning told Rittenberg. “Is it necessarily best for the programs that have been in to say, ‘Hey, let’s invite more?’ No, but is it better? What happened because of the College Football Playoff is every bowl game has been devalued, the end of the season looks completely different. You’re a failure as a coach if you don’t make it to the College Football Playoff. … It’s going to create more opportunity. Just like March Madness is great in the spring for basketball, it’ll be good for our sport.”
As Day continues to chew on the proposed format, he wonders how much more difficult it could become for Ohio State to win its 10th national championship somewhere down the road.
“When there was four (teams), you just had to win two games,” Day said. “Now there’s more games to be played, there’s a bigger pool, a bigger field. But when you take a step away from it, you’re always going to be late in the season, playing for an opportunity to be the highest seed that you can be.”
The push to earn a bye and an easier path to the title game is why neither Day nor Lanning believes a larger playoff field would lead coaches of teams comfortably in the CFP to rest their starters late in the season, as NFL teams often do.
“Because of how the seeding would work, it’s so valuable,” Lanning said. “We’re talking about 24 teams. The value of being the first-seeded team is so much more valuable than being fourth, even, that you’re going to want to make sure you put yourself in that position. Could that happen? It could happen. But there’s so many teams in the conversation, one loss can be a huge difference in being (seeded) 1 or 5 or 8.”
