With its recent expansion to 12 teams, College football is at a pivotal moment, wrestling with questions of fairness, competition, and power. Enter James Franklin, the outspoken head coach of Penn State, who recently unloaded his thoughts on the matter during an interview on Penn State Football on Blue White Illustrated. He did not hold back, calling out what he sees as glaring inequalities in the CFP and the broader structure of college football.
Franklin’s Vision for a Consistent Football Framework
Scheduling chaos has plagued college football for years, and the coach is fed up with it. Some conferences, like the Big Ten, play nine conference games, while others, such as the SEC, stick to eight. Specific teams, like Notre Dame, dodge conference affiliation altogether. Then there’s the patchwork of conference championship games; some leagues have them, others don’t.
He argues this mess makes it nearly impossible to compare teams fairly when the CFP committee picks its 12 playoff contenders. “When you have some conferences playing nine games, some conferences playing a conference championship, some teams not in a conference, it makes it really difficult,” Franklin said. His fix? Standardize everything.
He wants every team to play the same number of conference games and follow the same championship structure, or none at all. This front-end consistency, he contends, would eliminate the guesswork in playoff decisions and stop rewarding teams for gaming the system with lighter schedules.
Beyond logistics, he sees a leadership vacuum. He’s pushing for a college football commissioner to cut through the agendas that dominate decision-making. “The majority of people that have strong opinions have an agenda and are biased based on what’s good for them,” he noted in the interview.
A neutral overseer could align the sport’s fractured parts, a role some speculate could suit retired coaches like Nick Saban or Chris Petersen. With NIL deals and the transfer portal already shaking things up, his call for centralized control feels timely.
Voting Power Disparities Fueling CFP Frustrations
Franklin got his eye on the power dynamics behind the scenes. Historically, every conference and athletic director got an equal vote in college football’s governance, a nod to fairness in a diverse sport. But the ground has shifted. The Big Ten now boasts 18 teams, the SEC 16, and both face grueling schedules week after week. He questions why their influence shouldn’t match their heft.
“If we have more teams in our conference now and have a greater level of competition week in and week out, why should it be balanced?” he asked during the interview. To him, a Penn State vote shouldn’t carry the same weight as one from a smaller program with less at stake.
The old system, where every voice was equal, doesn’t hold up when some conferences are shouldering bigger burdens and producing more playoff-caliber teams.
This isn’t a solo opinion. Ohio State’s Ryan Day has floated the idea of the Big Ten snagging four automatic CFP bids, a nod to the conference’s depth.
He doesn’t fully commit to the number but buys the logic: if the game’s uneven at the start, why pretend it’s even at the finish? The Big Ten and SEC’s dominance, on the field and in TV revenue, only amplifies this argument, though it risks alienating more minor leagues desperate to keep their playoff hopes alive.
Push for More Automatic Qualifiers Gains Traction
The CFP’s current setup gives automatic bids to the top five conference champions, with seven at-large spots up for grabs. Franklin thinks that shortchanging the Big Ten and SEC, whose size and strength set them apart.
“I think the reason that the Big Ten and the SEC feel like there’s an argument for more is because of a lot of the things that I’ve also brought up in the past, of the discrepancies or things that are not even or balanced in the sport,” he explained.
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Take the 2024 season: Penn State racked up wins but got squeezed out of the playoff after tough losses to elite Big Ten foes. A team from a less brutal conference might’ve snuck in with an easier slate.
Franklin’s point is that the back-end solution is more automatic qualifiers for the big dogs without fixing the front-end issues like mismatched schedules. He admits it’s a Band-Aid, but a fair one until the sport gets its act together.
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