Would an expanded College Football Playoff help Wisconsin Football?

If the College Football Playoff got expanded to eight teams, would it help the chances of Wisconsin Football making the cut?

Big Ten media days have been garnering a lot of discussion about the College Football Playoff this year. Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh suggested the playoff be expanded to 16 teams. New Nebraska head coach Scott Frost suggested a more modest eight teams, but still more than the current four.

The current Playoff format is a crapshoot and even with weeks of polls leading up to the ultimate decision date, fans are still left confused about how the four teams are chosen. The biggest issue is probably the winner of the Big Ten being left out each of the last two seasons. In 2017, the Big Ten was left out entirely and the year prior Ohio State got the nod over champion Penn State.

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If the playoff expanded there would always be a team on the fringe that gets left out. If it went to eight teams, then the ninth team would feel betrayed. If the Playoff went to 16 teams, the 17th team would feel disrespected. There’s also the issue of giving automatic bids to conference champions and guaranteeing a Group of 5 team a spot, which would only leave two ‘at large’ bids.

But if the Playoff expanded, would it help Wisconsin get a spot? We’ll use last year as a test case. The Badgers were definitely one of the 16 best teams in the country, so if the Playoff expanded as Harbaugh desires, Wisconsin would have been in. But, it’s far less likely it expands that much. An eight-team bracket is more likely, with the conference champions and a Group of 5 team getting automatic bids. Last year, Georiga, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Clemson, USC, and UCF all would have gotten a spot, in no particular order. Last year’s national champion Alabama likely would have been included too as an ‘at large’ team, since they actually made the four-team bracket. So that leaves Wisconsin fighting for one spot with the likes of Auburn and Penn State. There’s no telling how the committee would have handled that.

And that leads me to make my final point; I don’t know if expanding the Playoff would help Wisconsin. I’d like to believe creating more spots would mean more chances for the Badgers to get in, but it wouldn’t be truly expanding all that much. Of the four new bids, one would go to a Group of 5 team, another to the fifth conference champ, and another would go to the committee’s darling that would have just missed the cut. And let’s face it, that honor is usually reserved for the Alabamas and Ohio States of the world. Again, it leaves Wisconsin fighting for just one spot. It’s super unlikely to be Wisconsin. And if the Badgers won the Big Ten last year it would have gotten in, and it would likely get in this year, so that doesn’t change much if the Playoff expands.

We’ll have to wait and see how the Playoff unfolds this year. The Badgers haven’t had much of a gripe with the current system. Harbaugh wanting to expand to 16 teams would likely mean his so-so Wolverines get a shot off their name alone, and Frost’s UCF team would have certainly gotten a chance if the Playoff was giving a bid to a Group of 5 team, so their pitches make sense.

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As for Wisconsin, a bid is on the table. Win and you’re in. Expand the Playoff if you want, but the Badgers won’t get much more of a significant advantage if it happens.