View the original article to see embedded media.
While the UEFA Champions League has expanded over the years to its current format, its core ethos up until the mid-1990s was simple: The champion of each European country played its way into a prestigious club competition after winning domestic leagues of varying strength. With its 2021–22 final coming up Saturday, the original “one champion, one berth” concept provides college football an opportunity it should seize amidst the broader upheaval about how conferences work their way to a champion. The opening is to turn the College Football Playoff into, well, an actual Playoff by letting teams play their way into it.
The NCAA recently opened the floodgates for change in how college football conferences crown their champions when the Division I council relaxed rules to no longer require divisions or a full round-robin schedule to be played to hold a conference title game. It would allow the incorporation of conference championship games into the CFP, whether explicitly (as a proper first round) or implicitly (by forming a conference champions–only Playoff—or at least an overwhelmingly majority-champion filled system—with the 10 teams). By definition, this is expansion given that it adds more teams to the existing four-team system, but it retains exclusivity with the conference champion stipulation. Let’s work backward.
