Outgoing Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson supports the College Football Playoff format expanding from four teams to eight. Johnson has long been an advocate for a larger field to reduce subjectivity in the selection process.
“There’s no rhyme or reason (for the selection of the four playoff teams),” said Johnson, whose boss for the next two weeks (athletic director Todd Stansbury) is a member of the CFP selection committee. “It’s just subjective. You can say what you want.”
Johnson proposes a format endorsed by many others – the five power-conference champions, the top conference champion from the “group of five” leagues and then two at-large bids. The teams would be seeded 1-8 with the first round of games played at the campus of the higher-seeded team on the weekend when conference championship games are played.
“It’s not that hard,” Johnson said. “You do away with the conference championship games. They’ve been doing it in FCS forever, and I was a big part of that.”
Eliminating the conference championship games might not be that difficult from a scheduling standpoint, but the SEC has already pushed back on the idea in no small part because its conference championship game is highly lucrative.
“I’m sure it’s something they’ll look at,” Johnson said. “They’re probably not going to ask me.”
As for a spot on the CFP selection committee? Johnson said that USF AD Michael Kelly, who was previously the chief operating officer of the CFP, used to joke with him that as soon as he retired that he would ask him to join the committee.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “If they go to eight, there won’t be much room for a committee. It’ll be kind of cut and dried a little bit.”
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