Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1015973
The playoff became a secondary con-
cern for Ohio State a few days later when
Meyer was placed on paid administrative
leave pending an investigation into his
handling of assistant coach Zach Smith
following allegations of domestic abuse by
Smith.
Elsewhere around the conference, how-
ever, the playoff conversation is ongoing,
and some say it should begin with an ad-
mission by college football's powers-
that-be that a four-team field isn't big
enough. Michigan's Jim Harbaugh would
like to double that number, and if he had
his way, an eight-team playoff would just
be a transitional phase on the way to an
even bigger tournament. "More would be
more," he said. "More would be better in
the playoffs: four right now, go to eight
and eventually get to 16."
Harbaugh came to Michigan from the
NFL, where a 12-team playoff format has
been in place since 1990. There has occa-
sionally been talk of expanding the field
to 14 or 16, but even in its current form,
the NFL playoffs allow 38 percent of the
league's 32 teams to compete for the
Vince Lombardi Trophy.
By contrast, at the college level, only 3
percent of this year's 130 FBS teams will
make the playoff. Of course, many of
those teams have no realistic path to the
final four. But even if you restrict the list
of potential participants to the Power Five
conferences and Notre Dame, only 6 per-
cent of all eligible teams will make the
field as it currently exists. It's a much less
egalitarian approach than in the sport's
lower divisions. In the Football Champi-
onship Subdivision, for example, 24 of
123 teams (20 percent) make the playoff
field. In Division II, it's 28 of 168 (17 per-
cent), and in Division III, it's 32 of 242 (13
percent).
Even in men's basketball, with 353
schools playing in Division I, the odds of
any given team qualifying for the NCAA
tournament are considerably higher than
in football, with 19 percent of the eligible
teams making the field.
But Franklin isn't so sure that a larger
field is right for the FBS. One of the fac-
tors he cites is the length of the season, as
players in the sport's top division play
more regular-season games than their
counterparts in the other divisions. FCS
and Division II teams play 11 games. Divi-
sion III teams play 10. Most of those
teams wrap up their regular seasons in
mid-November, making it possible to
stage an extended playoff without
stretching the season into the spring se-
mester.
"People talk about expanding the play-
offs and things like that," Franklin said.
"I'm not on the same page with that. We
started out playing 10 games [in the
1960s], then we went to 11 games, and
then 12 games, and now with the playoffs
P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >>
1
TRACE McSORLEY QB PENN STATE A ;=h-year senior
and soon to be a three-year starter, McSorley was the only
Big Ten player to claim unanimous preseason All-Conference
honors from a panel of media members. That was entirely
understandable. McSorley led the Big Ten in total o