Alabama‘s national championship in 2011 over LSU was the moment that everyone knew the BCS was a broken system. This year’s College Football Playoff is similar in the fact that the sport needs a change for the better.

There are many different opinions as to what improvements need to be made. Ultimately, the FBS conferences will follow whatever gives them the opportunity to make the most money. That may be a sad reality, but it will always be what drives commissioners and the sport’s biggest influencers.

The current College Football Playoff contract runs through the 2025 season. However, we have seen how quickly things can change. For the betterment of college football, the playoff system needs a fix.

Here are five ways they can do that.

Expanding to eight teams

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Whether or not you agree with it, expansion to at least eight teams is coming. Money is more than likely the biggest factor in that decision, although it’s needed from a football perspective as well.

Only three of the 14 semifinal games up to this point have been competitive for the full 60 minutes. The talent gap between the top teams and the fourth seed is wide. Expanding to eight teams will give you a better percentage of competitive games in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds.

Here is how the playoff would have looked based on the final 2020 rankings:

Alabama vs 8. Cincinnati Clemson vs 7. Florida Ohio State vs 6. Oklahoma Notre Dame vs 5. Texas A&M

All four matchups present much more intrigue than the Alabama-Notre Dame game did. And if Clemson and Ohio State were really top four teams, we would have seen them anyway in the semifinal.

Expanding not only gives more teams an opportunity to compete but will make games such as the Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl, etc. have more importance.

Uniform scheduling

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The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 are all in unison with how their scheduling goes. Three nonconference games, including a Power Five opponent, and then nine conference games. The only conference not following that schedule is the SEC.

From a money perspective, it would make more sense if Georgia got to play Texas A&M instead of Charleston Southern. An SEC conference game more than likely sells out and attracts more people to the college town.

From a football perspective, the SEC is doing the right thing. Giving their teams fewer opportunities to lose has put two conference teams in the playoff before. However, the playing field needs to be level throughout all of the major college football conferences.

Stop leaving it up to opinion

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In what other sport does the champion get determined by the opinion of a committee? Teams such as 2014 Ohio State, who won the national championship, got into the playoff because the committee determined they were more deserving than Baylor or TCU.

Looking at the NFL, there is no debate as to who should or who should not have made the playoffs. Even if the 7-9 Washington Football Team got in as the NFC’s No. 4 seed, while the 10-6 Miami Dolphins missed the playoffs in the AFC. Why? Because there is a set, uniform process that is determined by record and tiebreakers. Opinions are irrelevant.

The BCS was flawed and undoubtedly needed to be moved on from. The playoff committee has avoided the same type of controversy that the computers did as far as the top four teams go. A better system to rank the top 25 teams must be found.

Get the Group of 5 involved

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You cannot consider the Group of 5 a part of FBS football and not have them in the playoff discussion. While no team throughout the years has had a legit gripe of not getting in the top four, if the playoff is expanded to eight, they must be included.

Cincinnati was one of the top teams in the country and proved it by battling Georgia in the Peach Bowl. They were one of the top defenses in the country and held top offenses like UCF and SMU under wraps. The playoff committee never ranked the Bearcats higher than No. 7.

While it may seem like mismatches on paper, you never know until they play it out on the field. If a Group of Five team gets blown out, at least they had an opportunity. If they cannot get involved somehow, there should be discussions of them making their own playoff.

Automatic qualifiers

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This is one of the ways to eliminate opinion in determining playoff teams. If you are in one of the Power Five conferences and you win your championship game, you deserve to be in the playoff. Especially if it expands to eight teams.

Since 2020 was a weird season, looking at last season is a better scale as to what it could look like. LSU, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Oregon were the Power Five champions in 2019. The first four were the playoff teams while the Ducks finished at No. 6.

The Group of Five needs an automatic qualification spot as well, Memphis would have been the representative from last year.

College football is one of the only sports where there is not a set way to make the playoffs. Automatic qualifiers would be the first step of telling teams what it takes to be included in the postseason.