College football produced five undefeated national champions in a six-year span to close the four-team playoff era. With College Football Playoff expansion adding more marquee matchups to the schedule and the transfer portal distributing talent more equally across the sport’s most elite teams, undefeated title winners could become significantly more rare. Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said as much this offseason amid the ongoing discussions around the future of college football’s postseason structure.
Michigan went 15-0 in its final year under Jim Harbaugh to snap its title drought. Georgia matched that record a year prior. Clemson, LSU and Alabama were perfect from 2018-20. If another team joins that club, Sarkisian said it will be deserving of a statue.
“The idea I think we’ve all gotta wrap our brain around — I don’t know if we’ll ever see an undefeated national champion again,” Sarkisian said at the SEC spring meetings. “If we do, that’s a really good team. Because it’s just so difficult. It’s difficult, yes, because of the quality of opponents you play. But it’s so difficult to stay healthy that long. I mean, you’re going to have teams in years like we had last year where you lose your starting quarterback. How do you respond to your quarterback being down? Or you lose both your left tackles. That happened to us last year.”
Future of the College Football Playoff hinges on touchy subject among power conferences: Automatic qualifiers
Brandon Marcello
Last year’s Ohio State squad became the first two-loss champion since the chaotic 2007 season, in which LSU won the BCS National Championship with a 12-2 record. The Buckeyes clinched a spot in the playoff even with their pair of regular-season defeats, one of which came against an unranked rival in Michigan. In fact, they even had a decent amount of room to spare on the playoff bubble considering they got in as the No. 8 seed.
“I think you’re going to see teams more and more now with two losses, three losses, maybe even four losses that get in,” said Sarkisian. “Not very different than the NCAA Baseball Tournament, what that looks like.”
The 12-team playoff guarantees that each season’s national champion will go through at least three high-quality opponents in addition to the demands of the regular season and, in many cases, a conference championship game. With 14- and 16-team expansion on the table, an even longer postseason could be on the horizon.
“This idea of somebody is going to go 16-0 in college football, man, put a statue up somewhere of that team,” Sarkisian said. “Because I just don’t know if that’s going to happen again.”
Add Comment