How Creating the Group of 5 Playoffs will Save the Group of 5

With the College football having gone through its first 12 team playoff we have learned some things this season. That great teams can lose multiple times in the regular season and will be able to become unstoppable when it is playoff time. This will just mean teams with more star talent will get the benefit of doubt to lose more games and will get in due to bias from the committee. Now with the Committee making a new 14 team playoff for the year 2026 and rumors churning about the committee giving more auto bids to the Big 10 and the SEC conferences specifically it is time to get rid of the G5 spot and make their own playoff.

What is the point of the Playoff

The reason we have this playoff now is so teams who have done decent in the regular season (won more than a third of their games) can go into a playoff and crown a national championship. But the way they decide who is in is completely objective and decided by a committee. No cause no reason no metrics to help it is madness, the way college football was meant to be. But 134 teams should not be fighting for 12 or 14 team playoff. We already separated the teams via 9 conferences and a few teams as independents. Now as of recently we have separated them even more by calling the bigger conferences (SEC, BIG 12, BIG Ten and ACC) the Power 4 and the other section Group of 5 (AAC, Sun Belt, MAC, Mountain West, and Conference USA) who fight for one spot in the playoffs.

Why would we not give a chance to schools like Western Kentucky to have an actual chance to win a playoff we give division mentally why not let them play for something of meaning for themselves. As a BGSU alum it would make more sense to for BGSU to go a try to make a G5 Championship trophy rather than play for a bowl game and or playoff spot that only happens when I play CFB 25.

The Difference in Recruiting

The biggest difference in team comparison between the Group of 5 teams to the Power 4 is not the Strength of Schedule it is (and no surprise here) the Strength of Roster. People look at the CFP and think every team has the same chance to win the playoff. When this is not true at all Boise State in the past 4 years 74 average recruiting rank as where Ohio State has an average of a 3.5 recruiting ranking in the past 4 years. The worst recruiting ranking team to win the National Championship was Michigan in the 2023-24 season which was ranked 12th in recruiting rankings on the average the 4 years before. There is a big jump between 12th and 74th in recruiting rankings. The highest recruiting Group of 5 team for this cycle is Memphis at 63rd (as of Jan 20th). There are teams in the MAC are closer in recruiting rankings to Boise than Boise is to the worst Big Ten team.

How The NCAA can do this

The NCAA or the committee can make this G5 playoff a thing we already have 47 bowl games that they currently play and things change so rapidly for the CFP already so why nit make a move on the Group of 5 teams. Now this is not a secondary playoff for teams who should of gotten in to the P4 Playoff it is specifically for the G5.

This would somewhat completely separate the G5 and P4 giving them their own rankings and pretty much own worlds but they need this in the long run. I believe it would be best 12 or 14 seeds because unlike hitting the cream of the crop in CFP there are different levels to the game (look at the PENN STATE LINE ARTICLE). But in the G5 I do not think its the same completely. I believe the games should be played on saturdays just to keep schedule the same from the regular season (minus the MAC) but the post season should not go passed the first week of january it is way to long.

To sum this up They should separate the G5 and P4 to give G5 teams an actual chance to win a College football national championship this will bring viewers to the G5 and help them in the long run.