As leaders at the College Football Playoff and the top conferences continue to tinker with ideas for how the bracket should look in the future, the latest argument coming from fringe contenders is that the Group of 5 slot should be eliminated.
Programs that could make it into the 12-team field as the fourth or fifth representative from the SEC or Big Ten believe that their resume is superior to that of an AAC or Sun Belt power. And many of college football’s top voices are echoing this idea, at the expense of the Boise State, Tulane and James Madison types.
Count ESPN host Scott Van Pelt on the side of the Group of 5.
Sunday night on his podcast, Van Pelt argued that part of the fun of college sports is representation from all levels and regions. Van Pelt also offered a reminder of how thin some CFP teams’ resumes already are — and how lopsided the results can be when these supposedly superior teams play the best in the country.
“I have zero appetite for the complaining from people. One of the biggest sells of the NCAA basketball tournament is the idea of Cinderella,” Van Pelt explained.
“The whole notion of this sport is it has to have some ability for inclusion for that, or why do (Group of 5 schools) exist at all? And of course the odds of Tulane or James Madison beating somebody on the road in the playoffs are monumentally high, and you can complain about the fact that they’re going to be a 20-something-point dog.”
Van Pelt and co-host “Stanford” Steve Coughlin offered the example of Tennessee in 2024, which made the CFP as the SEC’s third representative before losing at Ohio State in the first round to the tune of a 42-17 blowout.
Until the more vocal lobbyists at the SEC and Big Ten prove that their lesser teams can routinely compete with the top seeds, Van Pelt doesn’t see a reason why a James Madison beatdown, for example, is any different than a Tennessee blowout:
“I have zero issue with the inclusion of the small guy, because the big guys are going to get their a** kicked by the best, too.”
The format of the CFP is unlikely to change in 2026, but the idea of removing the automatic entry for the Group of 5 figures to be one of the more contentious debates for the tournament heading forward.
