What Everyone Gets Wrong About The College Football Playoff Blowout Argument

The first round of the College Football Playoff is officially in the books, and things went about exactly as you would expect.

The two games that featured exclusively Power 4 matchups were close games throughout (though not always exciting), while the two Group of 5 schools were summarily blown out.

Yes, James Madison made it look closer on the scoreboard, but Oregon was already in cruise control by the time the Dukes mounted their ultimately futile comeback attempt.

Blowouts are the rule, not the exception, when high level P4 teams match up against G5 teams of any ilk, but the discussion online would have you believe this isn't the case.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone post a screenshot of a blowout from a playoff game between two P4 teams and framing it as some kind of "gotcha" for people who dared to predict (correctly) that these G5 games were going to be snoozers.

Accounts like these are either being disingenuous or missing the point entirely.

Blowouts happen to everyone.

Even the NFL has blowouts occur occasionally. It's football, things are bound to go off the rails every once in a while.

But the point is that a blowout is far more likely to happen to a G5 team than another P4 team, statistically speaking.

Hell, even that game CFB Kings uploaded that screenshot from features two teams who played earlier that year with Oregon coming out on top.

Over the last ten years, P4 teams are beating G5 teams at over an 80% clip, and that includes terrible power conference programs like Purdue and Arkansas.

It all comes down to talent, which is the point a lot of people are missing.

If two teams of equal talent play one another 100 times (see Oregon and Ohio State), you would expect most of the games to be close with some blowouts being the statistical outlier.

If an undermanned G5 school (JMU, Tulane, etc.) is swapped in for one of the P4 teams, the probabilities almost get reversed. It's almost guaranteed to be a blowout, with a slim chance the G5 team keeps it close or even wins.

I don't fault JMU or Tulane for being selected; they were just playing within the rules of the system. But the system is broken.

People are talking about expanding the playoff when we should be shrinking it, and last night just provided more evidence to back that claim up.

This will continue to happen as long as G5 teams are allowed into the big dance.

And these G5 teams are only getting worse, too, as I wrote about a few days ago.

The transfer portal and NIL were meant to make smaller schools more competitive, but all it's done has turned 95% of G5 schools into feeder programs for the big boys.

As an example, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall had to replace 60 players on his 85-man roster to start the season, with headliners such as QB Darian Mensah being poached by Duke for an estimated sum of $8 million dollars over three years.

Programs like Tulane can't compete with that kind of funding.

It's only getting harder for these lower-tier schools to win consistently, yet we continue to throw them into the fire that is the CFP and expect competitive games.

You may get one every once in a blue moon, but that's not the norm nor is it the point.

None of this means I'm anti-G5. I just want a competitive balance, and the P4 schools all have the advantage when it comes to resources and talent, to the point where it's almost like they're playing two different games.

You can whine and complain about how this means I don't love college football, but burying your head in the sand isn't going to change the facts.

It's not disrespectful towards Group of 5 schools. It's reality, and sometimes it bites.