PROTEST PLAYOFF 2021: Selection Sunday - Kansas City Sports Today

2021 Big 12 Championship - Oklahoma State v Baylor — The 2021 Big 12 Championship were just two of four current Big 12 teams to crash the part of the 2021 Protest Playoff. Could one of them win it? | Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

In which BracketCat analyzes a variety of data from the 2021 16-team playoff simulation and draws conclusions.

Welcome to the fourth Selection Sunday of the new Protest Playoff!

For this first section of playoff recreations (2014-2024), this will be pretty easy. We have the committee’s final CFP rankings for each year and can seed off those, along with champions.

In case you’ve already forgotten, the final CFP rankings for the 2021 season were (conference champions designated by asterisks):

Alabama* (12-1)
Michigan* (12-1)
Georgia (12-1)
Cincinnati* (13-0)
Notre Dame (11-1)
Ohio State (10-2)
Baylor* (11-2)
Ole Miss (10-2)
Oklahoma State (11-2)
Michigan State (10-2)
Utah* (10-3)
Pittsburgh* (11-2)
BYU (10-2)
Oregon (10-3)
Iowa (10-3)
Oklahoma (10-2)
Wake Forest (10-3)
NC State (9-3)
Clemson (9-3)
Houston (11-2)
Arkansas (8-4)
Kentucky (9-3)
Louisiana* (12-1)
San Diego State (11-2)
Texas A&M (8-4)

Other teams who made appearances in the CFP rankings in November and/or December, but could not stay in the final set, included Auburn (6-7), Fresno State (10-3), Minnesota (9-4), Mississippi State (7-6), Purdue (9-4), UTSA (12-2) and Wisconsin (9-4).

Our Actual Field: 16 Teams, 5+11 Model

Under this model, the five* highest ranked conference champions — Alabama (SEC), Michigan (Big Ten), Cincinnati (AAC), Baylor (Big 12), and Utah (Pac-12) — all would receive automatic bids, even though only three of them made the actual four-team playoff.

But seeding and byes are not tied to championship status, a decision that matches the one already reached for the 2025 12-team playoff after just one year of a flawed seeding process almost no one (outside of the ACC, Big 12 or Mountain West conferences) liked very much.

The remaining 11 teams* are drawn from the highest-ranked remaining schools in the committee’s final playoff rankings, yielding the following list of national seeds for PP 2021:

Alabama
Michigan
Georgia
Cincinnati
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Baylor
Ole Miss
Oklahoma State
Michigan State
Utah
Pittsburgh
BYU
Oregon
Iowa
Oklahoma

Unlike in 2023, our field does match the top 16 teams, as it did in 2024 and 2022. It’s also interesting that two independents made the field (BYU and Notre Dame). I don’t think we’ll see that ever again, honestly.

Other than a trio of one- or two-loss mid-majors (and one of them was Houston!) toward the bottom of the CFP rankings, nobody left out had fewer than three losses. I can live with it.

It is worth noting here the greatest deviation between this model and the one I used in my 2009 series of posts: I included all 10 conference champions and only had six remaining at-large teams. While this is the more egalitarian model in terms of widening national participation across multiple levels of FBS, it is entirely unrealistic — even more so now that the P4 (and especially the B1G and SEC) continue to pull away financially.

However, for those who care, under that model Louisiana (Sun Belt), Northern Illinois (MAC), Utah State (MWC), and UTSA (C-USA) would replace BYU, Oregon, Iowa and Oklahoma (Cincinnati still makes it in as the AAC champion under any 4-plus-team model).

(*For those of you wondering why the Group of 5 does not have an “automatic” bid, remember: You are conflating their highest-ranked conference champion, part of the five mentioned above, with their “non-power” status. This occurred following the dissolution of the Pac-12. Prior to that, the model under discussion for a 12-team playoff was a 6+6 model, and I am going to proceed under the assumption that this would occur in a 16-team Power 5 field as well. But this is not technically written into the 12- or 16-team rules as they stand.)

Alternate Field: 16 Teams, Conference Auto-Bid Model

If the Big Ten’s preferred plan were applied instead, these would be your 16 teams (those in bold received the conference or G5 auto-bids; the rest are at-large selections):

Alabama (SEC)
Michigan (B1G)
Georgia (SEC)
Cincinnati (G5)
Notre Dame
Ohio State (B1G)
Baylor (Big 12)
Ole Miss (SEC)
Oklahoma State (Big 12)
Michigan State (B1G)
Utah
Pittsburgh (ACC)
BYU
Iowa (B1G)
Wake Forest (ACC)
Arkansas (SEC)

This year’s model is another great illustration of why the Big Ten’s 4-4-2-2-1 proposal sucks ass. Oh, boy, is there a lot of stupid garbage to break down here!

It’s hard to speculate how this would have worked with a functional Pac-12, so I just left them in an at-large category instead of having to figure out any new conference quotas.

The lack of guarantees for the Pac-12 and the Big 12 limiting itself to just two automatic bids (a position everyone affiliated with the Big 12 is rightfully arguing against loudly as we speak) lead to these stupid P2 quotas resulting in the following points of idiocy:

Once again, a clearly three-bid SEC sneaks in a blatantly undeserving 8-4 Arkansas (No. 21!) over 10-2 Oklahoma. (This is under the 2021 alignment; Oklahoma stays in with 2024 rules.)
An slightly less egregious offense is knocking out 10-3 Oregon, ranked 14th, in favor of the ACC runner-up, Wake Forest (10-3), who just missed the cut at 17th in the final CFP. (Were Oregon in the Big Ten, it’s actually Iowa who would be squeezed out, ironically enough.)
This knocks the Big 12 down from three to two bids and the Pac-12 from two to one bids.
Seriously, again, what are we doing here, people? Squeezing in two lower-ranked ACC and SEC teams that ONLY PLAYED EIGHT CONFERENCE GAMES EACH because, again, quota?
In this scenario, it’s worth debating if the powers that be would have allowed two independents to suck up two of the three remaining at-large spots. I have serious doubts.

This year, the ACC is the main beneficiary of the quotes, arguably at the expense of the Big 12. I feel these illustrations only continue to prove why Brett Yormark is right: quotas suck.

Of course, this all presumes the biggest conferences would still play traditional championship games that produce rankings such as these; the plan, as we know, is to not.

Alternate Model: 12 Teams, Straight Seeding

If the model scheduled to be used this fall (2025) were applied back to previous years, it would net the following 12-team field for the season under discussion (auto-bids in bold):

Alabama
Michigan
Georgia
Cincinnati
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Baylor
Ole Miss
Oklahoma State
Michigan State
Utah
Pittsburgh

So basically it’s just your New Year’s Six participants, only instead the first-round matchups would be Pitt @ Notre Dame (winner meets Cincy in a bowl game), Utah @ Ohio State (winner gets UGA), Michigan State @ Baylor (winner faces Michigan) and OSU @ Ole Miss.

Alternate Model: 12 Teams, Original Seeding

Alternatively, you could field a 12-team field using the old seeding model used only in 2024:

Alabama
Michigan
Cincinnati
Baylor
Georgia
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Ole Miss
Oklahoma State
Michigan State
Utah
Pittsburgh

As you can see, this produces first-round matchups of Pitt @ UGA (winner moves on to face Baylor in a bowl game), Utah @ Notre Dame (winner gets Cincy), Michigan State @ Ohio State (winner faces Michigan) and still OSU @ Ole Miss (winner then loses to Alabama).

Whether it’s the all-B1G “regional” or Georgia, the eventual true national champion, not even receiving a bye, we can continue to see how screwy this approach really is. I won’t miss it.

Alternate Model: Eight Teams

For the sake of this exercise, I am going to assume the four major conferences would receive conference champion auto-bids and the other four teams would be selected at large. I think with only eight spots, the G5 would have a hard sell on getting an auto-bid.

(This is one of the reasons we jumped straight from four to 12, in fact — to avoid antitrust.)

I’m also going to presume under this model that champions would get to host, but since the first-round games likely would be played in bowl environments, that simply decides who gets to wear which jersey and possibly who gets which bowl (higher seeds closer to home):

Alabama
Michigan
Baylor
Pittsburgh
Georgia
Notre Dame
Ohio State
Ole Miss

Oh, man, can you imagine the outcry if 13-0 Cincinnati was left out in favor of Pittsburgh?!

This result alone officially makes this the worst possible playoff model; Cincy makes it into the field in all other models (except BCS). Another serious weakness of this model would be that immediate rematch of “The Game,” not to mention the Alabama-OIe Miss rematch.

Alternate Field: The CFP Four

Alabama
Michigan
Georgia
Cincinnati

Well, we know how this turned out. While this CFP Playoff was entertaining all the way through, it still featured just three conferences (one of them G5!). And if Cincy hadn’t run the table, easy to see Notre Dame (who they beat!) lurking there at No. 5 and sneaking in.

Alternate Field: The Good Ol’ BCS

The BCS would have produced an Alabama vs. Michigan matchup that, while perhaps interesting, completely discounts Georgia actually beating Michigan on a neutral field and then going on to win the whole damn chalupa. It also leaves out a deserving Cincinnati.

If you really want to go down this rabbit hole, the BCS Know How project has continued to project on X/Twitter what the original BCS standings would have looked like since 2013.

2021: What Really Happened

As we all know, SEC champion Alabama started the third-to-last four-team playoff as a No. 1 seed but was unable to successfully defend its 2020 title, falling to the very same Georgia team that was the wire-to-wire No. 1 team in the CFP rankings until Bama’s SEC title upset.

Alabama easily dispatched No. 4 seed Cincinnati in a lopsided Cotton Bowl before falling to No. 3 seed Georgia, which had previously “upset” No. 2 seed Michigan in the Orange Bowl.

Notre Dame, the first team “left out,” proceeded to justify its non-inclusion (as if losing to Cincy wasn’t disqualifying enough) by losing to Oklahoma State, 37-35, in the Fiesta Bowl.

In the Rose Bowl, Ohio State delivered unto Utah its typical faceplant by a score of 48-45.

The Sugar Bowl featured a fun matchup between Baylor and Ole Miss, with the Bears winning a 21-7 game that really wasn’t even as close as that final score. (But, but, but, SEC!)

The lamest non-playoff New Year’s Six game of 2021 was the Peach Bowl, matching the winner of the worst ACC race of all time, Pittsburgh, against the third-place Big Ten team, Michigan State. The Spartans won 31-21, then fired Mel Tucker less than two years later.

Among our other hypothetical playoff participants, these were the real-world finishes:

BYU lost a weak Independence Bowl to UAB, 31-28, justifying their application to the Big 12.
Oregon lost to Oklahoma, 47-32, in a high-scoring Alamo Bowl rematch of this controversy.
Iowa lost to Kentucky 20-17 in a gross Citrus Bowl, a win the Wildcats later had to vacate.

Honestly, when you see these results, I’m not really sure that any of these four teams had a strong case to justify inclusion in this particular playoff. But they may have played better if they had been included. I suppose we will never know. I’ll be interested to see if a team seeded 13th through 16th ever wins a game in either a hypothetical or true future playoff…

Wikipedia’s 2021 season summary

Tomorrow’s Games

To make these posts more fun and interactive, please vote for who you think would win each matchup! I can’t promise to take the votes into account because of the simulation process I use, but it will be interesting to see and discuss the results, plus they may serve as a sort of a tiebreaker if I end up needing one.

BracketCat’s Protest Playoff Archives