March Madness in the Fall? SMU’s Lashlee Pushes His CFP Plan

CHARLOTTE — While the Power 4 conferences debate what an expanded College Football Playoff should look like, SMU coach Rhett Lashlee wants to see the sport “reimagine” its postseason by creating a March Madness–like set of play-in games.

Even though SMU benefited from the CFP format last season—controversially being awarded the final spot over Alabama—Lashlee thinks the selection committee should be minimized.

“The committee has a really hard decision,” Lashlee said Tuesday at ACC media days. “We were up close and personal with that a year ago, and I respect what they have to do, but honestly, it’s a situation that’s set up for failure because there’s human bias and there’s always going to be.” 

Lashlee thinks removing responsibilities from the committee would be helpful “because there’s no other major … sport in America or the world that uses a committee to select their tournament participants.”

That’s in stark contrast to ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, who earlier on Tuesday said he had “faith and great confidence” in the CFP selection committee. Lashlee’s thoughts are more in line with Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, who has suggested a “play-in weekend” of sorts, if his conference were granted four automatic bids. 

Lashlee thinks that idea should go nationwide. “Imagine if Championship Saturday every year right after Thanksgiving was your four Power 4 conference championship games, and you have a 3 versus 6 and a 4 versus 5 in every conference playing to try to get in a 16-team Playoff,” he said. “It would be like March Madness Thursday and Friday. It would be the best Saturday that college football could ever manufacture.”

Lashlee said he hopes CFP leaders will “think outside the box a little bit instead of going down the same path we’ve gone down before.”