The 12-team playoff era is coming. What would UK have to do to make the field in 2024?
Monday’s national championship game between Michigan and Washington marks the end of an era for college football with the playoff expanding to 12 teams in 2024.
For a program like Kentucky that has never finished higher than sixth in the final Associated Press poll, a four-team playoff offered little hope. But could the Wildcats find themselves in contention for the 12-team playoff field?
Mark Stoops’ recent success offers at least some reason to think the Wildcats could factor in that discussion.
How the 12-team playoff format will work
Like now, the playoff committee will have the final say on the teams that make the expanded field. The six highest-ranked conference champions in the committee’s final poll (released the Sunday after conference championship games) will earn automatic bids. The six highest-ranked remaining teams will fill the rest of the field.
There has been discussion about changing that format in the wake of the demise of the Pac-12, but any changes appear on hold until after 2024. That means a nonconference champion might need to be ranked in the top 10 to make the field as two conference champions from outside the remaining Power Four leagues will qualify. There are recent examples of teams in that scenario that were ranked in the top 12 (like Cincinnati and UCF), but this year those automatic bids would have gone to No. 23 Liberty and No. 24 SMU.
The top four teams will receive a first-round bye. The first-round games between the remaining eight teams will be played at the venue of the higher-ranked team’s choosing. In most cases, that will mean an on-campus home game on Dec. 20 or 21.
The current New Year’s Six bowl games will host the second and third rounds. In 2024, the Fiesta Bowl (Dec. 31), Peach Bowl (Jan. 1), Rose Bowl (Jan. 1) and Sugar Bowl (Jan. 1) will host quarterfinals. The Orange Bowl (Jan. 9) and Cotton Bowl (Jan. 10) will host the semifinal matchups. The national championship game will be played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Jan. 20.
Teams will not be reseeded after each round, so the No. 1 seed will face the winner of the first-round game between the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds even if a double-digit seed pulls off a first-round upset in another game.
What Kentucky football needs to do to qualify for the 12-team playoff
After back-to-back disappointing 7-6 seasons, there is little reason to list Kentucky among the preseason contenders for the 2024 playoff, but the ability to quickly remake rosters in the transfer portal era means nothing is off the table. Kentucky followed back-to-back 7-6 seasons in 2016 and 2017 with a 10-win season in 2018 that would have placed the Wildcats in playoff discussion if the field had been 12 teams then.
It’s that 2018 season that offers the most hope for Kentucky reaching the expanded playoff.
A streak-snapping upset of a ranked Florida team in the second week gave Kentucky early attention that it built on during a 5-0 start. An overtime loss at Texas A&M offered a temporary setback, but the Wildcats reached their Nov. 3 game against Georgia ranked ninth by the playoff committee with a chance to secure an SEC East title with a victory.
Kentucky fell short against No. 6 Georgia, but even that loss would not have been enough to knock it out of contention for a 12-team playoff. It was the hangover effect from the Georgia game that resulted in a loss the following week to a Tennessee team that finished the year with a losing record that dropped the Wildcats outside playoff contention, falling from No. 11 to No. 17.
After the Tennessee loss, the committee dropped Kentucky behind Florida, despite the Wildcats’ head-to-head victory over the Gators. Closing the regular season with wins over Middle Tennessee and Louisville was only enough to move Kentucky up to No. 14 in the final committee ranking. Three other teams with 9-3 records (Florida, LSU and Penn State) were ranked ahead of the Wildcats.
Kentucky again won nine games in the regular season in 2021, but the Wildcats were never seriously viewed as a contender by the playoff committee that season. UK appeared at No. 18 with a 6-2 record in the committee’s first top 25 of the season, dropped out of the top 25 the next week after a home loss to Tennessee and did not return to the committee’s ranking until blowing out Louisville in the regular-season finale. A 9-3 Kentucky was ranked No. 22 in the final committee poll.
A 9-3 record might be good enough to secure one of the final at-large bids for the 12-team playoff next season (four teams that finished the regular season at 9-3 were ranked in the top 10 by the playoff committee since 2014), but only if it does not include the type of head-scratching loss that has been too common for Kentucky in recent years and the Wildcats receive help elsewhere. The committee has ranked at least one 10-win teams from a Power Five conference outside its final top 10 in eight of nine years (not including the COVID-shortened 2020 season), but the difficulty of Kentucky’s 2024 schedule makes it hard to imagine a UK team with 10 regular-season wins would be ranked outside the top 10.
In a scenario where Kentucky lost to Georgia and at Texas next season but won the rest of its games, securing likely ranked victories at Ole Miss and at Tennessee, the Wildcats would surely feel good about their playoff chances on Selection Sunday. Kentucky’s last 10-win regular season came in 1977, but the Wildcats have won nine games in the regular season twice since 2018. To have a chance at playoff contention even in a 12-team field, Stoops and company will still need to best the 2018 and 2021 performances.