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This is a great day for the Potato. Our first ever breakdown analysis. If you enjoyed this – please forward it to a friend or two and ask them to subscribe!

Thought it was time to take a look at the rankings for the past 10 years with the new big change coming to college football with a 12-team playoff. (This was written before the Michigan scandal).

The one thing that makes college football better than every other sport is the regular season means something. Every game counts. Every game is a quasi-playoff game, and the bigger the playoffs get from the BCS 2, to CFP 4, to soon CFP 12 the less and less important the regular season will be. And, that is a pure shame.

Going to 12 is a mistake, it’s just way too many teams, 8 is really the magic sweet spot to get the true teams that deserve to be in the playoffs, and can actually win a title + keep the regular season super meaningful.

So, with this new 12 team layout – what teams are going to benefit the most and what other things will we learn? A lot!

First, I went thru the rankings from the last 10 years (excluding Covid year) and took the rankings from the last week of the regular season (after conference championships) but before the bowl game.

Then, if you were in the top 4, you got “3” points and if in the top 12 (5-12), you got “1”. The total of this “Super System” tells us who has been the best teams over the past 10 years.

Not surprisingly, the numbers come out to what you’d expect but we learn a lot of things too. So, what schools benefit the most?

1. No major surprise here really… Penn St. – the ultimate 3rd place team in the Big 10. Good enough to be in the top 12, but not ever the top 4 (can’t beat OSU/Michigan enough). Penn St. is in a class of their own as 5 times they would make the playoffs in this new format, but the current way 0!

2. Who next… in a shocker, Ohio State! But in a totally different way. If the Buckeyes aren’t making the top 4, they are basically automatically making the top 12. They are auto-dancing now every year – they would be in the tourney an extra 5 times. Note: the one year they were banned so it would be 5 and 5.

3. Then the “top 20” type teams benefit the most – like a Wisconsin (3) or Washington (4) of the world. Teams that really have little chance being in the top 4 typically, but are always very solid and typically end up in that 10-15 range. There was also Baylor, USC (surprisingly), Utah, and Stanford. Notice all the Pac 12 teams…

4. The soon-to-be-gone Pac 12 ironically will benefit the most with the new system! All the Pac 12 schools would get in a ton more as they almost always got left out of the current top 4 style, but were in the top 12.

5. Alabama is basically like Ohio State and automatically dancing. They would have made it 9/10 with the only 1 missing they were ranked 13. In some ways it “hurts” them as no one else comes close to making the top 4 as much.

6. The new 12 will open it up to a lot more teams. 39 teams! made the top 12 over the past 10 years. That feels like a lot! That’s why casual fans (not diehards) will like it – but these teams really have little to no chance of actually winning it all – they feel like 8 seeds in March Madness.

7. Only 10 schools have been in the top 4 twice. I’d take those for the most part as the elite teams in college football right now.

8. And, who’s not on this list at all!? Texas – are you kidding me? Texas hasn’t been in the top 12 in 10 years! That’s incredibly… pathetic. Especially with the recruiting they do.

MICHIGAN (6-1-1): On bye… good thing right now.

MORTAL LOCK (4-4 so far): Crushed by an outrageous call by the refs in the Iowa game. Yep, only me and my mortal lock! Give me UNC -11 against Georgia Tech, like Nebraska -2.5 at home against Purdue, too.