Historical counterfactual · December 8, 2024 cutoff · Reviewed October 15, 2026
Six more places. A case to prove for each.
Bracket arithmetic explains how eighteen works. It does not establish that eighteen is the right field size. Inspect the additional entrants, the selection assumptions and the bowl opportunities they leave behind.
New protected comparison: Iowa State stays and LSU remains outside.
The paired-snapshot NRR extension now applies pre-title protection in both 2024 and 2025. Both protected NRR fields match the committee fields, with different benefits and opening matchups. The final-only sensitivity below is preserved as a separate experiment; it is not the proposal’s protected NRR field.
The 8–4 objection cannot be answered by the number eighteen alone.
The committee-order 2024 reconstruction adds three 9–3 teams, two 10–2 teams and one 10–3 team. None was 8–4. But a separate final-order-only NRR sensitivity includes 8–4 LSU instead of Iowa State. That experiment omits pre-title berth protection and is not the proposal’s adopted field. It shows why the ranking method and protection policy must be specified together before making an eligibility claim.
Judge the six additions using selection-date evidence.
The primary field uses the final committee order, five fixed selected champions and eighteen places. Its 2024 membership matches the existing protected reconstruction. All twelve actual entrants remain; none of the six additions is a selected champion. The added places go to three SEC, two Big 12 and one ACC teams. This season does not demonstrate additional champion access.
| Entrant · record | Wins over selection Top 25 / losses | Path and displaced opportunity |
|---|---|---|
| No. 11 Alabama9-3 · SEC | Georgia (2), South Carolina (15), Missouri (19)Losses: Oklahoma, Vanderbilt, Tennessee | 5 wins to title · up to 17 season gamesReliaQuest Bowl; also in final-order 16-place check |
| No. 13 Miami10-2 · ACC | No selection Top 25 winsLosses: Syracuse, Georgia Tech | 5 wins to title · up to 17 season gamesPop-Tarts Bowl; also in final-order 16-place check |
| No. 14 Ole Miss9-3 · SEC | Georgia (2), South Carolina (15)Losses: Kentucky, Florida, LSU | 5 wins to title · up to 17 season gamesGator Bowl; also in final-order 16-place check |
| No. 15 South Carolina9-3 · SEC | Clemson (16), Missouri (19)Losses: Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama | 5 wins to title · up to 17 season gamesCitrus Bowl; also in final-order 16-place check |
| No. 17 BYU10-2 · Big 12 | SMU (10)Losses: Kansas, Arizona State | 5 wins to title · up to 17 season gamesAlamo Bowl; one of the last two places beyond that check |
| No. 18 Iowa State10-3 · Big 12 | No selection Top 25 winsLosses: Kansas, Texas Tech, Arizona State | 5 wins to title · up to 18 season gamesPop-Tarts Bowl; one of the last two places beyond that check |
Miami and Iowa State had no wins over the selection Top 25. That is one limited résumé measure, not a full schedule evaluation or proof they were weak. All six require five postseason wins to win this proposed title; Iowa State could reach eighteen total games because it already played a conference championship.
Best-record wins and source discipline
Alabama: Georgia (11-2); South Carolina (9-3). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
Miami: Duke (9-3); Louisville (8-4). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
Ole Miss: Georgia (11-2); South Carolina (9-3). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
South Carolina: Clemson (10-3); Missouri (9-3). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
BYU: SMU (11-2); Kansas State (8-4). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
Iowa State: Kansas State (8-4); Iowa (8-4). These are the highest-record defeated opponents at selection, not a predictive strength rating.
Official selection-day records · Pre-title and final committee order · Complete benefit and calendar reconstruction. Actual bowl destinations are used only to identify later displacement; their results do not judge eligibility.
The marginal team depends on the selection method.
Hold the same five champions fixed: Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, Arizona State, Clemson. Fill remaining places in each declared final order. These comparisons isolate membership; they do not define complete alternative brackets or allocate their benefits.
| Check | Result | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Committee order · 18 | Six additions; BYU and Iowa State occupy the last two places. | Same membership as the protected 2024 reconstruction. Texas’s protected double bye still changes entry, not its underlying rank. |
| Committee order · 16 | Alabama, Miami, Ole Miss and South Carolina are the four additions to the actual twelve. | A final-order membership check only. It does not carry over pre-title guarantees or define a 16-team bracket; do not treat it as an adopted policy. |
| Retrospective NRR order · 18, without pre-title protection | LSU replaces Iowa State; seventeen of eighteen members match. | The frozen archive’s LSU record is 8–4, independently consistent with LSU’s schedule through November 30. The later bowl win is excluded. |
Protection matters: Iowa State entered its title game at committee No. 16 and finished No. 18. The proposal’s retained-berth rule protects its place in the existing reconstruction. The NRR sensitivity deliberately removes that mechanism; applying a coherent NRR protection policy would also require the corresponding pre-title NRR order. A hybrid of committee protection and final NRR order has not been adopted or validated here.
The NRR archive was produced retrospectively. A selection-date game cutoff does not make it a model published in December 2024 or an unused holdout. This comparison does not establish that NRR selects a better field. No weights or playoff rules changed.
Inspect all field memberships
Actual twelve: Oregon · Georgia · Texas · Penn State · Notre Dame · Ohio State · Tennessee · Indiana · Boise State · SMU · Arizona State · Clemson
Committee sixteen: Oregon · Georgia · Texas · Penn State · Notre Dame · Ohio State · Tennessee · Indiana · Boise State · SMU · Alabama · Arizona State · Miami · Ole Miss · South Carolina · Clemson
Committee eighteen: Oregon · Georgia · Texas · Penn State · Notre Dame · Ohio State · Tennessee · Indiana · Boise State · SMU · Alabama · Arizona State · Miami · Ole Miss · South Carolina · Clemson · BYU · Iowa State
NRR eighteen without pre-title protection: Oregon · Georgia · Texas · Notre Dame · Ohio State · Penn State · Indiana · Arizona State · Tennessee · SMU · Boise State · South Carolina · Alabama · BYU · Ole Miss · Clemson · Miami · LSU
Five bowls lose six identifiable participants.
This is the departure ledger for the committee-order eighteen-team case. It measures participants moving into the CFP, not games canceled or revenue lost. The official 2024–25 bowl schedule identifies the actual pairings.
| Bowl | Actual participants | Participants moving to CFP |
|---|---|---|
| ReliaQuest | Alabama – Michigan | Alabama |
| Pop-Tarts | Miami – Iowa State | Miami, Iowa State |
| Gator | Ole Miss – Duke | Ole Miss |
| Citrus | South Carolina – Illinois | South Carolina |
| Alamo | BYU – Colorado | BYU |
The Alamo loses BYU while Colorado remains outside this CFP. Both Pop-Tarts participants move. A 16-place final-order check would leave BYU and Iowa State available; it would still remove Miami from Pop-Tarts. Under the unprotected NRR sensitivity, Iowa State remains available and LSU instead leaves the Texas Bowl. These are available-team changes, not negotiated replacement matchups.
The separate National Tournament’s non-Power Four eligibility does not itself remove the listed Power Four bowl partners. The proposed smaller optional bowl tier still needs selection rights, willing teams, rights holders, operating budgets and organizer agreement. Retaining a bowl name cannot guarantee the same event quality, attendance or tradition.
Keep eighteen as a proposal to test, not a demonstrated optimum.
- Merit: expand the same selection-date audit to more seasons and compare marginal entrants with excluded teams under declared rules. Decide whether record floors belong in policy before choosing them to favor a result.
- Protection: use coherent pre-title and final ranking inputs. The canonical retained-berth rule keeps Virginia in the 2025 historical committee case; a final-rank floor would change policy. The source audit and input specification verify that distinction. The paired NRR comparison now verifies both seasons; a general capacity-conflict rule and more seasons remain open.
- Burden and access: eighteen-game paths require medical and athlete review plus funded host and travel plans. A valid bracket is not feasibility certification.
- Bowls and demand: obtain actual replacement inventory and commercial terms. Test attention separately from spending; the demand-data audit does not yet support an effect estimate.
Consistently thin marginal résumés, stronger excluded teams under agreed criteria, unacceptable athlete burden or infeasible bowl/host commitments would count against the design. This one-season comparison does not establish how often any of those occurs. It is not evidence that every added team deserves a title chance.
Reproduce the membership and displacement checks
Run node scripts/audit-field-tradeoffs.mjs then node --test tests/demand-field-study.test.mjs tests/playoff-comparison.test.mjs in the retained site source. The download records both input hashes. Existing benefit allocation is preserved; the additional final-order membership checks are separately labeled.