Barry Odom is not going to pretend that all of the games on UNLV’s schedule are created equal. He’s not that kind of coach. He’ll tell you like it is, and he’ll tell his team that, too.
So, he’s been telling his players that their schedule sets them up for a potential run to the College Football Playoff. He’s told them this a few times. Back in January, when the Rebels added Syracuse to their nonconference schedule, Odom noted that UNLV would have three games against Power 4 opponents, which could help set them up for a CFP berth if they were to win the Mountain West. He mentioned this to his team again in spring ball as he went over the schedule. He did the same thing on the first day of fall camp, reiterating to his players the importance of improving week to week and taking care of the little things that result in winning football.
“If you do that, the way that things are set up, it presents an opportunity to be in the 12-team Playoff,” Odom said. “Why not be the voice of it? We’re aligned in what we hear, say, think and do — and here are the reasons why we practice the way we do, here’s the outcome that we’re trying to achieve.”
UNLV is 3-0 for the first time since 1984, with wins over Houston and Kansas already on its resume. The Rebels were ranked in the coaches’ poll this week; it’s the first time they’ve ever been ranked in either major college football poll. Meanwhile, Northern Illinois upset Notre Dame in Week 2, and Toledo crushed Mississippi State in Week 3, two monster wins for Mid-American Conference programs. And Memphis, a top contender in the American Athletic Conference, picked up a big win over a reeling Florida State team last weekend as well.
It has been a September to remember for these Group of 5 conferences. And the coaches involved in the upsets say that it’s somewhat by design. These Group of 5-Power 4 matchups feel bigger and like they have more at stake than ever before. Beginning this postseason, the new 12-team CFP will include the five highest-ranked conference champions in the Football Bowl Subdivision. That means the top-ranked Group of 5 champion gets automatic access to the sport’s marquee postseason event for the first time.
“That provides hope for every Group of 5 team in the country,” Toledo coach Jason Candle said. “That’s where it all starts.”
Memphis head coach Ryan Silverfield said he’d guarantee that every single coach in every Group of 5 conference is using that hope — and path to the Playoff — as a motivator. Coaches can use it with their teams, telling them that if they win their league, they’ll have a shot. Coaches can use it in recruiting, pitching prospects on coming to a program like Memphis or Boise State that should nearly always contend for a conference title, because that’s a clearer path to the CFP than going to a middling Power 4 program in a tough league that may never sniff it.
“Anytime you sat down with a recruit, be it in January or spring or the summer, you could say, ‘Listen, if you come here, you have a true chance to go to the Playoff if we win this thing,’” Silverfield said. “You couldn’t say that in the past.”
And now fans aren’t just rooting for underdogs in games like these. They’re analyzing the quality of the wins and comparing them across conferences. The MAC owning two of the best Group of 5 nonconference wins in the country might be a surprise considering the MAC champion only finished atop the Group of 5 one time in the history of the CFP so far. But if Toledo were to win the MAC, a victory over an SEC opponent on the road could and should carry a lot of weight in comparison to other G5 champions’ resumes. Same for UNLV, with its two Power 4 wins and a third opportunity ahead against Syracuse. (Northern Illinois will face North Carolina State at the end of the month as well.)
Most P4-G5 games get scheduled because one team needs a home game and the other needs the paycheck. But if the Group of 5 team can actually win the game to boot, that victory goes just a bit farther in this new era of the CFP, boosting their own strength of schedule in significant ways as well as that of their league. For these teams, the stakes are higher than ever before in nonconference play.
“We were very select and direct in how we wanted to structure our nonconference schedule, and that’s a little bit scary — but if you win them all, then it works out perfectly,” Odom said. “I’m always going to try to put our team in position to achieve the highest goal that there is.
“The champion of the Mountain West should be in that 12-team (bracket) without question. You look at the history of the conference and the teams that have normally won the conference, how good that team is at the end of the year, and then now you combine that with a strength of schedule at Houston, at Kansas, Syracuse here on a Friday night, we go to Oregon State and, oh yes, by the way, you still have to weigh in your conference games. … We know that our margin of error is very, very slim, but I also wouldn’t want it any other way, and we’ve used it as a motivational factor for our team.”
Northern Illinois coach Thomas Hammock said he believes that the upsets we’ve seen so far this year stem from a similar formula we see in March Madness: Veteran teams. These teams have players who have been through the ups and downs of college football, guys who have chips on their shoulders because they aren’t at the blueblood schools and don’t have huge NIL deals. But they are cohesive as a unit, and they develop as a team, just like those experienced mid-major teams in the NCAA tournament who turn into Cinderellas.
“You see those teams with all those high-profile freshmen who go and play a team with some seniors and juniors, and they lose,” Hammock said. “That’s what you’re seeing in college football.”
The best part of the NCAA tournament is the inclusion of the Davids, trying to upset Goliath. If they didn’t have access to the bracket, they wouldn’t be able to give us memorable moments like UMBC’s upset of Virginia or Fairleigh Dickinson’s stunner over Purdue. Or the many double-digit seed upsets we see annually.
The new 12-team College Football Playoff may not give us upsets every December, and the top-ranked Group of 5 champion might always be slotted in as the No. 12 seed, which would match them up against a No. 5 seed that will likely be the second-best team in the SEC or Big Ten on an annual basis. But it’s not only about what happens after the CFP starts. Just having that seat at the table is already changing the sport for the better for these Group of 5 teams and fans of the sport as a whole. It’s already meant more.
“You can feel it,” Odom said. “We know that every week that we win, then our opportunities grow, and the prize at the end of the year becomes a little bit bigger. We certainly know and respect that we’ve got a beast of a schedule coming up and things that we have to do every single week to have a chance to stay in the race. Ultimately, we’ve got to win our conference championship, and then anything that we do on top of that will help our brand and improve the opportunity and the chance for us to be one of those 12 teams.”
