Ohio State Football’s Ryan Day Sounds Off on CFP

The Ohio State Buckeyes won the first 12-team College Football Playoff, taking down the Notre Dame Fighting Irish after enduring one of the most difficult paths to get to the prestigious event. Ohio State had to knock off two SEC teams (Texas and Tennessee) and the then-undefeated Oregon Ducks, all of which had some of the most dynamic playmakers in college football.

On top of those games, the Buckeyes had to play an incredibly difficult regular season Big Ten schedule. While their non-conference resume did get brought up often as a weak point for the program, they had to take on Penn State, Oregon and Indiana all throughout the regular season. The Big Ten has continued to expand over the last several seasons and now holds some strong CFP contenders.

That's why Ryan Day believes the conference should get four automatic bids into the playoffs. He recently sat down with ESPN's Adam Rittenberg and went over the changing landscape of the College Football Playoff.

"We're in the Big Ten, and we have 18 teams and some of the best programs in the country. I feel like we deserve at least four automatic qualifiers," Day said.

Day has a point as well. With almost 20 programs, the Buckeyes have to play in a conference that holds some of the best teams in the country, while others like Arizona State, Clemson, or smaller programs like James Madison could run the table in significantly weaker conferences. The record doesn't always paint the right picture, but that isn't necessarily the point that Day is even trying to make here.

Here's a key point in why Day believes in the automatic bids.

"Day added that a CFP model with more automatic spots will benefit the sport because it will incentivize stronger nonconference scheduling, especially given the discrepancies in conference scheduling models," Rittenberg wrote.

There is support for the 5+11 CFP model, where there are 11 at-large spots and the top five conference champions get into the playoff, but that would expand it to 16 teams, diluting the necessary talent to actually be a CFP contender.

Nonetheless, Day has a strong case, and there will be many changes in the coming years to refine the CFP format.