The G6 was never allowed to compound

David Ubben crunched the numbers for The Athletic this week and found something worth sitting with: If the College Football Playoff had started with 24 teams in 2014, 80 different programs would have qualified over 12 seasons. Big Ten deputy commissioner Kerry Kenny dropped the stat at a media session Tuesday. Ubben checked his work. He’s right.

But here’s the number that didn’t make the headline: 21 of those 80 programs came from the Group of 6.

Twenty-one programs. Boise State, Cincinnati and Houston three times each. Louisiana, Memphis, Navy, Temple, Tulane and UCF twice each. Appalachian State, Army, Coastal Carolina, Fresno State, James Madison, Liberty, San Diego State, San Jose State, Troy, Tulsa, UNLV and Western Michigan once apiece.

That’s not a footnote. That’s more than a quarter of the 80 schools that would have filled 288 bracket slots over 12 seasons. And every one of those programs was denied the chance to build on it.

Access compounds. That’s the point.

Ohio State would have made all 12 fields. Alabama would have made all 12. Each appearance feeds the next — recruiting gets easier, NIL money flows in, facilities get upgraded, the brand grows, the next class is even better. That’s not luck. That’s compounding. And the playoff is the engine.

The G6 never got to start the engine.

Boise State would have made three 24-team fields. Three home playoff games in Boise. Three national TV windows. Three recruiting cycles where a coach could tell a four-star kid, “We were in the playoff last year. We’ll be there again.” What does Boise State look like today with a decade of that momentum? We don’t know. They never got the chance.

Cincinnati entered the 2021 CFP Semifinal undefeated, became the first Group of 5 program to crack the four-team field and lost to Alabama in the Cotton Bowl. One appearance. One shot. They’d have had three in a 24-team world. But by then, they’d already been absorbed into the Big 12 — not because the Big 12 wanted them, but because Texas and Oklahoma left for the SEC and the conference needed replacement parts.

That’s the pattern.

The four responses

Every time a G6 program builds something real, the power structure responds the same way. It has four moves.

1. Change the rules.

The BCS kept G6 programs out entirely — a computer and a poll decided who played for the title, and the math was designed for programs with brand equity and strength of schedule advantages baked into the system. The four-team playoff was a glass ceiling with a view. The 12-team bracket added a guaranteed bid, then the conversation immediately shifted to auto-qualifying power conferences and revenue splits that keep G6 programs collecting fractions.

Every expansion has come with a catch. The access grows. The gap in what that access is worth grows faster.

2. Poach the coaches.

This is the most reliable move, and it works every time.

Chris Petersen went 92-12 at Boise State, won two Fiesta Bowls and turned a program on a blue field into a national brand. Washington took him in 2013.

Scott Frost went 13-0 at UCF and beat Auburn in the Peach Bowl. Nebraska hired him the same day UCF won the AAC Championship — hours after the game. He coached the bowl game as a lame duck.

Billy Napier went 40-12 at Louisiana, won two Sun Belt championships and was named Sun Belt Coach of the Year twice. Florida took him after 2021.

Curt Cignetti built James Madison into an FBS force during their transition years. Indiana hired him — and 13 JMU players followed. The Hoosiers’ national championship team was built on players Cignetti recruited to Harrisonburg. They built it at JMU. They won it wearing someone else’s jersey. His successor, Bob Chesney, won the Sun Belt title and coached the Dukes in the CFP first round — as a lame duck. UCLA had hired him less than 24 hours after the championship game.

Luke Fickell went 57-18 at Cincinnati and took the Bearcats to the CFP as the first G5 team ever selected. Wisconsin took him during the 2022 season.

Jon Sumrall went 23-4 at Troy with back-to-back Sun Belt championships, then went 20-7 in two seasons at Tulane. Florida hired him on November 30, 2025 — six-year, $44.7 million deal. Sumrall coached Tulane’s AAC Championship win five days later, then coached the Green Wave in the CFP first round against Ole Miss. A lame duck on the biggest stage the program had ever reached.

Eli Drinkwitz went 12-1 at App State in his only season, won the Sun Belt Championship and left for Missouri before the confetti dried.

Mike Norvell went 38-15 at Memphis over four seasons, won the AAC Championship in 2019 and left for Florida State.

Willie Fritz built Tulane into an AAC champ that beat USC in the Cotton Bowl. He stayed — but eventually couldn’t say no to the Big 12 money and recruiting advantages at Houston.

That’s ten coaches in roughly a decade. Ten programs that had momentum. Ten programs that started over.

The G6 doesn’t have a coaching pipeline. It has a coaching conveyor belt — and it only moves in one direction.

3. Poach the players.

The transfer portal made it frictionless, but it was always happening. A G6 program develops a quarterback, a pass rusher, a corner — and a Power 4 program offers more money, more exposure, a bigger stage. The portal just removed the friction.

Cignetti didn’t just leave JMU. He took the team with him. But that’s the extreme version. The everyday version is quieter and just as corrosive. Every April, the best players at G6 programs enter the portal and move up. The programs that developed them get nothing — no transfer fee, no compensation, no draft pick. Just a roster hole and a recruiting cycle that starts over.

The real question isn’t whether Power 4 programs can take whoever they want. Of course they can. The question is whether coaches and players would feel they needed to jump if the G6 had real access. Would a coach feel like he had to leave for the Power 4 if he believed a national title was possible where he was? Would a player enter the portal if his program had playoff revenue, NIL infrastructure and a recruiting pitch built on a decade of postseason access? The Power 4 will always be a bigger stage. But would the gap feel so wide if access were real? We’ll never know — because access was never real.

4. If they have to, absorb them.

Cincinnati, Houston and UCF — three programs with a combined eight hypothetical playoff appearances on Ubben’s list — were pulled into the Big 12 in 2023. Not because the Big 12 wanted to reward their success. Because Texas and Oklahoma left for the SEC and the conference needed warm bodies with TV markets. The Big 12 voted to add them less than two months after Texas and Oklahoma announced their departure. The timing tells you everything.

SMU went to the ACC in 2024 — alongside Stanford and Cal — after the Pac-12 collapsed. The ACC grabbed Cal and Stanford to shore up its footprint, and SMU tagged along because the conference wanted mid-country flags and SMU was so desperate for the Power label that it basically bought its way in — agreeing to forgo television revenue distributions for years as the price of admission.

These weren’t promotions. They were patches. And the programs left behind in the G6 started the cycle over again with less.

The question nobody’s asking

The Athletic’s piece asks what a 24-team field would have looked like. That’s the right data. But the right question is different.

What would those 21 G6 programs look like today if they’d had 12 years of playoff access?

What does Troy’s recruiting class look like if they’d hosted a playoff game in 2022 after going 12-2 and winning the Sun Belt? What does Louisiana’s NIL operation look like if Napier had three playoff appearances to sell? What does Boise State’s conference negotiating power look like with a decade of playoff revenue?

We don’t know. The sport made sure we’d never find out.

The G6 was never allowed to compound. And that’s not an accident. It’s a business model.

And now you understand why so many voices on the Power 4 side are pushing for a separate G6 playoff. Ubben’s numbers make the math plain: more than a quarter of the 80 programs that would have filled those 288 bracket slots came from the Group of 6. Twenty-one programs. Thirty total appearances. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a threat.

Can’t let them compound. Can’t let them in the room. And if the room gets bigger, build a different room and send them there.

This story references data and analysis from David Ubben’s reporting in The Athletic: “Who would have made a 24-team field in the College Football Playoff era? Try 80 different teams.” Full credit to Ubben and The Athletic for the original research.