Vanderbilt Tried to Add a 13th Game to Sneak Into the Playoff: Why It Was Never Going to Work
Vanderbilt is not making the College Football Playoff this year. The Commodores knew it. They tried something wild anyway.
According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Vanderbilt explored adding a 13th regular season game in hopes of catching the CFP selection committee’s attention. The operational and legislative hurdles killed the plan before it could happen, but the fact that they tried it at all tells you everything about how desperate the Commodores were to land in the 12-team field.
Here is the situation. Vanderbilt is 10-2 with both losses coming against ranked SEC opponents. They came in at No. 14 in the latest playoff rankings. They are not playing in the SEC Championship Game, which means they have no meaningful action this weekend. The other top teams in their range are going to play extra games and pad their resumes. Vandy is going to sit at home.
So they pitched a 13th game. The math was simple. Schedule a quality opponent, win convincingly, give the committee one more data point. Even a 13th game that did not count toward the official record could potentially impact the conversation.
The problem is the entire structure of college football fights against this. There is no mechanism for an extra regular season game. NCAA rules cap the schedule. Conference scheduling commitments cannot be unwound on a week’s notice. Vanderbilt would have needed cooperation from a willing opponent, the NCAA, the SEC, and the CFP selection committee. That coalition was never going to form before Sunday’s selection show.
Even if they had pulled it off, the optics would have been ugly. Other teams in the at-large mix would have screamed about competitive fairness. The committee would have been forced to either count the game or formally disregard it, and either choice creates a precedent the sport cannot live with.
So Vandy is stuck. The Commodores will probably finish No. 13 or No. 14, miss the playoff, and watch the SEC fill the field with Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and possibly Ole Miss. That is going to feel cruel given how much progress Clark Lea has made building this program.
Lea has every right to be frustrated. He called out the committee last week for what he sees as bias against his team, and he is not entirely wrong. Vandy beat South Carolina, LSU, Tennessee, and Missouri when all four of those teams were ranked. Those wins look worse now because every one of those teams fell out of the top 25 by season’s end. The committee uses end-of-year ranking when evaluating resumes, which screws over teams that beat opponents during their hot stretches.
The fix is not to add a 13th game. The fix is for the committee to weight wins at the time they happened, not at season’s end. That is a structural change that probably needs to happen, and Vandy’s case is going to become Exhibit A in the offseason debate.
For Vanderbilt right now, this season is still a triumph. They beat a slate of decent teams. They finished with double-digit wins. They are bowl-eligible and they will get a good December game. Clark Lea has proven he can build something sustainable at a school where sustainability was supposed to be impossible.
The playoff snub is going to sting. The CFP committee was always going to lean toward teams with conference championship game appearances and SEC blue-blood brand power. Vandy is on the outside of both groups.
But the 13th-game attempt was a great look at how high the stakes have gotten. Programs are willing to invent solutions out of thin air to get into this field. That tells you the 12-team playoff is working exactly as intended. The teams on the bubble are sweating.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
