I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to National Championship futures, there hasn’t been much money to be made in the last 10 years or so. The big upsets just haven’t been there because of the way the old BCS system worked.

The biggest long shot of the past 10 years was probably Auburn. But if you were paying attention to a certain trend, maybe they weren’t really that big of a long shot after all.

TOP TEN RECRUITING – The common trend among National Champions

A requirement among all the National Champions since we went to the BCS system has been recruiting at an elite level. With the exception of longshot Oklahoma in 2000, every team who has won a national title in the BCS era has had at least two top ten recruiting classes in the previous four cycles.

There are 11 teams who qualify for this metric in 2015, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Auburn, USC, Michigan, Ohio State and Florida State.

Seven of these eleven teams are from the SEC. That’s why it’s no coincidence that the SEC has dominated college football for the past decade.

I used to say that if we ever got a football program that employs the same methods of hard work, resources and serious dedication to recruiting as they do in the SEC, somebody else will start winning National Championships.

This is exactly what has happened in the past two years with Jimbo Fisher and FSU, who learned many of the same methods of recruiting from his ex-boss Nick Saban.

And Urban Meyer, who has brought his SEC style of recruiting to Ohio State. Which means he’s made some serious recruiting inroads into the south and Texas. So for all practical purposes Ohio State has become the SEC of the north.

Should the new Playoff format change the way we handicap futures?

Does the new 4-team playoff format potentially give a non-blue blood school a chance to make a run and get in the dance? 

Maybe.

However, beating two potential blue blood schools to win the National Championship is another story, as Oregon found out in the inaugural playoff. And despite making a name for themselves in recent years, Oregon is NOT one of the blue bloods of college football.

They are not a consistent top 10 recruiting program, which for me is the first requirement of being called a true blue blood of college football.

The only scenario where I can see a non-blue blood team winning the national title is if we have a year in which all of the stars align and most of the true power programs have down years or rebuilding seasons.

I look at this new college football playoff format the same way I do the 64 team NCAA basketball tournament. No matter how many teams are in it, it’s still the blue blood basketball teams that end up winning it every year.

In college football they are almost always the only teams who have the combination of talent, depth and endurance to make it through a 15 game schedule. There are not many non-blue blood schools out there that have that kind of manpower. 

I breakdown which of the 11 teams are best qualified to win this year and list my two favorite “value” plays here at REAL CLEAR SPORTS.

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