Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier is among a growing number of Group of 5 officials that favor adding a playoff specifically for the Group of 5 schools.
"It's time to have a realistic conversation about creating a playoff for the Group of 5," Frazier told ESPN. "Why not?"
It's been 32 years since a non-Power 5 team won a national championship (BYU in 1984) and it likely will never happen again in the current format. In the first three years of the College Football Playoff, a Group of 5 team has never ranked higher than No. 13 (Memphis in the 2015 initial rankings) by the CFB Playoff selection committee.
"There is absolutely no ability for us (teams in the Group of 5) to be in that national title conversation," Frazier said. "That's just reality. Anyone that says we can: that's a flat-out lie."
The Group of 5 consists of schools from the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences along with independents BYU, Army and UMass.
Frazier said he believes a Group of 5 playoff could be financially rewarding to those schools. NBC, CBS and ESPN have interest in televising a Group of 5 playoff, an industry source said.
