To close out hour three of Ready or Mott, Thomas Mott explained why the College Football Playoff expanding to a twelve-team format would be a win win across the board for everybody. Thursday news broke that the College Football Playoff management committee will meet next week to consider expanding the current four-team playoff format to a new twelve-team format. The new College Football Playoff format as stated would include twelve teams, but it would not include automatic bids for conference champions. However, the new format would consist of a bracket featuring the six highest ranked conference champions, and the six highest ranked non conference champions, all rankings determined by the College Football Playoff Committee of course. While Thomas feels the College Football Playoff Committee has been “annoying” during most of their tenure, he says “what they’re doing has to be given credit.”
Mott does think the College Football Playoff committee has been better than the BCS rankings and has gotten everything right “for the most part” since they came into effect in 2014, but Thomas definitely thinks this is the committee’s best move to date. Thomas says the biggest upside to having a twelve team playoff opposed to four is the fact that “you are going to get some really exciting matchups.” Thomas is also happy about the fact that the potential new format could remove some “random bowl games” saying “I’m tired of random bowl games, like if it’s not a College Football Playoff or at least a New Year’s Six I really don’t care.” Mott also makes the great point of while teams will have some bowl games taken away from them, and teams like bowl games because it’s something to play for, Thomas says “I think everybody inside the top twenty-five would much rather have a chance at going to a first round, because there will be three round now, College Football Playoff Game and have a chance to win.” Now, Thomas does answer to the people who might be against this potential expansion , i.e. Alabama and Clemson alumni, saying “Yes you have to play one extra game, but you’re probably going to be playing a lesser team anyway.” The current four team College Football Playoff format has been fun, but Thomas made a great comparison to what the College Football Playoff is turning into comparing the Playoff to the four straight NBA Finals matchups between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors saying “it was really fun...but it got old.” Seeing the same combination between Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Oklahoma/Notre Dame has been really fun, but it has indeed gotten old. Now, with a twelve team format teams like Georgia, Wisconsin, Baylor, and company can at least have a chance to make a run at a championship instead of playing in a bowl game they are honestly not all that excited for.
The only thing people have to be upset about Thomas says “is the fact that they have to wait until 2023 to see it.” This is a refreshing change that College Football needed, and if the College Football Playoff management committee agrees on this model and presents to the presidents and chancellors of the CFP committee on June 22nd, and they agree upon it and have it implemented by the commissioners, then College Football will be a lot better because of it. The PAC-12 has not had a team represent them in the Playoff since the 2016-17 playoff when Washington was a Playoff team, and this expansion of the playoffs would almost guarantee a team from each Power Five conference in the Playoff every year, and not to mention six other teams, this change would bring in so many more college football audiences driving up viewership, sponsorships, money, and bottom lines. Basically, this twelve-team College Football Playoff is a no brainer because not only are the fans getting more meaningful College Football that could include their team, but the College Football Playoff would also open themselves to make so much more money, and that sounds like a win-win to me.