The board of managers for the College Football Playoff unanimously voted in favor to expand the CFP to 12 teams by 2026, but as soon as 2024. In this approved format, the six highest-ranked conference champions will automatically qualify and the next six highest-ranked programs will qualify. Additionally, the top four seeds will have a first-round bye and the other eight teams will play at the higher seed's home stadium.
The news spread across the college football world like wildfire and the reactions were all over the place, with many celebrating the news while others were disappointed. College Football Gametime discussed the decision on Saturday morning and particularly why it may not be the best decision for the sport.
The discrepancy in talent throughout college football is glaring. Sure, the old format was unfair to the teams, but nothing is truly "fair" about college football as it was. The elite schools pool the talent and they will still compete for the titles.
"I believe in the fact that 'any given Sunday', but any given Saturday is a lot different," Randy McMichael said on Saturday morning. "It's just a different talent level and you're going to be flying all over the country playing, not at a neutral site, but at the team's home stadium. I just don't see the use to it."
More teams will make it, but how much will this actually change the outcome? Probably not all that much, and the games will be all the more lopsided. The reality is that the semifinal matchups were already that way. Only three games since 2014 have been within one score and the average margin of victory is a whopping 21 points per game.
Supporters of this change will point to the Rose Bowl as evidence that the games could be more exciting, but that game never would have happened with this format. Instead, Utah would have traveled to Athens to play the Georgia Bulldogs in a matchup that would likely be an R-rated outcome.
Fans are celebrating that this means that different teams will be given opportunities to play in the playoff, but it will likely be many of the usual suspects. Even though 12 teams are going to be there, that doesn't mean that teams like UAB or UCF would get the opportunity as it would likely defer to Power 5 teams. This doesn't open the door for a flurry of smaller programs as much as it guarantees the presence of the blue-blood programs.
"I don't think it's too hard to think that the SEC couldn't have three, possibly four to five teams get it," Chris Goforth said. "Like it or not the Big 10 and the SEC have separated themselves from everybody else both in terms of money and in terms of competition and quality."
The additional implication is that the regular season (and the crown jewel of the sport, mind you) falls by the wayside. Jon Chuckery agreed:
"The reality is that there are going to be a lot of regular season games that don't have as much on the line now. Say you have two top-tier teams play later on in the season," he continued. "The loser of that game is not going to get penalized. They may drop a few spots in the poll, but they're not knocked out of the playoffs by any stretch of the imagination."
When there were four teams vying for a slot, having two losses was a kiss of the death. Now, not so much. Take the 2020 Georgia Bulldogs as an example: this team lost its two most important games (Alabama and Florida) and was rightfully omitted from the playoff. That wouldn't be the case anymore. In this new era of college football, losses will matter less.
More football in December will be fun, sure, and the expansion was imminent, but that doesn't make it good for college football.
