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Assessing the 12-Team College Football Playoff Format
SportsGrid
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12/31/2024
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Sports
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00:00
The question is, though, because, you know, you wrote about how the maybe the format the 12 team
00:04
format needs to be reassessed and fixed and and just how ugly it was. Can all be forgiven now
00:12
in this quarterfinal round if we get four good games? What what is it ultimately due to the
00:17
committee and to the sport where we're at expanding from 4 to 12? Well, I think in some ways if we had
00:23
four good games, it would it would affirm the decisions that the committee and and the college
00:30
football playoff at large made relative to the construction of the playoff. And I know they have
00:35
input from conference commissioners and such. I love the conference college football playoff
00:41
being 12 teams. I think that it absolutely is essential. I don't think there's any other word
00:47
essential that there be automatic qualification for the five highest ranked conference champions.
00:54
It's not a real playoff without that. But there's no rule that says and certainly this doesn't
00:59
apply in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. There's no rule. It says you have to get an
01:04
advantage seed because you want a conference. Lots of teams get number one seeds in the NCAA
01:09
tournament without winning their conferences, either regular season or the tournament. That
01:15
happened with Tennessee in twenty nineteen pit in 2009 off the top of my head. Examples
01:20
won neither their regular season or conference championships, but were judged to be one of the
01:24
four best teams. So I don't think that seeding Boise State and Arizona State into the quarter
01:31
finals was the right call. Everything else they did was great. But doing that disadvantaged the
01:37
first round, made it made it. So there were more mismatches. I mean, Indiana versus Boise State
01:43
might have been a great game, but we'll never know. And you look in the quarter finals and
01:48
you've got Ohio State going in as a favorite against the team that's with an undefeated
01:53
record and was the number one overall seed in the tournament. That doesn't seem right.
01:56
That seems like there's a mismatch in seeding there. And then you have double digit seed
02:02
favorites that had to play in the in the first round and are now playing against quarterfinal
02:09
opponents that got seeds. So I think the same about the NFL. I mean, the fact that either the
02:15
Vikings or the Lions are going to have to go on the road and play against an eight or nine win
02:19
team in a couple of weeks is ridiculous. But I think that the college football playoff should
02:24
have followed the example of the superior postseason. And that's the NCAA tournament,
02:29
not the NFL playoffs. Do you think the expanded format really kind of further waters down these
02:37
bowl games? Like people should have and maybe people were, but not to the degree that ordinarily
02:42
they would be. You should have been elated to have like New Year's Eve and we've got Alabama
02:48
against Michigan. I know these two schools, these programs weren't this year what they have been
02:52
historically. Certainly it wasn't the Rose Bowl last year and seeing them this year.
02:57
And then you sprinkle, you know, all around college football saying that, all right, well,
03:00
how do I if I'm a better, how do I even wager on this game knowing that all the coach left
03:04
or all the coordinators have left? Oh, the best players have sat out because they've declared for
03:09
the NFL drafter. Oh, look how many guys aren't playing because they're in the transfer portal
03:13
to where it's like, it feels like you have JV teams out there, high school teams out there.
03:17
I know that wasn't the case specifically with Alabama, Michigan, but do these games just feel
03:22
that much less important? I think, I think that's fair to say they're important to the schools
03:29
that have the teams in the games. If you're a Pitt fan, you wanted to see them beat Toledo
03:36
or you're an Alabama fan, you wanted to see them beat Michigan. I think it matters to them and it
03:41
gives networks good programming that people watch because they like football. And it is something
03:48
to wager on, although it is a challenge to figure out how teams are going to perform
03:53
when they are not whole. And we, but that's been a problem really in college football,
04:00
starting probably 20 years ago when coaches started taking jobs and leaving before the
04:05
bowl games, that's probably when it began. I remember specifically when Brian Kelly left
04:09
Cincinnati with an undefeated team to go take the Notre Dame job. That was sort of the apotheosis of
04:16
that particular practice. And then you started to see players opt out and then you started to
04:20
see the transfer portal have an impact as well. So all of that has watered the bowl games down a
04:26
bit. But I've always said, Adam, that the reality is that the people who claim that the bowls have
04:33
been good for college football aren't telling the truth. The bowls have always been good for the
04:38
bowls. And that's really all, that's all the further it goes. If you're a player in one of
04:42
those games, you got a nice trip and maybe a good swag bag, but the games never were consequential
04:49
beyond whatever game was designated as the national championship game in that particular year.
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