Assessing the 12-Team College Football Playoff Format

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00:00The question is, though, because, you know, you wrote about how the maybe the format the 12 team

00:04format needs to be reassessed and fixed and and just how ugly it was. Can all be forgiven now

00:12in this quarterfinal round if we get four good games? What what is it ultimately due to the

00:17committee and to the sport where we're at expanding from 4 to 12? Well, I think in some ways if we had

00:23four good games, it would it would affirm the decisions that the committee and and the college

00:30football playoff at large made relative to the construction of the playoff. And I know they have

00:35input from conference commissioners and such. I love the conference college football playoff

00:41being 12 teams. I think that it absolutely is essential. I don't think there's any other word

00:47essential that there be automatic qualification for the five highest ranked conference champions.

00:54It's not a real playoff without that. But there's no rule that says and certainly this doesn't

00:59apply in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. There's no rule. It says you have to get an

01:04advantage seed because you want a conference. Lots of teams get number one seeds in the NCAA

01:09tournament without winning their conferences, either regular season or the tournament. That

01:15happened with Tennessee in twenty nineteen pit in 2009 off the top of my head. Examples

01:20won neither their regular season or conference championships, but were judged to be one of the

01:24four best teams. So I don't think that seeding Boise State and Arizona State into the quarter

01:31finals was the right call. Everything else they did was great. But doing that disadvantaged the

01:37first round, made it made it. So there were more mismatches. I mean, Indiana versus Boise State

01:43might have been a great game, but we'll never know. And you look in the quarter finals and

01:48you've got Ohio State going in as a favorite against the team that's with an undefeated

01:53record and was the number one overall seed in the tournament. That doesn't seem right.

01:56That seems like there's a mismatch in seeding there. And then you have double digit seed

02:02favorites that had to play in the in the first round and are now playing against quarterfinal

02:09opponents that got seeds. So I think the same about the NFL. I mean, the fact that either the

02:15Vikings or the Lions are going to have to go on the road and play against an eight or nine win

02:19team in a couple of weeks is ridiculous. But I think that the college football playoff should

02:24have followed the example of the superior postseason. And that's the NCAA tournament,

02:29not the NFL playoffs. Do you think the expanded format really kind of further waters down these

02:37bowl games? Like people should have and maybe people were, but not to the degree that ordinarily

02:42they would be. You should have been elated to have like New Year's Eve and we've got Alabama

02:48against Michigan. I know these two schools, these programs weren't this year what they have been

02:52historically. Certainly it wasn't the Rose Bowl last year and seeing them this year.

02:57And then you sprinkle, you know, all around college football saying that, all right, well,

03:00how do I if I'm a better, how do I even wager on this game knowing that all the coach left

03:04or all the coordinators have left? Oh, the best players have sat out because they've declared for

03:09the NFL drafter. Oh, look how many guys aren't playing because they're in the transfer portal

03:13to where it's like, it feels like you have JV teams out there, high school teams out there.

03:17I know that wasn't the case specifically with Alabama, Michigan, but do these games just feel

03:22that much less important? I think, I think that's fair to say they're important to the schools

03:29that have the teams in the games. If you're a Pitt fan, you wanted to see them beat Toledo

03:36or you're an Alabama fan, you wanted to see them beat Michigan. I think it matters to them and it

03:41gives networks good programming that people watch because they like football. And it is something

03:48to wager on, although it is a challenge to figure out how teams are going to perform

03:53when they are not whole. And we, but that's been a problem really in college football,

04:00starting probably 20 years ago when coaches started taking jobs and leaving before the

04:05bowl games, that's probably when it began. I remember specifically when Brian Kelly left

04:09Cincinnati with an undefeated team to go take the Notre Dame job. That was sort of the apotheosis of

04:16that particular practice. And then you started to see players opt out and then you started to

04:20see the transfer portal have an impact as well. So all of that has watered the bowl games down a

04:26bit. But I've always said, Adam, that the reality is that the people who claim that the bowls have

04:33been good for college football aren't telling the truth. The bowls have always been good for the

04:38bowls. And that's really all, that's all the further it goes. If you're a player in one of

04:42those games, you got a nice trip and maybe a good swag bag, but the games never were consequential

04:49beyond whatever game was designated as the national championship game in that particular year.

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