Why the playoff needs to expand, but not to 12.
With the news that the playoff committee is considering expansion, there is no better time than now to talk about it. This is a topic that has divided the sport every time someone mentions the playoffs. Fans either believe that the committee got the teams right or that a team got snubbed. With there not being a consistent list of criteria for teams to make the playoffs, you can make an argument for almost any of the top teams to make the final cut. I have gone back and forth with this topic internally. I now firmly believe that expansion is inevitable, but not with the same thought of the committee. I believe that 12 teams are too many teams, and then we will be arguments that the playoffs are watered down. The bottom half of the bracket will have subpar resumes. Looking at last year's standings, there were not 12 teams qualified to compete for a national championship. I am a fan of the Georgia Bulldogs, and after watching every game last year we did not deserve to even have our name in consideration for the title. We lost our two biggest games of the season, so in a way, we already lost our playoff games. But if we go off a 12-team playoff, then we have been included in last year. I believe that there were five teams that had the resume to be in the playoffs. Obviously, a five-team playoff would not work, so I propose that the playoffs expand to six teams. The top two teams will have a bye, and the next two seeds will host a playoff game on campus a week after the conference championship games. This will allow for more teams to have a chance to win the title, but not include too many teams that do not deserve a spot. The only pro for 12 team expansion is revenue. Money rules a lot of decisions in college sport, but this should not be one. The goal of any sport is to find the best. The world wants to see the best teams play, and we do not want to see a star player hurt because of an unnecessary game. Another proposition for expansion is to take the FCS route. We can turn the bowl games into a playoff hosting site and get rid of the bowl games themselves. I do not know how that will affect revenue with sponsorship, but the only bowl games that would be left would be the lower-level ones. The playoffs could have automatic qualifiers for the conference champions and so many at-large bids. This will give everyone a fair chance to compete for a national title and no conference feels left out. This is a more difficult decision to make, because, unlike the FCS, the FBS is more separated by tiers of talent. Conference USA does not contain the same talent as the SEC, and this will lead to an unnecessary game being played. Football is a sport that, of the major sports in America, the better team almost always wins. Yes, the better teams win in the other major sports, but not like they do in college football. In basketball, if the other team has a player who is on fire that day and your players are ice cold then you lose. In baseball, you can have a pitcher who is unhittable for the day and that is all it takes for a loss. In hockey, you can have a goalie who is not letting anything by him, and it only takes one goal to win. In football, specifically college football, there is not just one player who can control the game, so talent and coaching usually win games. There are some instances in history where the "worse" team wins, but that is few and far between for the sport. You rarely see Alabama lose to an inferior team, but when they do it is because of a historic performance and Alabama making mistakes. If expansion is on the horizon, then the committee should remember the fewer the better.