I Have a Hot Take About the 24 Team Playoff

Yes, yes, I know the suits are ruining everything we know and love about college football. After the news being all but official of playoff expansion next year the immediate reaction was "this ruins the regular season!" and I have a few reasons that I don't think that's necessarily true.

My hot take is that a 24 team playoff actually makes the regular season matter more for more teams. It's just not the teams we're looking at.

Yes, for the top 2-3 teams of the Big 10 and SEC the regular season matters less because they will get in every single year. That is true. But does the regular season not matter at all for the FCS teams that are fighting to get into their 24 team playoff? The percentage of teams that will get into an FBS playoff are now roughly similar to March Madness. Yes, basketball is a different sport, but it's not like suddenly every single team is getting a chance at a playoff here.

I will preface all of this by saying: At 24 teams every conference champ should be in, just like the FCS playoffs. But the NCAA doesn't own the FBS playoff so they can't force that. Also the NCAA is gutless and worthless now.

Second note: Having 5 autobids instead of 10 is better for BYU, so I'm on board with it.

More teams, more meaningful games.

Everybody wants better OOC match ups. An expanded playoff gives that in the postseason. And I think we will get it more in the early season too.

The SEC has been reluctant to go to 9 games because that means half their league is getting an extra loss. That is bad for business. They're smart about that. But with an expanded playoff, you can take more risks in your non conference scheduling.

Yes, we meme about quality losses all we want. But do you want to know how many non conference top 25 matchups there have been this season?

3.

BYU vs Notre Dame

Ohio State vs Texas

Ole Miss vs Louisville

That's it. And it's bland. The current system punishes losses so harshly that it's better for Indiana to schedule North Texas than it is for them to play Oklahoma State. We all need to stop lying to ourselves saying that every undefeated record is the same, and all wins and losses are the same. If we stop and thinking about it, everybody agrees, but then every time a poll comes out there's complaints about this 3 loss team being ahead of that 2 loss team, etc.

So the risks are there.

The late season meaning shifts.

In the 4 and 12 team playoff eras, the Iron Bowl may have been Auburn trying to keep Alabama out of the playoff. So that game mattered and had playoff implications. But Alabama was going to get into the playoff most years anyway.

The expanded playoff shifts the window downward.

Last year heading into the Territorial Cup, Arizona was ranked #25 and ASU was ranked #20. In a 24 team playoff that moves the meaning of the game from a fun Top 25 rivalry to a play-in game where the winner goes to the playoff. Houston jumped to #21 after beating Baylor the last week of the season, but the Bears could've played spoiler to a playoff bid, etc.

In a 12 team playoff, if a team loses 2 games early, their only path forward is chaos and hoping to fall into a conference championship game (see 2024 ASU).

Last season, 20 P4 went into the last week of the regular season at 8-3 or better. They played across 15 games. That matters. If you start 0-3 then go on a 9 game run and start climbing the polls, every single game matters. Before the rest of your season was meaningless.

Remember what Independence felt like once BYU lost a game?

We joined hte Big 12 and were excited to have something else to play for. But now with leagues so big and weird tiebreakers, who knows what can happen. My point is that yes, the regular season matters less for the very top of the sport that is going to get in almost every year, but the number of teams that are still in the hunt rather than all but eliminated before October has never been higher.

Conference Championship Games

Weird how this didn't really exist until 15 years ago. SEC started it. Big 12 followed, but dropped it for 7 years. ACC started in 2005. Big Ten and Pac didn't start until 2011. Oh yeah, the super WAC had a few.

But now it's ubiquitous and we're lamenting it going away. I'm indifferent on them because I think the playoff has already cheapened the meaning of it for P4 schools. People remember Tech last year more for getting waxed by Oregon than they do for winning the Big 12. The leagues are so large that it's a convoluted SOS 5th tie breaker to pick participants half the time. The problem of conferences being too big isn't going away, that created the CCG issue. Playoff just redirects it.

I think the Big 12 should move to an 8+1 scheduling model where the last game of the season is a flex and you care pair 1 & 2 for a CCG. Both will already have playoff berths. No risk in playing another top 10-15 game. YOLO.

BUT THEY'LL JUST STACK SEC AND BIG TEN TEAMS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POLL

Yes. This is true. The narrative right now is that the Big Ten and SEC are so far ahead that there's now they'll just get all the teams in and the Big 12 will be lucky to get 2 teams in.

Maybe that's true, but in the previously floated models of set number of bids, we would have no way to change it. Look at SP+ since 2015 for the gap between #1 and #10 and #10 to #25:

The NIL is creating more parity across the top 25 programs. A world where you can get paid, play, and still have a chance at a playoff run is more enticing than sitting the bench at Georgia for 2-3 years until it's your turn.

Look at the national narrative this week about the Big 12 because of 1 win last Saturday and the number of teams in the top 10. Having 19 at-large bids creates space for the narrative to be changed. If the SEC is overrated, they'll lose games and more parity in the bids will come. If the Big 12 is underrated, then the 3 teams they get in will outlast the 6 Big Ten teams or whatever it is. If 2 Big 12 teams end up in the semis the offseason narrative will be changed in one off season.

Bowl Season

It's already dead. We all think it's dead. Players opting out led to whole teams opting out because the games were meaningless. People complained about there being too many of them because 80+ teams were eligible for postseason play.

In 1970 there were 11 bowl games. 1980 had 15. 1990 had 19. Now we have 40.

A 24 team bracket has 23 games total.

The G6 should do an NIT type tournament on the off days with an 8 or 12 team bracket.

Problem solved.

No Excuses

Last thought - if you can get into a playoff with 3 losses, there's no blaming anybody else if you don't get in. All the arguments we made last year about BYU are irrelevant in this scenario, because everybody who was even close to deserving it would be in and then a couple lucky others. There's no feeling bad for the 3 & 4 loss teams on the bubble.