By Mark Nagi
Well, the best regular season in North American sports is taking yet another body blow.
Last week it was reported that college football at the FBS level is going to expand from twelve teams to twenty-four teams, as early as 2027.
Congratulations, powers that be… You are succeeding in killing the sport we love.
Let’s backtrack a bit before we delve into the monstrosity that is about to be thrown upon us. For decades, we were told that protecting the bowl system was paramount. Eventually, the folks running college football realized that there was more money to be made, so the BCS was born in 1998 (Go Vols). The College Football Playoff began in 2014 with four teams becoming eligible to play for the national title.
In 2024, the playoff made the jump from four teams to twelve. Why do that many in one fell swoop? And now, only a couple of years later, they will be expanding the playoff to twenty-four teams.
So, if you are scoring at home, they are going from four teams in the 2023 season to (likely) twenty-four teams in 2027. That is a 500% increase in teams that, in theory, I guess, could win the national championship.
The sport has lost its mind since Alabama was left out of the CFB playoffs in 2024. That Tide team had no business being in that 12-team playoff, but blue bloods will be loud and cranky about any perceived slight.
Remember, Alabama got the benefit of the doubt multiple times in the BCS and playoff areas, most memorably when they got a rematch against LSU in the January 2012 title game.
Well, now with a field of twenty-four, you will never see an Ohio State, an Alabama, or a Texas on the outside looking in. 9-3 will be fine to ”earn” a place at the table. Just get ready for 8-4 SEC and Big Ten teams to get in. With nine-game conference schedules and everyone beating each other up, you will see the 6th or 7th place teams in those leagues hold that record, and it will not automatically cost them a spot. The only problem will be which 8-4 units get in, because you will get multiple teams with that same record.
Man, that first-round playoff game between 9-3 Minnesota and 8-4 Texas A&M is going to be terrific!
Now, there are parts I like. Finally, we are going to get more games played on college campuses. One of the flaws of the current system was that there were only four games on campus, and the rest at neutral sites.
But overall, it is a flawed solution to no actual problem.
Think about that LSU/Kentucky game a couple of weeks ago. One of the reasons why that game was so entertaining was because of the stakes. Both teams already had one loss, and a second would take away any room for error in the second half of the season for a team to make the playoffs.
But now? No tension, because four-loss teams will make the field.
What this all comes down to is money, but not directly. It is not like the added TV revenue will make a huge difference, as the lucrative conference title games will have to go away. But with football rosters and coaching contracts in the tens of millions of dollars, fans and boosters want a return on their investments. Saying that your team earned a playoff spot means more than saying your team earned a spot in the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl.
At least for now.
Because very soon first-round playoff exits will not be enough.
Look, college football has been a sea of change ever since the first time Princeton and Rutgers laced their cleats. But between congressional lobbying, unlimited transfers, fights over NIL and compensation, and now the expanded playoff, there has never been more of a threat to what made it so much fun.
College football’s uniqueness is dying.
