Hard Hittin College Football Blogs:
A Logical College Football Playoff Expansion
By: Jace Garcia
The big criticism for the college football playoff is the need to expand it to 8 teams. While I agree with that sediment and would love to see it happen, I think that is a change that can not happen overnight and would take the playoff committee and the NCAA a hard time to get it right. The idea I have is a small expansion from 4 teams to 6 teams and hopefully once the NCAA and the playoff committee get comfortable with a 6 team format they can then expand it further to the 8 team playoff that was so desperately want.
First off let’s talk about why an expansion is needed. Everyone talks about the big power 5 conferences (SEC, Big 10, Big 12, PAC 12, and ACC) and how those are the biggest and best schools in college football, but there are 5 big conferences and only 4 playoff spots, that does not sound right to me. Also due to the fact that everyone thinks so highly of those power 5 conferences, the other conferences I feel should at least have some sort of a chance to get a playoff bid since the creation of the playoff system the only non-power 5 team to make it in has been Notre Dame. While everyone thinks teams like Notre Dame, UCF, Boise State, and any other non-power 5 team is not up to snuff I feel like they should at least get somewhat of a better chance at a bid and expanding to 6 teams should do that.
Now how do I expect the 6 team format to help the issues I just mentioned? Starting off with the power 5 schools opening the playoff up to 6 teams would theoretically give ever champion from the power 5 conferences a spot. I am not saying a power 5 conference championship gives a team an automatic bid, if a conference cannibalize itself and the conference champion comes out of the conference with 2+ loses that could lead to a possibly where a conference champion might not get a bid.
With 5 of the spots theoretically going to power 5 conference champions the 6 spot opens up an opportunity for a non-power 5 school to get in. With the way the committee seemly looks at teams the way a non-power 5 team would probably have to go undefeated and most likely have one power 5 win to definitely get in, but it still gives non-power 5 schools a better chance to get a bid. Now the same thing that can possibly happen with the power 5 conference champion not being able to get it, if the non-power 5 conference team do end up cannibalizing each other then we could see that 6th spot go to a power 5 conference runner up.
This format makes the most sense at this point in time and gives the NCAA the ability to make all the big New Year’s 6 bowl games have meaning for the national championship. How would this work? The committee would rank their top 6 six teams like they do now with the top 4 for the current playoff format and with that the top 2 ranked teams would have a bye and then 3rd ranked team would play the 6th ranked team and the winner would play the 2nd ranked team and the 4th ranked team would play the 5th ranked team and the winner would play the 1st ranked team, standard playoff format but with a bye. Is this doable? Could this be a step to eventually getting to the 8 team format we want? Only time will tell.
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