A debate is raging in college football on the question of whether to expand the playoff pool from 12 to 24 teams. And the battle lines are generally predictable.
Coaches want more teams. For coaches, qualifying for the playoffs becomes the best way to keep their jobs from one year to the next.
Broadcasters like ESPN want the status quo. More playoff teams will further undermine the bowl system, which is already diminished given the current size of the playoff field.
Among the conferences, the SEC has yet to embrace expansion. Commissioner Greg Sankey addressed on Monday the conference’s reluctance to join its power-conference peers regarding the push for 24.
“Doesn’t bother me,” Sankey said, via Pete Thamel of ESPN. “People tell me that, but I don’t know if you pay attention in college sports. Positions seem to change a lot.”
The SEC has yet to take a final position on the ideal size of the CFP field.
“I’m not an opponent of 24 or 28,” Sankey said. “We have to inform the decision-making. I think we did a good job informing our position last year on 16. We’ll consider other ideas, certainly, this week and moving forward.”
The concern comes from making the field too large, too quickly. There will be an impact on the regular season that won’t be fully realized until the new field is in place.
“When professional sports have added to their postseason, it’s always been a small adjustment,” Sankey said. “Four to 12 [in the CFP] was monumental, but I think it was justifiable. You want to be careful about how far you go, and that’s understanding the competitive impacts and maybe you bring more teams into the conversation, and you make a judgment because . . . a game that may not have that same type of leverage, if you will, or that same type of value because both teams could be in [the playoff].
“That’s minimal, but the ability to bring more teams into the conversation would have [to create] value in the regular season. Some of that you can quantify, some of that strikes me as a matter of judgment.”
Here’s the reality. Whatever the size of the field, the last team to miss the cut will have a gripe that it should have gotten in — that it could have run the table if it had only gotten a chance (e.g., Notre Dame in 2025). If the field becomes so big that the first team on the other side of the line has no real chance to win it all, plenty of the teams that make it will be destined for first-round blowouts.
Last year, Tulane and James Madison had no business being in the field of 12 — and their first-round games proved it. More teams will result in more games like that.
The best outcome would be to create an organized league (or leagues) that would award playoff spots based on wins and losses, with schedules driven not by chasing dollars or lining up patsies but true competitive balance. Maybe a series of leagues makes sense, with relegation and promotion available to all of the programs.
It’s become fashionable to complain about chaos in college football, as it relates to the players finally getting paid. Chaos has always been there, with competing polls and unbalanced schedules and all too often a sense that the team that wins the “championship” isn’t truly the best team.
A full overhaul would eliminate much of the chaos. A super league, or a series of leagues, would allow for the creation of a multi-employer bargaining unit that would finally abandon the student-athlete facade and make the players members of a union, with the rights, privileges, and obligations that apply to employee-athletes in the NFL.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to get everyone on the same page, because the major programs and the power conferences don’t want to risk losing their money or influence. But if the sport is truly serious about ending the chaos, it doesn’t start with restricting the earning potential of the players. It starts with the programs and the conferences realizing that the entire system is out of whack.
Maybe that’s why the SEC is holding out as to expansion of the playoff field. As college football looks more like a professional league, those who care about college football will begin to argue that it should just become a professional league. If that ever happens, conferences like the SEC will lose the power and the money they have been able to hoard under the current system.