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Pac-12 season proof College Football Playoff needs to be expanded

By Brenton Lillie

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Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN loves the four team playoff, but this year’s Pac-12 proves why just four teams is bad for college football.

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Prominent ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit loves the College Football Playoff. Truth be told, we all love it, or at least we love it more than we did the Bowl Championship Series. Four teams with a legitimate shot is better than two.

However, Herbstreit recently explained why he thinks four teams is a good number, and why he the current playoff format:

“I like the four teams, I like the arguments,” Herbstreit said. “I think it’s fun, and I think it’s healthy to have these debates. It makes the regular season really matter. Every week, every game, people are on the edge of their seat because they know what’s at stake.

“I think it makes sense to eventually get there [to more teams], but in the meantime I’m really enjoying having it at four. Here we are with just three weeks to go, and I could make a legitimate argument for the top 10 teams to get in if they win out.”

Meanwhile, Pac-12 fans know the truth. Having a playoff system that does not reward conference champions and allows only four teams from the Power Five conferences to compete does the opposite of what Herbstreit alleges.

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Every game does not matter. The Pac-12 is having one of the most exciting seasons in recent memory. Dramatic upsets, chaos atop both the North and South divisions. Every week there seems to be a new favorite to win the conference. Yet, there is something missing from the conversation.

No matter who wins the conference the chances of that team making it into the playoff is slim. The two teams with the best shot, Utah and Stanford, suffered losses to Arizona and Oregon, respectively to give them a second loss. While this has made for an exciting finish to the regular season there is nothing but a second tier bowl game waiting for the eventual winner.

That is just flat-out wrong. It has made the last few weeks of Pac-12 football meaningless, despite what Herbstreit and the other playoff backers believe. Just like the BCS era, the college football playoff is excluding teams that deserve a shot.

It would be incredibly easy to expand the playoff to six teams and include each power conference winner plus one at-large team from outside the power five. You could even give the top two teams a bye.

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You could argue that this makes for too many games for an allegedly amateur sport featuring students trying to also further their education. The solution there is obvious. Limit the number of regular season games, including conference championship games to 11.

Two non-conference games, plus eight conference games. A championship game plus at most three playoff games. 14 games, which is one fewer than Oregon and Ohio State played last year when they played in the championship game.

Not only would this solve the problem of the regular season being meaningless for the conference assumed to be left out, but it would also make for more of a meritocracy in college football. Teams would be rewarded for winning, not for being ranked high in preseason polls.

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The playoff committee would only be responsible for seeding the teams and selecting the at-large competitor. There would no longer be controversy over what team is left out. Win your conference and get rewarded. What a novel idea, and one that is long overdue in college football.

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