Why College Football Playoff needs to expand to 8 teams
The College Football Playoff has done well and provided memorable games in its first two years but not without a little bit of controversy and plenty of discussion. Here is why the playoff needs to expand to 8 teams.
When the college football playoff was made a reality in 2014, many a fan in the college football world rejoiced and saw that the people in charge had listened to fans and given them what they wanted.
Without question, the games between Alabama and Ohio State and Oregon and Florida State were great, as well as the National Championship between Oregon and Ohio State. As we watched those games, however, it crept into the minds of fans and journalists alike, “what if the playoff had more teams?”
Let’s be clear. No one is asking for the playoff to be turned into a March Madness type of tournament, that is crazy, but expanding to eight teams makes sense for the Playoff Committee and for the college game.
Expanding to eight teams allows for the opportunity for each Power 5 conference champion to compete for the national title. The Big 12 and the Pac-12 both understand how it feels to not have a team represented in the playoff games.
Expanding to eight teams also gives teams from the Group of Five (Mountain West, C-USA, AAC, Sun Belt, and MAC) more of a chance to make it into the playoff and showcase their teams to the college football world. The current model gives them very little chance of making it into the New Years Six games let alone the playoff games.
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Not only would there be better conference representation but all of the New Years Six bowls could be a part of the playoff every year as opposed to rotating to who actually hosts a playoff game each year. In order for this new amount of teams one extra bowl game would have to be added; let’s just assume it is the Citrus Bowl as it has a long history as a solid well-respected New Years bowl game.
In this model of the playoff, simply implement the same tournament system as the Elite Eight in college basketball. Highest seed faces the lowest seed and so on. The games would go from final eight teams to the final four and then the National Championship Game. In this format, you would use all of the proposed seven bowl games (Cotton, Citrus, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Rose and Sugar) and the championship host would rotate each year to a different bowl.
Lastly, who wouldn’t care for more football? Adding two more teams gives fans more to watch during the bowl season and makes those bowl games even more important. You also give a goal for Group of Five teams to reach who might not ever have a chance to reach in the current four team playoff.
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We could already point out how if there was an expanded model then maybe this team or that team would have made the playoff and they might have won the championship. It is easy to speculate. Even if the playoff did expand to 8 teams, we could still point out how there could be more teams.
Without a doubt, the current playoff is better than the BCS system and for college football in general. Adding four more teams just makes it that much more competitive and exhilarating to the team that wins it all.