3 best ideas for College Football Playoff expansion

16-team playoff

Once the College Football Playoff expands to six or eight or whatever, it will eventually get to 16 teams. It just makes too much sense.

It allows every single conference champion in the FBS to get an automatic berth, which is the way to go. Talk about making the regular season worthwhile, people might actually have a reason to care about the MAC and the Sun Belt.  At least more on a national scale than they do now.

The bracket is simple enough. It’s the schedule and the location of the games that’s more difficult. Do you stick with the bowl system or blow it up completely?

If you played the conference title games earlier, you could start the playoff the next week, allowing you to play the round of 16 and quarterfinals on consecutive Saturdays.

Then, if you want to keep the bowl games around, play the semifinals and national championship at the same time as now, using the same rotation of games.

The first two rounds could be on campus and then other (non-playoff) bowl games between the first two rounds and the semifinals.

Bowl games could also be incorporated into the first two rounds. Those games could be used like NCAA pods. Select games in different regions and allow the higher-seeded teams to play close to home. The Big Ten champ could play in the Motor City Bowl or the Pinstripe as an example.

The biggest bowls could be part of the semifinal and quarterfinal rotation, while the others could host first-round games on a rotating basis, which would help every bowl game because each would be part of the College Football Playoff every few years.

Or, college football could just play the first two rounds on campus and keep the rest of the structure the same.

Even with expansion, there would still be elite programs but more would be able to sell getting to the playoff, which is a frequent talking point in recruiting.

The top schools get the top recruits and it has created a very uncompetitive landscape in college football, one that could be addressed by one of the changes listed above.