SMQ: What would a 12-team College Football Playoff look like in 2021?

Final thoughts on an expanded College Football Playoff

Sitting here on my 39th birthday this morning, I find myself more perplexed than ever as to why we can’t have nice things. After today’s SMQ thought experiment, it is readily apparent that an expanded 12-team College Football Playoff would provide even more excitement on championship weekend as teams vie for one of those six lucrative champion qualifying spots.

Some of the championship games would become play-in games in the truest sense. Other conference title tilts would become chess matches where the winner gets a bye and the loser sweats the wild card selection. This year, only the MAC championship would have featured zero stakes in the playoff hunt.

Instead, we are stuck waiting for the selection committee to hold its final Selection Sunday reveal show where they will show the world which teams are deemed worthy of playing for the mythical national championship.

We’ll probably get matchups very similar to a chalk-filled bracket that might evolve in a 12-team setup. My hunch is that both Alabama and Georgia will get into the semifinals, Michigan will become the third Big Ten team to reach the College Football Playoff, and Cincinnati will make history as the first Group of Five team to get a chance.

It works as a way of maintaining the mythical national championship, but it is a weak substitute for the wider range of meaningful narratives we would get to enjoy from a deeper field. Even if we see the usual suspects walk away with the big prize, opening up opportunities strips away some of the mythic nature surrounding the national championship and makes the narrative that much more legitimate in the process.

Ultimately we fans are left to find joy in what we are provided by the College Football Playoff, acknowledging that it at least provides more access than its predecessors. That doesn’t mean we can’t daydream about what a better alternative for the future would look like today.