The new 12-team college football playoffs are not going to be effective, and there are too many reasons to count why.
Let’s start with how the playoff is set up, collegefootballplayoff.com says, “The 12 participating teams will be the five conference champions ranked highest by the CFP selection committee, plus the next seven highest-ranked teams.”
This is just a terrible decision in itself, there are only four power conferences with the removal of the PAC-12, this means a team that is a group of five will be included every single time. So, if you’re a SEC school and you’re ranked 12th in the country you don’t get to go to the playoffs because Bowling Green, Arkansas State, or some other unimpressive school went undefeated and won their conference. This is just unfair, in most years the worst SEC school would demolish the best group of five teams. If we are being totally honest the ACC is barely a power conference and the Big 12 is lackluster as well.
Another rule of the new format says, “The four highest-ranked conference champions will be seeded one through four and will receive a first-round bye. The fifth conference champion will be seeded where it was ranked or at No. 12.”
This means that if you do not win your conference championship you are not allowed to get a bye and in a lot of cases you can get kicked out of playoff contention by having one bad game. Besides the flawed ranking system there is an even more glaring problem with a 12 team play off; no given year has there ever been more than six “good” teams. This year for example, there are only six indisputably good teams: Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Ohio State, and Penn State.
With that being said there are some other good teams that deserve a chance to play in the playoffs like Miami for example, they are possibly the most overrated high seeded team of all time, they should have lost to Virginia Tech (they won because of a bad call on a hail Mary), an unranked and just average team.
Miami also had a difficult time winning against the mediocrity that is California, winning by only one point. If you think Miami is a team that can even come close to hanging with another top ten team, think again. But at this point in the season they do deserve a chance to at least try to win a national championship. There is a decent chance that Miami loses to the Louisville team that got embarrassed by Notre Dame last and if that happens a lot of changes will be made to their ranking.
None of the rankings are set in stone right now and everything will more then likely be set right by the end of the season. Another team that is on pace to deserve a chance is Notre Dame. Yes, they lost to a group of five team, Northern Illinois, however they have played well and beat good teams unlike Miami.
In my humble opinion a six- team playoff with the top two teams receiving a bye would be the best format, but that is only a good idea if the AP poll members actually do a good job on the rankings – which they have not shown themselves to be capable of doing.
Another solution would be to do an eight-team playoff where everyone gets a one week bye. A 12-team playoff is just awkward, why not do 16 if you want to give teams a chance.
The 12-team playoff is an obvious ploy for the NCAA to generate more revenue – yes March Madness exists and yes it is extremely effective. However, Basketball is a much safer game and upsets are more likely to happen so a larger pool makes sense.
But the NCAA isn’t worried about player safety or what makes sense for a specific sport, they care about screen time and ad revenue for their highest grossing sport.
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