College Football's 24-Team Playoff Sparks Backlash

Segment Spotlight: Quick Hits From Pushing The Odds with Matt Perrault

College Football Playoff Expansion Ignores Fans and Rewards Boardroom Control

Executive director Rich Clark acknowledged during the press conference announcing the 24-team playoff that many fans oppose expansion. He said their sentiment was considered, but the decision ultimately came down to creating a spectacular playoff.

That response feels like an insult to the fans. It amounts to saying, “We know you do not want this, but we are giving it to you anyway because we know more than you do.” It reflects the arrogance of the people running college football.

This is about money and making sure nobody can complain about being left out. It creates a participation-trophy playoff in which practically everyone gets in. It follows Notre Dame being left out and Miami barely making it before advancing to the national championship game against Indiana. People want teams to be able to make runs similar to college basketball, but that is not what football has traditionally been.

The qualification standards are also a problem. The SEC is being told that teams must play 10 power-conference FBS games to be eligible. That eliminates the conference’s practice of scheduling one, two or sometimes three easier games because its conference schedule is already so difficult.

It should not be the committee’s job to tell conferences and teams how to determine their champions. Automatic qualifiers could also be decided by tiebreakers despite conferences not playing balanced schedules. Some Big Ten and SEC teams avoid the strongest opponents because of conference rotations. That does not necessarily make them the best team in the conference or mean they deserve a bye or one of the highest seeds.

If every conference had 10 teams playing nine conference games in a round-robin format, the system would be easier to accept. That is not what happens. Schedules differ, yet those differences can determine playoff positioning.

Sports should be decided on the field, but the people running college football continually try to determine outcomes in a boardroom. That has long been part of bowl selection and the FBS system. The people controlling college football see themselves as masters of the sport.

A 12-team playoff threatened to make those decision-makers less relevant, but conferences wanted more inclusion. They did not want a room of people deciding who gets in, especially when a program such as Notre Dame has a large fan base and people willing to spend money. Expansion prevents the committee from making that kind of exclusion.

With 24 teams, nobody will seriously listen to complaints from the team ranked 25th. Injuries to a quarterback or starting running back will no longer carry the same consequences because there will be so much room in the field.

The same constant tinkering has affected conference championship games. Divisions can become unbalanced, with several strong teams grouped together. Removing divisions creates another issue when three teams finish undefeated but only two can play for the conference championship. The next proposed solution is eliminating the championship game entirely.

College football keeps changing its system instead of allowing results to be settled cleanly on the field. Clark said the College Football Playoff has a responsibility to fans because they are the lifeblood of the sport. Yet moving forward with a 24-team playoff despite their opposition does not reflect that responsibility. It feels like college football’s leaders are patting fans on the head, dismissing their concerns and doing what they wanted all along.