re: Expanded playoff wont mean better games

Adding another round definitely favors Bama, not only because of the mulligan thing, but because their depth can survive those 3 tough games. Be almost impossible for the UCFs of the world—who expansion is partly trying to placate—to win 3 of these games in a row. They may pull off a 1st round upset, but they just wouldn’t have enough to win 2 more.

That said, the decision shouldn’t be reactionary to what Bama is doing right now. They are a machine the likes of which college football has never nor likely will ever see again. An aborration. I used to be really against playoff expansion—because I truly believe college football has the greatest regular season of any of the major sports. “Every game matters” was what I always said.

But they really don’t. Most games have very little bearing on conference and national championships. Now, there are a few games that mean “everything,” and that’s exciting. The LSU-Bama(from 6-7years ago), LSU-Florida, Iron Bowl, Florida-Georgia,Michigan-Ohio State, Texas-OU, Notre Dame-USC, etc...games wont mean “everything” anymore. But many more games will mean “something.” That’s a trade Im willing to make, providing the top seeds get homefield in the quarters. There has to be a reward for going 12-0 as opposed to 9-3. I had always clamored for a 6-team playoff, with the top 2 seeds getting byes, but that may be too big of an advantage and really doesn’t address the issue of inclusion.

I think conference championships should matter. There is—or used to be until recently—an innate value in winning your conference. The setup we have now has rendered them almost meaningless save for using the CCGames as de facto quarterfinals. So, it’s gotta be P5 conference champs, 2 at larges, and the highest “ranked” G5 conference champ. You’d have to use a pre-determined BCS type formula for that “ranking.” The committee can stick around for seeding and trying to eliminate re-matches in the 1st round. Yeah, you may get a 3-loss 2001 LSU in there every now and then. But that’s something I think we should be able to live with. And home field in the quarters is such a big advantage that I don’t think you’d have to worry about teams resting players for fear of losing one of those top 4 spots.