re: Why are you mad about a 24-team playoff?

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Why are you mad about a 24-team playoff?

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Because it cheapens the regular season AND championship. Single-elimination tournaments among teams with 3 losses will not define greatness.

College football is on its way to becoming the new nascar. The drastic changes to the sport over the past 5 years will turn lots of people off unfortunately. I even find myself caring significantly less about the results of games and I was as big of a college football fan as anyone.

The sport has changed so much. I'm not even upset over losses anymore. I still enjoy watching, but my emotional invesment is now so minimal.

It’s just piling on during the deconstruction of the game we lived and loved. It’s a shite product now w zero pageantry, emotions and pride. NFL lite paying many who haven’t earned their check. Pathetic…..

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Perfect seasons don’t matter any more.

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That is not a good thing. At all. What separated college football champions from champions in other sports was that it was based on who was the best team from the 1st weekend of September until January. A 4 month+ playoff. A picture of the entire body of work. Made up by 13-15 weekly snapshots that all mattered equally. Now it will only be a December/January picture made up of only 4 snapshots. But really only 1. The championship game. CFB has already approached the “win the NC or your season was a failure” territory. It will only get worse with expansion. You’re either holding the big trophy up in the stream of confetti, or your season—your team—is totally forgotten. You may not as well have even had a season.

Again, that’s what made college football so special. It was about the journey, not just the destination. Some of the greatest experiences of my fandom life have come during seasons when LSU made the fricking Independence Bowl. Dinardo’s 1st year. Dinardo’s 3rd year. Saban’s 1st year and we come back and beat Georgia Tech in the Peach Bowl after replacing Booty with Rohan, with a gimpy Brandon Winey gutting it out like a beast, on 2 touchdown passes to Tommy Banks of all people (not a shot, just pointing our FB catching 2 passes period in one game, much less 2 touchdowns was wild) in his final game in an LSU uniform? Sweet. The 2001 SECCG without Rohan? Then the demolishing of Illinois in the Sugar Bowl? Hell yes. Donkey stomping Notre Dame in the ‘06 Sugar Bowl? Hell, hell yes. I think will remember and love those teams forever. And not just because they won their bowl games, but because of the ride of individual regular season games that got them there. How awesome was the Earthquake game when Tommy Hodson found Eddie Fuller in the end zone as the clock expired? Even after our 3 recent NCs, that may still be the 2nd most iconic game in LSU history behind the Halloween Billy Cannon Ole Miss game. As long as college football exists and people talk about LSU, the story of that game will always be told. But does anybody know we finished 8-4 that year with a loss to Syracuse in the Hall of Fame Bowl? If they do, do they care? The Bluegrass Miracle. Probably a top 5-10 iconic game in LSU history. We finished that season with 5 losses.

I could go on and on. But those moments, those games, those teams, will forever be remembered. And none of them won the National Championship. We are rapidly moving toward those type teams, games, moments, being completely forgotten. Like trees falling in a forest with no one around. Will they have made a sound? Will they have even existed?

And I think eventually, even the National Champions won’t be memorialized. When more and more 2 and 3 loss teams start winning them, their places in history won’t be immortal. They won’t be compared to previous great teams from the past. Their fans will care. Everybody else will just keep it moving. Because they only watched a 4 week tournament. Or maybe only 1 game like a lot of people do with the Super Bowl. Because they weren’t invested for the weekly ups and downs of a 4 month journey. Because the expanded playoff allowed them to not have to be. And as someone who always thought college football was the greatest sport on earth to follow, I think that really fricking sucks.

Tl;dr—the expanded playoff is going to kill the regular season which is what has made the sport so special, gonna make any team that doesn’t win the NC be completely forgotten, and going to even make the NC teams less revered and less memorable historically. They’ll all just blend together by everyone except their own fans. There will be no more magical moments. No more games of the century. Because the stakes of each individual game, each individual play, will be significantly lowered. Until the playoffs. When most of the country has moved on to Christmas and are not paying attention. And it will suck.

It takes the magic out of college football. The need for near perfection.

I went to the 2019 LSU-Alabama game. Both teams were undefeated. The atmosphere was intense because there was the sense that a national championship hung in the air. That atmosphere is gone, at least from the regular season.

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however they structure this, you'll end up with 12-16 competitive teams, imo

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lol

We have never found 4 competitive teams for the semis.

Who’s mad?

What you will start seeing is players opting out during the last regular season game when they are already a lock for the playoffs.

I'm not, not at all. I'm pumped for a playoff game in Tiger Stadium. I'm pumped for more meaningful games compared to the Poulan Weedeater bowl.

More football is good for everyone. With the SEC beating itself up, this is the easiest way to get a fair amount of our schools in the playoffs.