How many times do Michigan and Bama have to play before the shine wears off?

Last time I checked, never. Does Bama ever get tired of playing Auburn? Why would two top programs not want to play each other?

Why would people get tired of top programs matching up in a playoff for the championship?

It's cool that LSU is playing USC next year, but it would have been cooler in a playoff in 2003.

It happens all the time in other sports, especially baseball and basketball. When LSU made the final 4 in 1986 we played Kentucky 4 times, only beating them once but it was in the Elite 8 lol.

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I agree with this, keeping conference championship games in the new system is asinine.

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completely unnecessary, but more pork to fatten up those tv contracts.

I want to see Ole Miss play Michigan in the playoffs. Real oddball matchup.

All these top teams meeting is preferable in every way to one of them playing Furman and the other playing Ball State

You mean the novelty will wear off? Sure, but it's the product of getting the right contestants in the final. I certainly don't want to stick to the more commonly-seen matchups for this reason alone.

Michigan-UW is cool, I'm excited about it. We'll have SEC teams playing for a title, which will be cool/odd. We'll have the UM-Bama type games. We'll have the Oregon vs. Penn State type game, which will be different. And eventually we're probably going to have an Ohio State vs. Cincinnati type game with non-traditional team genuinely having a chance to win it all.

So I don't think we're going to lose much on this front. Yes, the novelty of particular matchups will wane over time as we see more and more of them happen, but the variety in the interim *should* be better.

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It happens all the time in other sports, especially baseball and basketball.

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Yes, "other sports." What makes college football so great is how unique it is. Or was. And baseball and basketball play a lot more games than football. Each individual game isn't as meaningful.

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when LSU made the final 4 in 1986 we played Kentucky 4 times, only beating them once but it was in the Elite 8 lol.

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You've helped make one of my points. Those 1st 3 games wound up not mattering. And to me, it's the biggest flaw of college basketball. Individual games don't matter--it's what you did cumulatively over the regular season. (Granted, the trade off is they have the most exciting post-season in college sports). But who, besides fans of LSU and Kentucky are tuning in to watch them play on a random Tuesday night in February? And it's not like it was back then anyway, when players stayed 3, sometimes 4 years together. Remember those Laettner, Hurley, etc...Duke teams? The Running Rebels of UNLV? The Fab Five? Those guys played together for 2 or 3 years and the rest of the country got to know them. Now, the good ones bounce to the NBA after just one year and the rest are transferring all over the place. Teams are completely different from year to year.

Not to mention really talented players are much, much better as Juniors than Freshman. Hell, fricking Shaq stayed in school for 3 years. And even the less talented teams were better after playing with each other for multiple years. It was just a much better product back then. Which is fine, I'm not "get off my lawn" whining about it. It is what it is. But I'm not watching a Duke/Carolina regular season game these days. Because they don't matter. They're guaranteed to play twice and will likely meet up in the ACC Tourney for a 3rd time. It's just not very exciting. To me, anyway.

But I've got off on a bit of a tangent. My point is that college football is very unique, and some of the things that make it so are part of why those of us who love it so much do. The regular season has been the best in all of sports (granted again, at the expense of it's post-season, the opposite trade-off of CBB) because every individual game meant something. Even if they had no national championship implications. Because they are rare--you're only guaranteed to get 12 of them a year. The whole scarcity principle and all that.

Which leads me back to my original point on the expanded playoffs leading to teams playing each other a lot more. That was one of the cool things about the old bowl system--you got to see matchups that you rarely saw. A poster above mentioned that LSU playing USC to start the season in Vegas next year is gonna be pretty cool. Part of that is because we haven't played them in 40 years. He mentioned it would have been cooler to have played them in the '03 playoff. I agree.

But that whole "split title" thing that people have been trying to litigate the past 20 years adds to the "mystique" and coolness of the game in Vegas. But had we met in '03, that game would have meant EVERYTHING. Hell, our last 2 openers against Florida State have basically meant EVERYTHING. At the time, anyway. We lived and died with each play, because the result of that game could have been the difference between making the playoffs or being barely left out. And the opener in Vegas next year would have felt the same. But now with the expanded playoff, it will mean a lot less. Every team will have 1 mulligan, most will have 2. Some will eventually have 3.

Which makes each individual regular season game mean much less. They'll all still mean something, but almost none--at the time--will mean everything. And that's not good for college football. Add to that big brand teams in different conferences that rarely play each other will start playing pretty regularly in the playoffs, and takes away that scarcity piece that adds to its uniqueness.

And it will for teams that already play each other every year in the regular season too. Ohio State and Michigan, the Iron Bowl, LSU and Florida, whatever--those games will suffer too for both reasons. The games won't mean as much because the loser's NC chances aren't on the line (unless it's one of the last week of the season games and 1 or both of the teams are a loss away from being left out). And maybe more importantly, I don't care how much Ohio State and Michigan hate each other, if they start playing twice (maybe 3 times a year and maybe in back-to-back weeks), those games will start to mean less for their own fans. But they will certainly mean less to fans of other teams. Ohio State/Michigan the past 3 years? I'm dialed in. In '26, after I've seen them play 5 times in the last 2 or 3 years? Meh. I'll probably find something else to do and just wait a few weeks until they play in the playoffs. Again.

And that's not good for college football. Taking away the scarcity of the matchups and making the regular season games mean less, is just taking away the things that have made it so unique (and great, if it's your favorite sport like it is mine and I'd imagine the majority of the people on here.) It's just turning it into the NFL. Only with worse players.

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I think most LSU fans will be disappointed if we aren't making the 12 team play off 30% of the time.

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If 3 losses gets you out of the top 12, LSU fans should get used to not making the 12 team playoff very often. We don’t have the money to consistently lose two or less games in the new era, IMO.

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and conference championship games going away from divisions

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Going to laugh my arse off when as soon as probably next year we will get Ohio St-Michigan two weeks in a row. Then the real possibility of them facing off for a third time in a playoff at some point in the future. Who wants that?