While the talk of the college football world has been conference realignment over the past couple of months, at the heart of that conversation is the subject of expansion in the College Football Playoff.
At the moment, the CFP consists of 4 teams, voted on by a committee based on season success, strength of schedule, and quality of wins and losses. That has been the case since the inaugural playoff which took place in 2015, where the Oregon Ducks beat the Florida State Seminoles in the semi-finals, but fell to the Ohio State Buckeyes in the championship.
Since then, only one other team from the Pac-12 — the Washington Huskies — has made the playoff. For that reason, among many others, a large swath of people have been pushing for an expansion of the playoff, trying to get up to 12 or 16 teams in the mix.
Oregon linebacker DJ Johnson is one of those players to recently touch on this subject.
“I just feel it’s something that we want and need,” Oregon linebacker DJ Johnson said, via ESPN. “To not have a team on the West Coast in the Playoff just irritates you, because we definitely have talent.”
A larger playoff would mean more games for the athletes, but if you were to make the quarter-final and semi-final games aligned with bowl games and potentially cut down on non-conference games, it can be made to work in the schedule.
While the world of college football continues to shift in front of our eyes with NIL, the transfer portal, and conference realignment, don’t be shocked if we see more news about playoff expansion. It seems more likely than not that it is coming.
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