Another great NCAA Tournament of men’s basketball shows why college football needs to make one simple tweak to expand the College Football Playoff.
College Football Daily Cavalcade: College Football Playoff Expansion – It’s Time
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Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …
One freaking UC Santa Barbara missed layup – that’s all that stood between me and NCAA Tournament contest immortality. I’m not over it yet.
But ONLY if the CFP comes up with a better theme song than “One Shining Moment”
Enough dinking around, College Football Playoff.
You want the tournament to be as big as The Tournament? It might not be possible to make the CFP into another NCAA March Madness colossus, but December could be a whole lot bigger and more lucrative.
Just expand to eight teams already.
I know, I know, we’ve done this to death, but it’s time …
All five Power Five champions, the top-ranked Group of Five champion, two catch-all wild-cards. Play the first round a week after the conference championships on the home fields of the higher seeds, and then play the rest of the CFP like normal.
This has been brought up a gajillion times with a bazillion ideas ever since the College Football Playoff first got rolling during the 2014 season, but now is when the change might just make more sense.
Things are a little different after the lid has been blown off of so many college football things that America had previously accepted as a given.
You know, like moving the Rose Bowl from the most iconic setting in sports to Texas, so Mom and Dad could watch Notre Dame get obliterated by Alabama in person.
You want to make the change? You want to recoup a ton of lost revenue from 2020? College Football Playoff, just add that one extra day, and you make the playoff bigger without screwing up the importance of the rest of season.
Unlike the way the college basketball regular season has been rendered a giant nothing burger with no sauce thanks to the sport’s post-season, that’s not a problem for college football.
However, obviously, football isn’t basketball. You’re almost never going to get the Oral Roberts over Ohio State or Abilene Christian over Texas moments in the CFP, that make March Madness so special, but that’s not really the point. It’s about having the opportunity.
It’s about not telling most college football programs that they’re effectively eliminated from national championship consideration right after the first spring practice.
Could 7-seed Cincinnati have beaten No. 2 Clemson in Death Valley last season? It would’ve been interesting, and the Bearcats sure would’ve liked to have had a chance.
The conference championships would serve as a sort of CFP Quarterfinal, with a whole lot more to play for than a snazzy t-shirt.
How much bigger would the end of the Alabama-Florida SEC Championship have been if a playoff spot was on the line for the Gators? How much more fun would the Big 12 Championship have been for both Iowa State and Oklahoma, and how huge would the USC vs. Oregon Pac-12 Championship have been if that was for the No. 8 seed?
Thanksgiving/rivalry weekend leading into Championship Saturday, and then the first round of the College Football Playoff, and then the bowls, and then bigger bowls, and then New Year’s Day for a wild run of fun college football games.
IT’S … ALL … RIGHT … THERE.
Oh, it’ll happen … eventually.
We live in a time when we can create a pandemic-stopping vaccine in mere months, and we can finally order quesadillas from Chipotle on the app. Miracles simply require the will and the want-to.
College football fans will want to watch an eight-team College Football Playoff.
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