Who Wants the 12-Team College Football Playoffs?
This is the most recent heated low season debate, after Yahoo Sports reported that the structure is most well-liked if CFP is certainly expanded sooner or later. The bounce from 4 to twelve groups to a sport that has been wrestling with a right kind playoff fashion because the inception of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 is a daring step.
No doubt it is the maximum inclusive proposition ever made, however faculty football is a distinct undertaking towards conventional manufacturers. Change isn’t all the time met with thunderous applause.
What is the dimensions of a 12-team playoff? The Sporting News weighs in at the professionals and cons:
Pro: Four-team monopoly damaged
Who are to your faculty football playoffs for 2021?
If a minimum of 3 Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Notre Dame or Georgia are not to your checklist, you might be doing it unsuitable. Those six colleges have mixed for 23 of 28 playoff appearances.
It is much more explicit than that. Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State ruled the CFP generation, and the remainder of faculty football is tuning in.
The CFP championship game between Alabama and Ohio State – the game’s two largest manufacturers – won an rock bottom ranking for a CFP championship game. COVID-19 used to be an element, however the rut is actual.
More groups equals extra fan-base and equals extra pleasure. what is the downside?
MORE: What a 12-team box will seem like in 2020
CON: This isn’t the NFL
Why is faculty football attempting so exhausting to be just like the NFL? The NFL simply moved to a 14-team playoff structure, and the primary season used to be a a hit one. Tom Brady leads the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the Super Bowl name from the NFC Wild Card Round.
A transfer to the 12-team structure displays that school football is making an attempt too exhausting to turn out to be just like the NFL. As any individual who watches either one of them fall, I recognize the variations between the 2 video games.
I additionally recognize that school football underdog tales don’t seem to be what you assume. 4 seed all through their nationwide championship run in 2014, Ohio State used to be regarded as an “underdog,” and that crew had 31 long term NFL avid gamers.
Revisit that fictional 12-team CFP bracket for 2020. Do you assume Cincinnati may just undergo Georgia, Alabama, Notre Dame and Ohio State or Clemson in a single cross? The Bearcats may have a greater likelihood of profitable two video games within the four-team structure than 4 video games within the 12-team structure.
Pro: More Games, More Upsets
March Madness prospers at the tale of Cinderella as Villanova defeated Georgetown within the 1985 males’s basketball championship game, the primary 12 months of the 64-team generation.
Give groups extra possibilities to drag off the ones ups and downs of established powers, and possibly it will smash the similar previous matchup when Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State lose within the quarterfinals. Those quarterfinal matchups are nonetheless higher than maximum convention championship video games, continuously classified as “real quarterfinals”. Skip that step and make it a post-season game.
If CFP expands to twelve, that first weekend will rival the primary weekend of March Madness, particularly should you stay the ones video games on campus. Last 12 months that might have produced Cincinnati in Georgia, Texas A&M in Oregon, Florida in Iowa State and Oklahoma in Indiana. It’s like Sweet 16 Weekend.
It’s now not just like the NFL. It may well be higher.
CON: More video games, extra blowouts
This does now not alternate the truth that Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson nonetheless exist.
College football is a top-heavy sport that thrived on dynasties, and used to be enhanced via the CFP generation. In any given 12 months, there are fewer than 5 or 6 groups actually supplied to win the varsity football nationwide championship.
A 12-team playoff would possibly not alternate that. The four-team playoff hasn’t modified that. The moderate margin of victory within the CFP semi-finals is nineteen.7 issues in step with game. Of the 14 semi-finals within the closing seven years, 3 had been made up our minds via 10 issues or much less. You need greater than this?
The CFP championship game has additionally been a setback during the last 3 years. An argument is being made that increasing the playoffs will supply extra incentives for recruits to visit different colleges, however now not till the ones colleges start sending NFL-ready ability to the following stage at a price very similar to Alabama and Ohio State. — which may have shaped their very own playoff-caliber NFL groups — that is not going to modify all that a lot.
The Crimson Tide received 3 BCS championships and 3 CFP championships. Nick Saban signed an extension till 2028.
Pro: It’s Better Than Six on New Year’s Day
that is true. Players are opting out of the New Year’s six bowls, and glance no additional than Florida quarterback Kyle Trask’s objective of dropping the Sugar Bowl in Oklahoma closing 12 months.
There is much less incentive to play in a bowl game now, and it’ll achieve a essential level when a quarterback like Trask shall be out six bowls on New Year’s Day. The Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl do not imply as a lot when they aren’t semifinals.
Now, if the ones bowls are a part of the rotation within the 12-team playoffs, then, sure, that might be superior. If Florida vs. Oklahoma is the varsity football playoff quarterfinals, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Tony are at the box.
CON: Reduces common season worth
This could also be true, despite the fact that this is a subjective fact. The common season is a novel a part of faculty football. “As long as we beat (insert rival school) we can go 1-11. How many times have you heard that? One billion?
Regular-season rivalry games matter more than any other sport. Pittsburgh defeated Cleveland in Week 6 of the NFL schedule last season. Not a single Brown fan cares about that game anymore. It’s about AFC Wild Card victory.
Flip that for college, and Ohio State and Michigan fans miss nearly every score, especially since Jim Harbaugh took over as head coach. Is the Iron Bowl really the Iron Bowl if both teams make the 12-team playoffs and play again three weeks later? You can do that with North Carolina and Duke in basketball. It won’t be the same in football no matter how you sell it. In addition to possible seeding, there will be penalties for losing the game of the rivalry.
That one game matters more than anything else, and a 12-team playoff will force those fan-bases to adjust to how they view college football. We’re not saying it can’t be done, but it’s nave to think that expansion won’t shorten that regular season. Absolutely will.
Pro: More Inclusion, More Money
A dozen teams means more eyes from across the country, and if you haven’t made the field, that’s your problem.
It is likely that all five Power 5 conferences will be represented in a 12-team field, a group of at least 5 school and six at large. This would be a much-needed blow to a game that is about to enter the Zero Age. Television networks wouldn’t argue with more games, and that would be exciting.
Think about January 1, 2015. Florida State and Oregon played the first semifinals in the Rose Bowl, and Ohio State and Alabama played the best semifinals ever in the Sugar Bowl. There was a new excitement in the game.
Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State just made the ball their own, with a revolving door of guests who don’t really belong, with the exception of Joe Burrow-led LSU in 2019. Giving more invitations is the right thing to do.
CON: You lose No. 1 vs. No. 2
That is the essence of college football. No. 1 vs. No. 2 There’s no better regular-season game than “Game of the Century.” The game thrives on finger-pointing in all directions, and the fan-base goes back and forth with the same old snips.
“You have not performed somebody.”
“You did not beat somebody.”
Texas and Texas A&M don’t play anymore, and they still do it every day on Twitter.
Sure, you’ll settle it with a bloated playoff, however more often than not you already know who the ones groups are. There hasn’t ever been a greater faculty football game than the Rose Bowl between No. 1 USC and No. 2 Texas in 2005, and that is the reason as a result of the ones two groups ruled everybody who got here their approach.
The extra groups you upload, the fewer most likely you’re to have that more or less matchup.
Unless, after all, you actually imagine that Cincinnati can win all 4 video games within the 12-team structure.
