The College Football Playoff is expanding soon — maybe sooner than you think. The CFP executive board authorized an expansion to 12 teams on Friday. It capped off a more-than-three-year effort and delivered the most substantial alteration to the playoffs in college football history.
According to SI, the 11-member CFP Board of Managers unanimously voted to approve the 12-team format and implement it no later than 2026. It was a meeting shrouded in secrecy prior to a report from Sports Illustrated this past Wednesday. The decision didn't even seem like a probability as recently as a week ago. It, therefore, comes as a complete surprise and concludes a year-long stalemate over playoff expansion among a number of CFB stakeholders.
In light of the commissioners' futile efforts, presidents became more involved in the matter, spending months studying playoff scenarios until recently reaching a tipping point when, for the first time in more than a year, unanimity looked conceivable.
To wit, Mark Keenum, Mississippi State president and chair of the CFP Board of Managers, made a strong drive to reach a resolution on Friday.
“This was a very historic day for college football,” he remarked.
Recall that just six months ago, the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-12 all voted against the expansion idea, but they have since changed their minds.
Three commissioners and Notre Dame's Jack Swarbrick recommended the 12-team setup 15 months ago. The four were members of a CFP working group that spent two years developing the idea for expansion.
The 12-team CFP concept basically awards automatic invitations to the six highest-ranked conference champions. It also gives first-round byes to the top four champions and awards six at-large picks to fill out the field. Seeds five through 12 are anticipated to play their first-round games on campus or at a site chosen by the higher seed. Quarterfinals and semifinals will be held in a rotation of six bowls. More information about the model can be found here.
CFP confirms the news of expansion. Full details: pic.twitter.com/iuDhjOf9DA
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) September 2, 2022
It goes without saying that this expansion has yielded a variety of opinions from experts and fans alike. As such, here are three reasons why having 12-team College Football Playoffs is a bad idea.
3 reasons a 12-team College Football Playoff is bad
3. More room for injuries
This is a straightforward con of the expansion. It is painfully obvious that any expansion of the CFP means we will expect collegiate athletes to play around 16 to 17 games in a season. That's already the same as an NFL team's regular season schedule.
This basically implies that players will more likely get hurt. It is quite ironic since players will soon enter an era of college football for which they will receive direct compensation for their efforts, skills, and sacrifices.
Aside from that obvious issue of increased injury risk, the additional games will also reduce the number of time players have to prepare for the NFL Scouting Combine and other NFL pre-draft activities. To accommodate for this, the NFL may have to postpone the yearly meeting of new players at some point.
2. Power 5 still holds the overwhelming edge
Experts have debated so much about which Power Five teams will make it to the College Football Playoff. On the other end, most of the Group of Five hype should dissipate with time.
Most people in college football know what would happen if you put Cincinnati or BYU up against Alabama or Ohio State. It will probably be ugly.
Yes, there are occasional miracles and flukes when the stars align. For example, Boise State had the famous hook-and-ladder play that defeated Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Still, those sorts of games are the exception, not the rule.
Extending the College Football Playoff would be wonderful for Group of Five programs that wouldn't ordinarily have the chance to compete on a national scale. However, what happens when they leave the field with significant injuries?
Here's the stark reality — the nation's top players often attend Power 5 programs, which generate the strongest teams. The playoffs are intended for those top teams.
Expanding the CFP in the hopes that miraculous upsets will happen every single year is just plain unrealistic.
3. Doesn't address parity
Football has the least parity of the “big four” American sports, and college football pushes it to a level that even the NFL can only dream of. College football is experiencing a period of dominance and dynasties. Of the 28 teams picked across the seven years of the College Football Playoff, 20 of those bids have gone to just four schools. These are Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Oklahoma. Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State are responsible for six CFP National Championships, the with lone outlier being the historic 2019 LSU Tigers team.
Furthermore, only twice has a four-seed won a game in the CFP. That's Ohio State in the first-ever playoff and Alabama in 2017. Both went on to win national titles.
What about the remaining five years? Four seeds have fallen by an average of 20 points and have never led at halftime. An increase to 12 accomplishes little to break the juggernauts' stranglehold on college football.
A 12-team expansion needlessly extends the season, increases the injury risk, and doesn't address key issues like across-the-board parity.
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