Okay, so I’ve been marinating over this topic over the last few days. The 2023-2024 college football playoff field is set, and unsurprisingly there exists a ton of salt from various fanbases, just as much pointless analysis to simulate a bunch of hypotheticals, and then a whole lot more salt from the results of such hypothetical matchups. Honestly, this isn’t something that I was really intending on writing about, but it’s getting a little slow at the office as we’ve entered the tail end of the year and the holiday season, and I’ve found a little bit of time here and there to help kill time by writing, win-win.
Honestly, I think the committee did an okay job with the four teams that are slated to play for the National Championship. The only one I really don’t agree with is Texas, but I’m completely okay with Michigan, Washington and Alabama being in the playoff. I wholeheartedly agree that Florida State, in spite of their 13-0 record and ACC championship aren’t a top-4 team, because the ACC has been more or less anything but a Power-5 conference since well, Trevor Lawrence left Clemson.
Trying to not sound like such a Georgia homer, but despite the fact that they did lose the SEC to Alabama, I still feel that they should’ve been in the playoff, especially instead of Texas. CFB is always about recency bias above all else, and Georgia did finally lose, at the worst possible time ever, but nobody’s going to convince me that the two-time defending National Champions who hadn’t lost in two years doesn’t deserve to be in the CFB playoff.
An even harder sell is convincing me, as well as millions of other CFB fans, that a Michigan/Washington/Georgia/Alabama field wouldn’t be absolute money for all parties involved, because it’s no secret that the SEC has flexed on the entire sport for decades at this point, and what better way for other conferences to try to overcome the mountain than by having two SEC powerhouses in the field?
If anything, the one flexible school that is in the field in my opinion is Washington, because they’re always a strong regular season school, but have done jack shit come postseason, with them getting trounced by Alabama just a few years ago the time they did make it in. Plus they have a far smaller fanbase that isn’t nearly as willing to spend money, travel, spend money or spend money than programs such as FSU, Texas or Ohio State, and as long as the CFB playoff remains a biased invitational, there will always remain arguments of keeping certain programs out for the pursuit of money.
Regardless of my armchair analysis, the one thing that most everyone can agree upon at this juncture is that the CFB playoff field desperately, desperately needs expansion. Fortunately, this is something that is mutually agreed upon by the CFB committee, but unfortunately this is not the year in which it rolls out, otherwise we’d have a pretty lit playoff field set.
But the word is that starting next season, the playoff will become a 12-team field with the top four seeds all getting bye weeks, and then 5-12 playing games to reduce to eight, then to four, before setting up the game for the Natty. And although this system is probably more than sufficient to get a lot of CFB fans wet, sure there is a lot for me to like as well, but I just think that it isn’t a particularly good idea as well.
Continue reading “Rarely are there ever winners in college football”