In reality, it does the opposite ($$).
… Though an expanded Playoff will be more entertaining and include more games at the end of the year with higher stakes, I think I’m one of the few national college football reporters who is against it. Why? Because college football’s parity problem isn’t because the Playoff field is too small. It’s because the best high school recruits in the country go to one of five schools every year.
… All you’re doing is creating a situation that allows the teams that hoard talent — Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia and a few others — a mulligan. You’re taking away the beauty of the upset that could ruin a Super Team’s season. Not anymore. When the Playoff expands, all of the teams everyone is tired of seeing in the four-team field will make it every single year no matter what.
… Making the four-team field is a huge accomplishment. Making the Playoff by default because there are 12 or 16 teams feels participation trophy-ish to me.
… That said, the final fours we get now will look very similar to the ones we get even after the Playoff is expanded. The difference between the No. 3 team and the No. 12 team is enormous, even if there are regular-season upsets from time to time.
Of course, we know parity isn’t the real reason we’re about to get postseason expansion.
You’re creating more Playoff games that will be consumed at an outrageously high level on television, sure, but you’re stripping away the importance of regular-season upsets.
Money, unlike college football teams, is undefeated and will remain so.
Get The Picture 
Last year there could have been a 64-team playoff and Georgia would have still beat Alabama for the Championship.
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I’m not sure about Bama. They could have easily lost 3 regular season games. And there were numerous teams better than Cincy,
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Wasserman is really the only guy with a national voice who is saying this. Of course, he’s a recruiting guy and understands what the real problem in the sport is … talent distribution.
Other than reducing scholarships available (doesn’t that reduce the academic opportunity for “student”-athletes?) to force talent down, what alternatives are out there? Most blue chips aren’t hitting the portal. The ones that do pretty much know which “super team” they are heading to before the name goes in.
This is a problem that is very difficult to solve until the sport is full NFL Lite with a CBA that includes some sort of talent distribution feature.
In the meantime, we’re going to kill the regular season we all love.
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Everything in life can’t be reduced to “but we should have more x to make things fair.” With a relatively small sample size, merit conquers all. Is it fair that the southeast is full of athletes like Jordan Davis or Jalen Carter or Trevon Walker, and other areas of the country aren’t? As long as HS athletes can go where they like, you’re going to see the best ones go play at the best programs. All the hand wringing in the world isn’t going to affect talent distribution. There’s a larger lesson there, but skill players will go play where the best linemen go, because that’s how you win.
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81, good post as usual. Your comment is exactly Ari’s point about the expanded playoff being the equivalent of a participation trophy. The #12 seed likely has a fatal flaw that isn’t going to hold up over 4 games and may not over 2 games. It only produces a potentially interesting game in December for TV, which is what this is really about.
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CFP expansion is like telling me, “If you put a bigger motor on your margarita machine, your margarita’s will be mo’ better”,…ain’t buying that line of B.S….GO DAWGS!
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You do get your margarita quicker 😉
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RR scribbles “bigger motor on blender” in little spiral notebook.
Short pencil is better than a long memory…
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As has been said many times before — can’t wait to watch all the CFP games featuring teams with three regular season losses! W0000000!
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The whole season is a DeFacto playoff.
So sorry, all of you teams that didn’t do well enough to make the final four. You just didn’t show up enough to make the cut.
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It gives teams at the top another chance to have a Mookie Williams type situation and excuse for losing.
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This is as a succinct debunking of the expanding playoff myth that you will see. If more people just took a second to look behind the expanded playoff curtain to see the stack of money driving things, they might take their blinders off for a second. But no. A regular season upset doesn’t make as much money as a playoff upset, so lets pull even more validity from the regular season and stack it in a playoff format that will drive the same results we have always been seeing. A counter point may be that teams may be less reluctant to schedule regular season patsys because they will still have a chance of making the playoffs despite a potential loss, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
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Gives Kirby a chance to throw another game to get his team’s attention and fool the opposition heading into the playoffs.
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Well, it WILL expand, and one day we’ll have a “national champion” with a 9-6 record. Can’t wait for that day.
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Oh, and /s in case anyone missed it.
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I didn’t think you were being sarcastic. I thought you were serious and I was agreeing with your post.
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You can just about permanently ink (no need for a pencil) UGA, Bama, anOSU, and Clemson into the playoffs every year. HIGH probability that ND, OU, and now USC (because ESPN wants them in so badly along with TX if they can ever get their shit together) will have to play their way OUT of the playoff. That does not leave room for many newcomers to this expanded party.
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You all can’t actually know this, because you can’t know what making a playoff (at all) will do for a school’s recruiting. What they’re betting on is that even if there are a lot of blow-outs, the exposure and accomplishment of making the playoffs at all will enable some of the schools to recruit well enough to catch up. And if it stays at 4 and the 4 are us, Alabama, tOSU, and Clempson every year, that will ruin parity just as it always has. The powers that be don’t know if this will work either, but it’s a card they can play that addresses multiple shared concerns.
Really, most people on this blog should come clean and admit that they don’t two shits about whether CFB turns in to college hockey or not as long as their school is one of the winners. You’ll take ruining the sport if your team wins, seems to me. Prove me wrong.
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I’m going out on a limb here and saying that getting your brains beaten out in the first round of the playoffs is not going to do much for recruiting. A 63-14 beatdown is not going to all of a sudden make a recruit want to come running to your school. The playoffs will not fix that. The disparity on what each school spends on recruiting, facilities, and staff will not be fixed with and expanded playoff ( and now throw in NIL collectives). Until those change, the rich will continue to get richer. Prove me wrong.
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I don’t remember everyone on GTP demanding expanded playoffs when Georgia was f’d out of the NCG by the Herbstreit Doctrine, Saban’s advice, etc. We were pissed off, but we didn’t demand expansion.
I’m all for playoff shrinkage. Cincinatti and Michigan shouldn’t have been in the last playoff.
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The rare LSU kind of team might want in, but the same regular season W-L should take care of things nicely. I was glad when they went to the 4 game format vs the BCS. A 12 or 16 game playoff just does not seem just if it ends up being a war of attrition. Bodies lined up and teams decimated in the process. It’s not basketball.
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Ooops, missed the concrete casting of the 12 game “tourney” I will have to read top down from now on.
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Spot on article! The first 5+ seed to win a national title will be one of OSU, Bama, UGA, etc who just happened to take an upset or two in the regular season but had enough talent to win the playoff. It won’t make anyone happy, but it will completely invalidate that regular season upset.
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