The Athletic has a roundtable to address the question, “Is CFP expansion just a money grab?“. This is Ari Wasserman’s contribution ($$):
The regular season will never be meaningless. This is college football. There’s too much passion around it. But the high drama of the upset or the stakes that make this sport so compelling in the middle of the year no longer exist. And that stinks.
… That’s the best thing about the expansion of the Playoff. It seems to be a more inclusive system, even if the eventual national champions will be the same as they are today and the regular season is a little weaker. It is paramount to save the sport.
It would have been a lot quicker just to answer “yes”.
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UPDATE: Apparently some of you think his first paragraph refers to the here and now. It doesn’t.
… We love upsets because we love watching teams’ dreams be destroyed, especially the big-timers who make the Playoff every year. Now all we’ve done is make a scenario where every single season Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia and others in that realm — even in big-time down years — make the Playoff.
Get The Picture 
A sport that is generating billions and is the second most popular TV sport in the US needs something to come along and save it?
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I guess the suits that run college football are completely unaware of a thing called NASCAR that set about “improving” its product to make it more of a national draw?
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Talk about your “farts in church”!
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Man. Talk about a head-scratching quote.
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Forget it, Jake. It’s Mickeytown.
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What a dumbass.
Ari bases all of his arguments on how he feels.
One’s desire to expand the playoffs is directly proportional to how much one’s pet program sucks.
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In case you didn’t know he was the beat guy for Ohio State for some years and still carries a torch for them. So at least he can speak for one of the usual suspects.
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Didn’t know.
Maybe he’s looking out for the interests of that conference.
They all hate the SEC for having two games in the NC game.
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The high drama of the upset no longer exists? Don’t know about Ari, but a lot of the rest of us DAWG fans were feeling highly dramatized for a good while last Saturday night.
I do agree with his earlier assessment about the regular season, though.
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I didn’t realize they’d already implemented the 12-team playoff.
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Doesn’t this weekend show us anything? It definitely is a money grab, and is not necessary. But upsets can and will happen. It will be fun when they do.
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As I see the future of college football; as presented by the geniuses running it, it goes something like this:
Move teams from their long standing conference affiliation and do away with traditional rivalry games so they can start playing teams they have nothing in common with from regions far from their campuses.
Make the regular season less relevant. Teams will be able to “throw” games as a tactic to make the playoff. The out of conference games will have virtually no meaning at all.
Expand the playoff to include 8 more teams that have no business being in it to create the illusion that more teams have a chance to be national champions. An added “benefit” of this great idea will be to save the jobs of some coaches who will be able to sneak into the playoff every few years.
Let TV run pretty much all aspects of college football with the goal of maximizing the tv audience.
I guess I have a hard time seeing how this is going to “save the sport”.
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I numbered my points when I wrote them. I guess numbers don’t follow when posted.
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Don’t worry, the points came through. Sadly, I agree with you.
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The flip side of the job saving aspect is that it might also hasten the canning of several coaches that don’t get into the expanded playoff. The Gus Bus might have been shown the door in 2019 instead of 2020 if there had been a 12 team playoff in 2019. Auburn finished #12 in the final CFP rankings in 2019 but would have been bumped by #17 Memphis as the AAC/highest ranked G5 champion. That might have been more than Jimmy Rane could have swallowed (and Jimmy looks like he pretty much swallows everything).
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I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but seems to me people got pretty excited about Marshall, App St., and Ga. Southern knocking off some bluebloods a few weeks ago?
And I sure as heck remember thinking “this is blowing a playoff shot” in the 3rd Qtr. Saturday night.
I guess these thoughts are void of drama and not compelling????
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Y’all aren’t getting this. He made that comment in the context of a 12-game playoff, not as things currently are.
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Forget it, Bluto…this is GTP.
Most of us went to public school.
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I’ll always have my degree from Alps Road Elementary to fall back on.
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Acworth elementary here…same school my grandfather (it was a high school for him) and both my parents and brother went to.
I walked to school from 1st to 5th…and sometimes my dog would just “show up” at school…my 3rd grade teacher called him a show dog after about the 2nd time.
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That made me laugh.
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I agree with Ari on his point that expanding to 12 teams just means that teams like Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State and Clemson basically will get in nearly every year.
I’m not in favor of a 12 team playoff, but I disagree with Ari that expansion to 12 teams will take away all of the regular season drama. A regular season loss by Georgia and a loss in the SECCG or a regular season loss that keeps them out of the SECCG (for example) might not keep Georgia out of the playoff when it moves to 12 teams (actually, a perfect example of this is 2017 when Auburn won the Iron Bowl…in a 12 team playoff Georgia, Auburn, and Alabama would have all been in the playoff). But there will still be a lot of drama in November surrounding those teams clawing and scratching for one of those at-large bids that sits around 10, 11, or 12 in the rankings. In other words, the drama won’t be gone when the CFP goes to 12 teams. It just gets shifted to lower in the standings.
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The 2nd part is pretty much spot on though…
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I’ll just continue to enjoy it until I don’t. At some point you look around and realize that what you fell in love with no longer exists other than in name only. For me that is baseball. All the rule changes, metrics, etc. have turned me from a raving fanatic to best a casual fan not of the game anymore, but just the Braves. I fear that at some point this is going to happen with CFB. I love it and will watch 2 teams that I have no real interest in because I love the game. It is so much more passionate and interesting to me than the NFL. Keep up the good work empty suites and I’m sure I will feel the same way about CFB in the future. I will always love my DAWGS and will watch and support them. I’m not sure I will be able to say that about the game as a whole if it continues on its current trajectory.
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The Braves are a fun team to watch.
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With your first sentence, I totally agree.
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The Braves were in the playoffs, but the chase to clinch the bye is compelling and generates passion. In theory that’s what the geniuses running CFB think will happen, negating all other concerns. It’s possible. Drop a game like last week but then come storming back the rest of the season will keep DawgNation engaged. Don’t like it, but will learn to live with it.
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Ari is so funny. He’s also not very smart.
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“it seems to be a more inclusive system”…
Suuumbody needs to tell ole Ari this sounds like gotdamn hippie participation trophy bullshit!!
NASCAR is rur’nt, NFL is rur’nt, ML bazeball is rur’nt….
keep your gotdamn hands off college football!!
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The NFL is rolling in money…
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Ari is a “journalist”, have you ever known a “journalist” that will just use one word. They get paid by the word.
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Playoff expansion makes the regular season ‘a little weaker,’ huh, Ari? So when undefeated UGA and Bama meet in the SEC title game and neither team has to win to make the playoff, that’s just a slight weakening of the regular season, is it? Winning the SEC suddenly means much less than it did when the playoff field was 4 teams, but no biggie, right? Regular season’ll be fine. It’s just a flesh wound.
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It sure didn’t mean much last year, although another SECC Hat would have been nice.
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I’m more worried about the de-regionalization of the conferences than expansion. To me that risks weakening enthusiasm. Allowing more teams in might help keep fans of those teams in contention far more engaged. I just don’t understand why they had to take these conferences out of their regions—Well, I guess I understand why (TV $$$), but I think that will do more damage than expansion.
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