As if we needed another reminder, the B1G reminded us yet again this month that the actual college football season can’t start soon enough.
We need Week 0 like a southerner needs black eyed peas on New Year’s Day, and even though 2 midwestern teams playing a college football game on an island in Europe is about as weird as LIV Golf pumping music into their 3-round weekend snoozefests, we will all watch it with grateful hearts come Saturday as long as it means talking season is finally over.
What did the B1G do now, you ask? Or more likely, why did the B1G believe pitching its latest idea for College Football Expansion to B1G athletic directors and then leaking the hare-brained scheme to the press was a good idea?
If you missed it, the B1G’s latest pitch for Playoff expansion involves a field of as many as 28 teams, a mega-tournament so big that well, who could possibly complain?
Undoubtedly feeling itself after winning the last 2 national championships, the B1G has stuck its neck out in College Football Playoff expansion discussions, which have stalled over format disagreements in the past few months.
The biggest advantage to a field of 28, one B1G athletic director told SDS this week, is that “you couldn’t really argue that the best teams didn’t get invited.”
Expansion seems inevitable at this point. It’s just a question of what it looks like.
Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti seems to prefer a field of 16 that features multiple automatic bids for each Power 4 conference. The question is how those bids get divided. Under one B1G proposed model, the SEC and B1G would receive 4 auto bids each. The ACC and Big 12 would receive 2 more auto bids, and 1 auto bid would go to the highest ranked champion from the non-Power 4 conferences. There would then be 3 at-large bids determined by a selection committee.
In the 28-team field, a play-in weekend would potentially replace (or complement, in a way no one has yet to explain) conference championship weekend, allowing teams ranked 3 to 6 in power conferences the opportunity to earn a spot in a final 16-team bracket.
The Big 12, already irritated at the B1G 4-4-2-2 proposal, stalled discussions earlier this summer by suggesting a 16-team bracket that awards 5 auto bids (4 Power 4 conference champs, 1 bid to the top ranked non-Power 4 conference champion) and 11 at large berths. That format intrigued enough SEC athletic directors to foment unrest and opposition to the B1G’s preferred format. The net result has been stalled discussions on expansion, at least until now.
Here’s the thing about 28 teams – or even 24, which admittedly works at the FCS level but feels too big at the FBS level.
It cheapens the regular season.
That’s already occurring in the 12-team format, where serious debate circulated over which 3-loss team was more “worthy” of playing for the national championship in the first year of the expanded format. But 28 teams? A 7-5 entrant is inevitable. A sport that built a brand on every Saturday being meaningful would suddenly have a Playoff that stands as the ultimate monument to mediocrity. I’m not the most superstitious guy, but I might hang a horseshoe above my doorway to keep that evil from entering our beloved sport.
Imagine losing an Iron Bowl and immediately getting the chance to replay it in the Round of 16 two weeks later? That’s a scenario that could happen in a field of 12 or 16 to be sure, but what better way to water down the bragging rights that are part and parcel of the sport’s lifeblood than to almost assure an 8-3 Auburn upsetting a 10-1 Alabama has 0 impact on anyone, outside a handful of toilet paper salesman in the state of Alabama?
Also aren’t we as a culture turning away from participation trophies?
I think it’s fantastic that a team could overcome injuries/youth/insert adversity here and go 9-3 in the toughest league in college football. Don’t we have wonderful events like the Pop Tart Bowl to reward that accomplishment?
We don’t really need to let them play in a tournament for the national championship, do we?
And what’s the matter, exactly, with a 12-team Playoff? Five auto bids and 7 at-large berths seems a proper way to reward regular season excellence and offer December and January hope. Go to 16 if you must, with similar conference champion guarantees, but do we really need to debate whether team 29 deserved a Playoff game over team 28?
In the pantheon of bad sports ideas, from the participation trophy to the 0-12 youth basketball team to the glowing puck designed to help viewers follow a black puck on white ice (no, really, that’s what FOX felt was necessary), I would rate a 28-team Playoff at “Playing with Appalachian State in Dynasty Mode because you loved that game where they won at Michigan” levels of silly.
That’s not a knock against App State, I promise. If they go 12-0, the Mountaineers should have a seat at the Playoff table.
We just don’t need to invite a 9-3 Michigan team that loses to them to a Playoff play-in game.
If you want absurdity, play a video game.
If you want excellence, keep the field at 16 or fewer teams.
It’s supposed to be hard to win. The “hard” is what makes it worth it.
The emptiness of walking out of a stadium in late November, knowing your championship dreams just perished on the field, is part of what makes the sport great.
The pain of a lost season is what makes the special one worth savoring.
A 28-team Playoff spoils that journey. The journey, mercifully, begins again on Saturday.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
