ESPN’s Michael Wilbon says College Football Playoff should be at 8, isn’t because of greed
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ESPN’s Michael Wilbon has been a mainstay for a quarter-century now on Pardon the Interruption, and the longtime sports analyst wasn’t afraid to go after the network he works for in discussing why the College Football Playoff would never dare go from 12 teams back to 8.
“From the top for me, 12 (teams) is too many. I’m going to disagree with people who are true experts, who’ve been talking all day (today). They all bless 12 (teams). I’m not going to bless 12,” said Wilbon during PTI on Friday afternoon. “If you have 8 (teams), you don’t have byes. You don’t need byes. Get in with 8, you seed them 1 through 8, and you put those 8 teams out there and say, ‘let’s go.'”
Wilbon explained further that the teams who had those 4 first-round byes — Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State — all lost their first Playoff game because they were rusty, because “they hadn’t played in a month,” as Wilbon said. For Wilbon, it’s a simple fix for the Playoff committee in 2025 and beyond, and it’s not right for ESPN to be pushing for an expanded Playoff because it hurts the Playoff as a whole.
Wilbon went so far as to call it all a “greed play and a money play” by the network.
Meanwhile, longtime PTI co-host Tony Kornheiser ripped into the SEC after Georgia fell flat on its face in a quarterfinal loss to Notre Dame on Thursday.
“I don’t want to hear any more about how the SEC got hosed by the committee,” said Kornheiser, who also talked about the early Playoff exit by Tennessee and massive bowl flameout by Alabama.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
