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Paul Finebaum has seen the evolution of the College Football Playoff over the years, right up to the current 12-team format that was played out for the first time during the 2024 season.
A lot of criticism came out of that first 12-team run, including suggestions for how the Playoff should evolve going forward. And the latest rumblings have the SEC and Big Ten, the 2 conferences that right now control college football, taking up more of the Playoff pie, so to speak. The leagues are pushing for the 12-team format to increase to 14 or even 16 teams, with the SEC and Big Ten having 4 automatic bids each.
The possibility of this has already angered ESPN analysts like Pardon the Interruption co-host Michael Wilbon. And during ESPN’s Get Up on Friday, college football analyst Paul Finebaum chimed in with equal venom, calling the possibility of all this “inherently wrong.”
“They are completely wrong about guaranteeing bids. Even SEC fans are calling in saying they don’t like it,” said Finebaum. “There is something inherently wrong about stacking the deck before the season. … I think it’s a bad move right now.”
Finebaum also pointed out that in both leagues, particularly in the Big Ten, in a given season there could be a few elite teams who do deserve an automatic Playoff bid but that the third or fourth team that would get the automatic bid wouldn’t deserve it because the conference wasn’t deep enough.
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.
