It's time to expand the college football playoffs to eight teams
It starts on December 29th. The locales are Miami and Dallas. The Orange and Cotton Bowl games. The playoffs for the college football national championship begins.
Alabama vs Oklahoma. Clemson vs Notre Dame. The more things in college football change, the more they stay the same.
In the five years since the football playoffs began, this will be Alabama's fifth trip. We've seen the Tide every single year. Clemson will have been there the last four years. Three times for Oklahoma and two for Notre Dame.
It's time to see some new faces contending for the title.
We need an eight team playoff to determine a national champion. It's way past time for this. We should have had this from the start.
There are five power conferences in college football. We put a premium on winning the conference championship, so all five need to be in the playoffs. The last two years, we haven't seen a representative from either the Big Ten or Pac 12. An eight team playoff gets them in. So simple and there's no controversy over leaving a champion out, as it seems almost every year.
That leaves room for three more teams. You can have a single spot for one of the smaller schools. They always talk about how they can compete with the big boys. This gives them their put up or shut up opportunity. No more fake championship rings. UCF can play for the real thing.
There's two more spots in the playoffs for at large schools. It rewards a team like Georgia, that had a great seasons but not quite great enough to get to the final four.
Then you seed the teams like you do in basketball. Number one plays number eight. Two plays seven...and so on.
Between the choosing of the at large schools and the seeding, this gives the playoff committee something to do. It keeps the human element involved.
So what would an eight team look like this December? You'd have Alabama vs. Central Florida. Clemson vs Washington. Notre Dame vs Ohio State. And, Oklahoma vs Georgia.
All conferences and all sections of the country would be involved....and we haven't even started to talk about how much more money this brings in to all the partners in this event...except the players....but that's another subject for another day.
If you're a college football fan, doesn't that sound better than the same old same old? Are you ready for an eight team playoff?
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