The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. While the final result of the College Football season may differ from year to year, the entire process leading up to the National Championship game is the same every single year: wait for Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma to destroy the rest of the competition and then offend two of those fan bases by leaving them out of the four-team playoff altogether.
I ask you this as a passionate fan of college football: when will the insanity end?
With the college football season set to get underway on Saturday, August 27th, the first AP Top-25 poll has been released and if you are shocked by which four teams make up the top-4, I have some ocean-side property in Kansas to sell you.
Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, and Clemson lead the pack of 25, with Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Utah, Michigan, and Oklahoma in tow.
It’s such an exciting time to be a fan of those top-four schools because you are finally being given a chance to succeed this season. I mean, after all, those four programs have combined to lose one of the last eight National Championships.
So, again I ask, this time to you, the reader, and fan of college football: Are you not bored of watching the same four teams compete against each other every single season?
Ways To Fix the College Football Playoff
I’m not going to sit here and try and reinvent the wheel. The College Football playoff is a staple of the college game and it’s a cash cow for the prestigious schools that already have more money than they know what to do with. It’s not going away any time soon, but it has its flaws.
The first way to fix what’s clearly broken is by expanding the playoff. Yes, this has been talked about since the inaugural CFP was put in place and there are two different (realistic) formats to do so.
Eight Team Playoff: This is the most realistic of the bunch as you can get all five power five conference champions into the mix and the highest ranked Group of Five champion. From there, two at-large bids would be given to the teams ranked seventh and eighth in the country. The format would be a very straightforward 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc.
12-Team Playoff: This playoff format would include the top six conference champions (including at least one Group of Five champion) plus the six next highest-ranked teams in the country per the committee’s rankings. The four highest-ranked conference champions would receive first-round byes, while the remaining teams would play each other at the home field of the better seed: 5 vs. 12, 6 vs. 11, etc.
The quarterfinals and semi-finals of this 12-team tournament would then be hosted by existing bowl games, with the championship game played at a predetermined neutral site.
Those two ideas are phenomenal. Getting more teams into the mix gives football fans more meaningful football and maybe, just maybe we can tell our grandkids about one hell of an underdog that captured the country’s heart.
Or we can get radical and turn the entire football landscape and recruiting game on its head.
I present to you, the College Football Playoff Cap.
The idea is quite simple. We limit programs to just two appearances in a row to the College Football Playoffs. It doesn’t matter if you are Alabama and win three straight SEC titles and go undefeated in three straight regular seasons. You are not getting in that third year. You instead get to go to a New Year’s Six bowl.
Now, I understand that this is NEVER going to happen, but think about the potential this has, to reshape the way recruits continuously flock to the upper-echelon programs like Bama’, Ohio State, Clemson, etc.
It would certainly give teams a chance to play catch up in the recruiting game and it would certainly give us some fresh faces in the playoff and a chance for a truly starved fanbase to taste glory.
Never say never.