Randy Smith: If There Was Ever A Time

The College Football Playoff committee released the latest poll and it's pretty solid. Georgia, Michigan TCU and Southern Cal are the teams the committee has selected for the final four, which will become official after this weekend's conference championship games. I personally don't believe any of those teams will lose, which means the field is unofficially set. It also means if there was ever a time for an expanded playoff format, this is it.

If the playoffs were to begin this year with a 12-team format, the top four teams would all have a first round bye. In the first round, Washington would play at Ohio State, Utah would play at Alabama, Kansas State would visit Tennessee, and Clemson plays at Penn State. Now that's a pretty good slate of games. The winners would all face the top four teams in round two, with the quarterfinal winners gathering on neutral field for the semi finals, as we have now.

There has always been talk about the added games creating too much of a strain on the athletes. A lot of schools are on Christmas break by the time the games would start so that theory no longer holds water. There would be a lot of money on the table for an expanded format and that always creates more interest....and for the millions of college football fans who are not ready for the football season to end, it provides more games on television through the holidays.

Instead, we have four teams playing on New Years Eve with more than three weeks of mediocre bowl games and nothing else exciting going on. Start the expanded playoffs in 2023. There is no reason at all to postpone things any longer and like the NCAA basketball tournament, teams can come from out of nowhere to challenge for a national title. If you look at the final four teams now, it's three of the old guard teams with one newcomer, (TCU.)

College football has always been the most popular college sport and before a playoff system was put in place, when the season was over most of the excitement was gone. One championship game, played a month after the regular season ends and that was it. We've come a long way in a short period of time and the more teams we have still relevant in December, the better things are.

I watch a few bowl games but I really can't get excited about a game between two 6-6 teams playing in the "Who Cares" Bowl. Less than 20% of the bowl games played now have close to sell out crowds. I've been to some of those bowl games and the older I got, the less I cared about being there. The playoff committee has already let the cat out of the bag about expansion....so why wait?