The weeks-long debate regarding the 12 spots in the College Football Playoff will come to a head very soon, when the cigars-and-bourbon back-room star chamber decides the configuration of the dozen teams that will be competing for the National Championship.
There will always be arguments about which teams should get the final spots in any playoff system based on anything other than wins and losses and tiebreakers. Whether it’s 12 for football or 64 (or however many they let in now) for basketball, the teams that just missed out will always be salty about being omitted.
But let’s consider the bigger picture, based on the sole iteration of the 12-team system from 2024. The most important spots are No. 5 through No. 8. Those teams get an extra home game. Those teams get a chance to keep the saw sharp, against a lesser foe.
Last year, each of the four first-round games had double-digit victory margins. And each of the four teams that won their first-round games went to the neutral site second-round contests and upended the higher seeds, which had been sitting at home for nearly four weeks.
That’s the bigger picture and, potentially, the biggest flaw in the current process. The fifth through eighth teams get December home games against the last four teams to make it. Check that box, and those teams head to the next round with a sweat already going against top-four teams that are both feeling the weight of their seeding — and that may be caught flat-footed after an extended break.
For that reason alone, the CFP should expand to 16 teams. And then all of the noise can focus on the arguments made by the teams that landed at No. 17 or No. 18.
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