There was a time when losing a college football game felt like the end of the world.
Because sometimes it was.
One bad Saturday in October could derail an entire season. One missed field goal in November could turn a national championship dream into a lifetime of misery. And it was beautiful.
I keep hearing that college football only had such a great regular season because its postseason was terrible. I think that’s completely backward.
The regular season was the playoff. Every Saturday was another round, and losing actually had consequences.
Now, because apparently twelve teams aren’t enough, we’re discussing a 24-team playoff.
Twenty-four.
At this rate, why not invite everybody? We can give the No. 24 seed a commemorative T-shirt and congratulate it for successfully participating in the regular season.
I’m an Alabama fan, and here’s the funny part: a bigger playoff would probably benefit Alabama more than almost anybody. We could lose to Georgia, drop the Iron Bowl, stumble against somebody we have no business losing to, and still have a perfectly good chance to win the national championship.
That’s supposed to be a selling point?
I don’t want Alabama getting unlimited do-overs. I want those games to matter.
I actually loved the four-team playoff. One loss? You might survive. Two? Yeah, you’re probably done. Eight teams could’ve been a great compromise. Even twelve is defensible. But twenty-four?
We’re talking about a playoff large enough that teams with three or four losses, potentially even teams that went .500 in conference play, could compete for a national championship.
Congratulations. You won half your conference games. Here’s your participation trophy. It comes with a first-round matchup.
This isn’t the NFL, where a salary cap and draft keep teams relatively close in talent. College football has programs operating on completely different planets. If a powerhouse goes .500 in conference play, it probably lost games it had absolutely no business losing.
And we’re supposed to reward that?
Look at Penn State and Michigan this weekend. Penn State is 3-3 and winless in the Big Ten. Michigan is 3-2 and winless in conference play. Are we seriously supposed to believe the winner should be back in the national championship conversation?
Maybe try winning a conference game before we start planning the parade.
And for powerhouses with easy schedules, a 24-team playoff turns the regular season into a twelve-game administrative requirement. Beat the teams you’re supposed to beat, stay healthy, submit your paperwork to the committee.
Why schedule another difficult opponent when you can coast into the bracket?
Brilliant.
Think about the Kick Six. Chris Davis returns a missed field goal, Auburn wins the Iron Bowl, and Alabama’s hopes of a third straight national championship are effectively over.
In a 24-team playoff?
Auburn storms the field. Alabama fans stare into the void. And then Alabama gets the No. 11 seed.
Wonderful. Can’t wait for January.
Or think about Alabama at LSU in 2012, when AJ McCarron led a late touchdown drive to save the season. Terrence Cody blocking Tennessee’s potential game-winning field goal in 2009. Jarvis Moss doing the same for Florida against South Carolina in 2006.
Those teams went on to win national championships, and those were championship moments before the championship game was ever played.
We’re not losing the highlights. We’re losing the consequences.
Then there’s the argument that expansion creates Cinderella stories.
I love Cinderella stories. But if that’s the goal, maybe we should talk about NIL and the transfer portal.
A smaller school develops an overlooked quarterback, builds a team around him, and finally has a shot at something special. Then a bigger program comes calling with more money, and suddenly Cinderella’s quarterback is shopping for a new castle.
I’m not blaming the players. They deserve to be paid and pursue better opportunities, but let them make the playoff after transfer and prove it at a powerhouse program.
These teams have no chance in the playoffs. They basically invite Cinderella to the ball, take off her slippers, and bash her skull in for 4 hours. But hey! Congrats on getting to the dance.
And now we’ve reached the point where transfer decisions and portal activity can overlap with the postseason itself.
Think about how ridiculous that is.
We’re expanding the playoff to make the national championship the most important thing in the sport, while players are having to make decisions about their next school before the current season has even finished.
Imagine an NFL team preparing for a playoff game while half the conversation is about which players might be suiting up for somebody else next month.
College football somehow looked at that situation and decided what we really needed was more playoff games.
And another annoying part is that Cinderella never needed a national championship to have a great story. Boise State beating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl mattered. Appalachian State beating Michigan mattered.
Which brings me to something else we’ve already managed to ruin: bowl season.
I loved bowl season. The ridiculous sponsors, the random matchups, the seniors playing one final game for their schools.
Were those games technically meaningless? Sure. But meaningless according to whom?
If you want to get philosophical about it, isn’t the national championship technically just another football game? It matters because we decide it matters.
An 8-4 team winning a bowl had something to celebrate. Not everything needed to end with a national championship trophy.
But the four-team playoff, as much as I liked it, helped convince everybody that games outside the playoff were irrelevant.
And now we’re doing the same thing to the regular season.
We’re turning a sport where the entire season mattered into one where the only thing that matters is the tournament at the end.
All for what? More television money? More playoff inventory? A chance for a 9-3 team to get hot in December?
I understand wanting more access and fairness. But a 24-team playoff won’t eliminate controversy. We’ll just argue about the twenty-fourth team instead of the twelfth.
Congratulations. We’ve moved the argument down twelve spots.
College football was never supposed to be twelve games of qualifying for a tournament.
The regular season was the tournament.
You didn’t get to save your best football for December. You had to play it in September, October, and November, too.
There will still be rivalries, packed stadiums, and unbelievable plays. But a game where both teams can afford to lose will never feel quite like one where neither can.
The Kick Six will always be the Kick Six.
But instead of asking, “Can we save our season?”
We’ll be asking, “Can we save our seed?”
College football doesn’t need a 24-team playoff. It needs a regular season where losing still means something.
Because college football already had the greatest playoff in sports.
We played it every Saturday.