Here’s what needs to change about College Football Playoff format after sparkling debut

The 12-team College Football Playoff works. I don’t mean it works like an old tube television that turns on if you bang on it in just the right spot. This format requires no pounding or modification. It works like a new 72-inch mounted flat screen TV that displays a crisp picture with the click of a button.

Leave it be. Enjoy the show. Let a good thing be a good thing.

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey and his Big Ten counterpart Tony Petitti vowed they’d closely monitor this expanded playoff’s debut as they evaluated whether to pursue tweaks to the format.

“This just has to go incredibly well,” Sankey said in October. “This has to be a successful launch.”

Whether this playoff goes down as “a successful launch” probably depends on who’s evaluating the launch pattern. If you ask me, here’s a list of what I’d change, post haste, about the playoff format:

Nothing.

That’s right, I wouldn’t change the format a bit.

When Ohio State or Notre Dame celebrates on Monday in Atlanta, a deserving champion that proved itself throughout four playoff games will be crowned. We won’t wonder whether the selection committee omitted the nation’s best team. Every team rejected from this bracket presented a flawed résumé and squandered opportunities.

Should College Football Playoff adjust seeding, byes? Nope.

The most common grievance about this playoff format is that the four byes are reserved for conference champions. That unlocks the possibility of some funny-looking differences between a team’s CFP ranking and its bracket seeding. Consider, Arizona State ranked No. 12 in the final CFP rankings, but, as the fourth-best conference champion, the Sun Devils were seeded No. 4.

This bothered many observers. ESPN blowhard Rece Davis used the network’s weekly rankings show as his personal pulpit to demand that seeding be…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/heres-needs-change-college-football-110202799.html

Author : USA TODAY Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-18 11:02:00

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