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The College Football Playoff is already headed for likely expansion and retooling.
But which plan should Tennessee football fans be rooting for? And is that the same as what’s best for college football?
On this podcast episode of “The Volunteer State,” hosts Adam Sparks and Blake Toppmeyer break down the various 12-team, 14-team and 16-team playoff formats with the Vols in mind. One of them will be implemented in the 2026 season.
Sparks and Toppmeyer like the current 12-team format, but they don’t think it will last beyond the 2025 season. And they hate the idea of automatic qualifiers for the top four teams in the SEC and Big Ten.
To hear the full conversation, listen to the podcast. Here are some highlights.
12-team playoff was awesome. Why change it?
The current 12-team format includes five conference champions and seven at-large teams. Sparks and Toppmeyer thought it worked well last season because it put stakes on so many regular-season games around the country.
Their only disagreement: Toppmeyer likes awarding byes to conference champions, but Sparks wants the highest ranked teams to get the byes.
They each have their reasons. Sparks doesn’t like that teams earning a first-round home game are bumped back into road game because lower-ranked conference champions leapfrogged them. (Notably, that’s what happened to UT last season, and Sparks covers UT.)
This 14-team playoff may not help Vols that much
One version of a proposed 14-team playoff includes five conference champions and nine at-large teams. It’s just an expanded field of what we already have, only with two teams getting byes rather than four teams.
If the playoff is going to change, Sparks is OK with this version. Toppmeyer actually prefers this 14-team format over the 12-team format because it settles the debate over who deserves the byes. In most years, the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/college-football-playoff-format-best-154511583.html
Author : Knox News | The Knoxville News-Sentinel
Publish date : 2025-02-21 15:45:00
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