The conversation around the 24-team playoff can yield some priceless commentary, even from a seven-time national championship coach like Nick Saban.
At the outset, I really like Saban and appreciate the fact that he graces our television screens on Saturday as a key part of the College Gameday experience. He’s also done a lot of great work lobbying for the Protect College Sports Act, a piece of much-needed legislation to get the unpredictable world of college athletics under control.
But as the College Football Playoff appears destined to expand, Saban is off the mark in suggesting the committee should compromise with a 16-team playoff.
At its core, I understand he’d like to cut a deal reducing expansion, but it vastly underestimates how we got here in the first place – money. He knows how deep the game’s pockets are, and the suggestion that we should gatekeep certain Power Four conferences from the playoff is merely a guise for protecting the ruling class of college football: the SEC.
It’s not an ideal picture, but the CFP will only survive in an expanded form that incorporates more than the SEC, Big Ten and the chokepoint ACC and Big 12 teams that’re fortunate enough to sniff the bracket.
We’re not going back to the BCS – I had an argument with family about this very topic today – and the hard truth is college football’s going to mirror basketball in a lot of ways by 2030. There’s pageantry involved, and football thrives on it, even if that means sacrificing the soon-to-be-meaningless conference championship games. If you asked any commissioner and sat them down with a yearly expense sheet, cutting those over-bloated title games makes a lot of sense when accounting for the resources, travel, and potential ROI involved with competing for a CFP seat.
In the current model, or even Saban’s preferred 16-team scenario, it’s hard to convince a school like Texas Tech or BYU that it has a routine shot at making the playoff and actually winning a game or two. Bump that number to 24, and suddenly those high-priced rosters start to make a little more sense when the CFP pie becomes that much bigger and adds several more chairs at the table.
