It will be argued until the end of days, certain questions in life. Stonehenge. The Mayans. Martians. And what really is the right amount of teams for college football’s post season?
Since the advent of the CFB Playoff, the latest incarnation in an attempt to either fix this vexing question or simply just squeeze more money out of the system, it’s looked like the number of four is right on the money.
Hey, someone, or a lot of someones … got something right. And if 2016 can be offered up as evidence, four is just right because sometimes it’s just right, and sometimes it’s too much. But it’s never too little.
Technically, teams mostly lose the right to complain about what they do or do not get once they lose a game. After that, it’s mostly up for tortured debate.
Alabama is in, we know that. After that, we’re going to have a verbal knife fight probably over the next three teams, and no matter what, people are guaranteed to be pretty mad.
Why is that?
Because honestly, four probably is too much this year, which is why this thing never needs to expand, ever, for any reason.
The CFB Playoff committee could end up having to weigh the fact that the best, deepest conference in the land put two teams in its title game (Penn State and/or Wisconsin) that aren’t even the best two in its conference, one of whom will almost assuredly have fewer losses than the conference champ (Michigan or Ohio State).
It may have to weigh a conference champ from the Pac-12 (Southern Cal) that got destroyed by Alabama like they were FCS cannon fodder or a Pac-12 champ that actually lost to an FCS team (Washington State). If they’re lucky, they’ll get Washington to win out. If they’re lucky.
Then, on to the Big 12, where they could end up weighing a champ who got smoked by that team we mentioned above named Ohio State. If West Virginia wins out, they will likely have defeated one ranked team all season. That’s no fault of their own, but it’s just illustrating that four is just fine.
If Louisville and Clemson lose, all hell breaks loose.
We’re very likely looking at a non-conference champ, which still in some ways feels a bit oily, but not nearly as oily as putting in a conference champ who got smoked by a non-conference champ from a different conference that has no loss.
College football normally just figures itself out, but it doesn’t feel that simple this year.
If you look at the current CFB Playoff ratings, which mean about as much as table lint right now, let’s say you go ahead and pull it out to 8 teams. You’re very possibly looking at 3-4 Big Ten teams … the majority of any of those matchups being rematches. You’d probably be looking at some form of a rematch in the Big 12.
You’d look at two probably from the Pac-12, possibly a rematch, and one that lost by 46 points to Alabama.
And then, you have poor Alabama, which probably thinks, “the BCS sounds good this year, because we’re just getting an extra chance to play our worst game.”
The truth of the matter is that the real answer varies by year. Sometimes it looks like two, sometimes it looks like three but you can’t have an odd number, and sometimes it looks like four. Past four, you’re watering down the product so bad, games really begin to not matter at the top of the rankings at some point.
So be happy that we have four, because it’s not two, but don’t desire for eight, because too many years are like 2016, and that would be a disaster.
Four is fine … because of times like last year when it was mostly obvious, and times like this year when it’ll be a rough sledding just to find out who can fill it out.
