They’ve heard the voices raging, raging against the dying of the light. A cacophony of criticism that can’t be ignored.
Until it is.
Until the College Football Playoff committee says we’ve heard your cries of expansion hate, and we’re going to 24, like it or not.
But here’s the thing: You hate it now, but will you hate it later?
“Ultimately,” says CFP executive director Rich Clark, “We just need to make a spectacular playoff.”
That’s the gamble, everyone. That’s the only move left for a CFP that three years ago went from a wondrous and controversial four-team postseason — there’s nothing wrong with controversy, people — to tripling in size, and using a 12-team format for one season before
trying to get fatter, faster.
From four, to 12 to 24 in four years. A brilliant man once said in 2013, prior to the advent of the four-team playoff a year later: “Bracket creep is inevitable.”
That was former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who worked with former SEC commissioner Mike Slive to come up with the four-team deal, and it was gloriously popular. Yes, even controversial.
Which fit perfectly with the DNA of the sport.
College football is the sport of arguing. My coach, my school is better than yours. My conference, stadium and band is better than yours.
And you can’t prove it isn’t.
That unique formula has driven the sport into the media rights passing lane, right by every major professional sport not named the NFL. College football isn’t the second most popular sport in America because of the oblong pigskin.
It’s because of decades upon decades of loyal, unwavering fans and their desire to consume more and more of their school and their sport.
Do you really think a 24-team CFP is going to wipe away all that? Do you think the knowledge a 24-team format is strictly a money grab and nothing else, will suddenly make Joe Sixpack ignore the game that fueled his fall Saturdays for decade upon decades?
Of course it won’t.
Look, the 24-team format is a terrible idea. The reality that we’ll be forced to choke down four-loss Kansas State against four-loss Minnesota in a playoff game makes me violently ill.
That’s not a playoff game, it’s a bowl game that — and here’s the key — will still outdraw anything this side of the NFL. But it’s football, and when you slap a CFP patch on the uniforms, it’s a real, live important game.
That’s what the presidents and chancellors of the Big Ten and SEC are banking on. This is their beast of burden, their hope against hope.
It is here where I would typically say hope isn’t a plan. But we’ve seen college football explode in the live sports television era, and watched in awe as it navigated a pandemic — even though some had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to get there (I’m looking at you, Big Ten).
Then the NIL era arrived, and they’ve been forced to avoid the land mines of shared revenue and free player movement, and judge shopping. And they’re still printing money — though, apparently, not enough.
College football doesn’t have a revenue problem, everyone. It has a budget problem.
It has a failure of leadership at the individual university level that defies any semblance of fiscal responsibility, giving a multi-million dollar contract extension to a coach whose record at the school was 19-18. Because another school may or may not have been interested.
Now Nebraska owes coach Matt Rhule $62 million if it fires him.
Oklahoma extended Brent Venables after two seasons of 10 wins, and two seasons of seven losses. And wouldn’t you know it, the Sooners have four losses this season, and until they played a program in worse straits (Florida), were headed toward another seven-loss season.
Florida State paid Mike Norvell $52 million to not coach, and LSU paid Brian Kelly $53 million last year. Then hired Lane Kiffin for the annual budget of a Third World Country, and Kiffin’s first team lost its third game of the season last weekend — after Kiffin’s disastrous fourth-down gamble in the fourth quarter emptied cavernous Tiger Stadium.
But hey, let’s expand this bad boy to 24 games and let ‘er rip. Let’s move the coaching success bar to playoff or bust, and keep paying off those ridiculous buyouts.
Soon enough, they’ll need more money to pay off more coaches and pay more money to players — who deserve their market value. And when it’s not enough, we’ll just expand to 32 teams.
There’s always money in the playoff, and fans will always come back for more.
Because you may hate it now, but you won’t hate it later.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: You’ll hate a 24-team CFP. And you’ll watch every second | Opinion
