If the College Football Playoff isn't broken, why fix it?

During assemblage football's Bowl Championship Series era, the sport's absorption to an expanded, fto unsocial expansive, playoff could beryllium summarized successful 1 colorful punctuation by then-Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee.

"They volition wrench a playoff strategy retired of my cold, dormant hands," Gee said successful 2007.

We are blessed to study that portion assemblage shot does, indeed, person a playoff, Gee is inactive precise overmuch alive. The 81-year-old retired conscionable this week aft a 2nd stint starring West Virginia University.

What is dead and buried, though, is assemblage football's staunch absorption to extending its postseason field. After decades of ignoring complaints and the committedness of further gross to assertion that conscionable 2 teams was much than enough, plans to determination from 12 participants to 16 were underway earlier past season's inaugural 12-teamer adjacent took place.

A once-static athletics present moves astatine airy speed, aboriginal implications beryllium damned.

Fire. Ready. Aim.

So possibly the champion spot of existent quality is that assemblage football's 2 ruling parties -- the SEC and Big Ten -- can't hold connected however the caller 16-team tract would beryllium selected. It has led to a intermission connected playoff expansion.

Maybe, conscionable maybe, it means nary enlargement volition hap by 2026, arsenic archetypal planned, and assemblage shot tin fto the 12-team exemplary navigator a small to accurately measure what changes -- if immoderate -- are adjacent needed.

"We person a 12-team playoff, 5 league champions," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said this week. "That could enactment if we can't agree."

Good. After all, what's the rush?

The 2025 play volition play retired with a 12-team format featuring automatic bids for 5 league champions and 7 at-large spots. Gone is past year's clunky request that the apical 4 seeds could spell lone to league champs -- elevating Boise State and Arizona State and unbalancing the field.

That unsocial was advancement built connected real-world experience. It should beryllium instructive.

The SEC wants a 16-team exemplary but with, arsenic is presently the case, automatic bids going to the champions successful the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and the champion of the alleged Group of 6. The remainder of the tract would beryllium at-large selections.

The Big Ten says it volition not backmost specified a connection until the SEC agrees to play 9 league games (up from its existent eight). Instead, it wants a 16-team strategy that gives 4 automatic bids apiece to the Big Ten and SEC, 2 each to the ACC and Big 12, 1 to the Group of 6 and past 3 at-large spots.

It's been dubbed the "4-4-2-2-1-3" due to the fact that assemblage diversion leaders emotion ridiculous parlances astir arsenic overmuch arsenic they emotion money.

While the ACC, Big 12 and others person offered opinions -- mostly siding with the SEC -- legislatively, the determination rests with the sport's 2 big-dog conferences.

Right now, neither broadside is budging. A compromise mightiness inactive beryllium made, of course. The expected deadline to acceptable the 2026 strategy is Nov. 30. And Sankey really says helium prefers the nine-game SEC schedule, adjacent if his coaches reason it.

However, the anticipation of the presumption quo lasting for a spot longer remains.

What the Big Ten has projected is simply a melodramatic displacement for a athletics that has been bombarded with melodramatic shifts -- league realignment, the transportation portal, NIL, gross sharing, etc.

The league wants to signifier aggregate "play-in" games connected league title weekend. The apical 2 teams successful the league would conscionable for the league rubric (as is presently the case), but the third- and fourth-place teams would play the fifth- and sixth-place teams to find the different automatic bids.

Extend this retired among each the conferences and you person up to a 26-team College Football Playoff (with 22 teams successful a play-in situation). This would dramatically alteration the mode the athletics works -- devaluing the stakes for nonconference games, for example. And immoderate mediocre teams would fundamentally get a playoff bid -- successful the Big Ten's case, the sixth effect past twelvemonth was an Iowa squad that finished 8-5.

Each league would person much high-value inventory to merchantability to broadcast partners, but it's not immoderate tremendous windfall. Likewise, 4 much first-round playoff games would request to find tv slots and relevance.

Is anyone definite this is necessary? Do we request 16 astatine all, fto unsocial with multibids?

In the 12-team format, the archetypal circular wasn't peculiarly competitory -- with a 19.3-point mean borderline of victory. It's overmuch similar the archetypal circular of the NFL playoffs, designed mostly to marque definite nary existent contender is near out.

Perhaps past twelvemonth was an outlier. And possibly aboriginal games volition beryllium close. Or possibly they'll beryllium adjacent much lopsided. Wouldn't it beryllium prudent to find out?

While determination were complaints astir the enactment committee picking SMU and/or Indiana implicit Alabama, it wasn't immoderate egregious slight. Arguments volition hap nary substance however large the field. Besides, the Crimson Tide mislaid to 2 6-6 teams past year. Expansion means a squad with a akin résumé tin cruise in.

Is that a bully thing?

Whatever the decision, it is being made with small to nary real-world information -- pro oregon con. Letting a fewer 12-team fields play out, providing discourse and perchance unexpected consequences, definite wouldn't hurt.

You don't person to beryllium Gordon Gee circa 2007 to favour letting this simmer and beryllium studied earlier leaping toward different circular of expansion.