No.
Well, not really.
Unlike any of our other favorite sports, college football truly has a worthy playoff. No automatic bids. In the NCAA tournament, we have all these conference champions guaranteed a berth into the 68 team tournament even though we know about 48 or so of those teams have no shot at winning the thing. Or in all the pro sports, where winning a geographically created division means you get to participate in the postseason (like Washington's 7-9 NFC East championship in 2020).
It also has just four teams in there and isn't inflated like nearly every other sport. As I write this, the Chargers and Raiders will play next Sunday night with the winner making the NFL playoffs. Does anyone really think that either of those teams will realistically get to the Super Bowl in February? Nope.
The College Football Playoff and the four teams that are selected for it all have a legit shot at winning a national championship. Mostly. So much so that fans of the teams who finished fifth or sixth in the CFP standings feel they could've won it all. And a committee selects the four teams as there are no automatic bids.
Now the powers that be want to expand the tournament to eight or even twelve teams. I used to be a guy that championed for a 12-team tournament. My proposal all those years ago was to have the five Power 5 champions automatically in, the top ranked Group of 5 champion, and then the six highest ranked non-champions. The top four seeds receive a bye. Seeds 5 through 12 play on campus. The winners of those games play at the four bye teams. You can then make the semifinals at bowl sites with the championship game like a Super Bowl (which the semis and the title game look like right now). Here is how it would've looked under the 2021 CFP rankings.
BYES
1-Alabama*, 2-Michigan*, 3-Georgia, 4-Cincinnati*
FIRST ROUND
12-Pittsburgh* at 5-Notre Dame
11-Utah* at 6-Ohio State
10-Michigan State at 7-Baylor*
9-Oklahoma State at 8-Ole Miss
The proposals kicked around during the summer would have their playoff look a lot like this, aside from some of the seeding. Under their rules, the byes would have been all conference champions, which means Baylor would've been a top four seed.
So when you see that, is this really what we want? Aside from maybe Notre Dame and possibly Ohio State, would any of the added teams really have a shot at winning a national championship? And if they somehow did, would they really represent who was the actual champion?
Of course, that's guessing what could happen ... so let's look at what actually does happen. We've had 16 semifinal games under the CFP format.
-13 of the 16 games were decided by more than 10 points
-9 of the 16 games were decided by 20 or more points
-4 of the 16 games were decided by 30 or more points
-0 of the games were decided by 5 or less points
The championship game has gone a bit better. After Ohio State thrashed Oregon in the inaugural CFP championship game, there were three outstanding title games in a row. The last three, however, have been yawners. In fact, the past three years, only the Clemson-Ohio State semifinal game in 2019-2020 was even competitive among any of the playoff games. So why do we need more of this?
No offense, by why do I need Pittsburgh playing for a title this year? Why should Michigan State bother a top team from winning a ring? What's the point?
If you think it is to make the bowl games interesting again (like Ohio State fans and players didn't care about attending the Rose Bowl last week), you have another thing coming. Do you think college football is going to incorporate 10 or 11 bowl games for the playoff? Get real. Would Utah fans be able to travel to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl one week, to Orlando and the Citrus Bowl the next week, to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl the following week, and then a national championship game in Indianapolis? No. Playoff games would likely be played on campus at least for the first round and possibly up through the quarterfinals. If that's the case, what kind of teams will be playing in the Gator Bowl if the 12 best teams are already used up? Hell, what kind of Rose Bowl would we get if the top three Big Ten teams and the Pac-12 champion are already in the playoff? Those bowl games would actually get worse and the logistics of jet-setting these players (possibly during finals) is unsettling, even as we are coming to grips of college football's lack of amateur status.
My solution will never, ever happen. I believe there should not be a set amount of playoff teams, and we just size it up when we get to the end of the season. Are the two best teams set in stone? Then just have two teams have it out for the title. Three teams? Do that. Four? Six? Then create that kind of bracket if needed. I mean, some years there are three legit title contenders and we are trying to figure out who the fourth deserves to be. Screw it. Just have the three with the No. 2 and 3 teams facing off with the winner facing the No. 1 seed. If it is five teams ... the seeds No. 4 and 5 play to get into the four-team bracket.
Of course people can't handle that so it won't happen, but is that any worse than having Pittsburgh playing in a national championship tournament because we want Kenny Pickett to play one more time instead of protecting his NFL Draft status? No.
