There was a time when college football had something that almost no other sport in America could replicate.
For a few months, the entire country watched the regular season unfold knowing that every Saturday carried enormous consequences. One bad afternoon could derail a national championship pursuit. Rivalries mattered.
Conference championships still mattered. And by December, we had a pretty good idea which teams had earned the right to play for a national championship. That was part of the beauty of it.
Now, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the College Football Playoff is nearing a deal to expand to 24 teams beginning in 2027, pending final approvals. Nobody should be surprised. The people who stand to profit from expanding the postseason were always going to get their way.
That said, I cannot think of many developments that would do more to diminish what makes this sport special.
And before anyone mistakes this for nostalgia, understand that I’m not opposed to change. For the most part, I actually liked the BCS model. There was something to be said for a system that combined human polls with computer rankings to determine the two best teams, even if the formula wasn’t perfect and reasonable people disagreed with its conclusions. I understood the argument for settling more of it on the field.
But somewhere along the way, we confused making the postseason more accessible with making the sport better.
Those are two very different things.