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sports Monday 5 SepteMber 2022
Analysis: Will a bigger College Football Playoff be better?

By RALPH D. RUSSO football to an endangered Now what if Wisconsin-
AP College Football Writer species. The 12-team play- Minnesota, Michigan
While enthusiastically an- off will now make it extinct State-Penn State, Oregon-
nouncing plans to expand and redefine what it means Oregon State and three
the College Football Play- to play an important regu- different Atlantic Coast
off, those in charge of the lar-season game. Conference games involv-
postseason system down- Let's use last year's Ohio ing Clemson, Wake Forest
played the revenue wind- State-Michigan game as and North Carolina State
fall that will come with an example. The Wolver- also had playoff implica-
tripling the number of par- ines not only broke a long tions?
ticipants and declined to losing streak in the rivalry, For some fans, that sounds
speculate about whether but they eliminated the even better. For others,
a new format will tap the Buckeyes from both Big Ten those teams are just water-
breaks on conference re- and playoff contention. ing down the field.
alignment. Under a 12-team playoff, "What motivated the presi- The College Football Playoff logo is shown on the field at AT&T
Instead, they stuck to a that game is for seeding dents and me as well was Stadium before the Rose Bowl NCAA college football game
strict script, touting how and a first-round bye. that we need to have an between Notre Dame and Alabama in Arlington, Texas, Jan. 1,
2021.
many more athletes will Think back to last Thanks- opportunity for more partic- Associated Press
get to play games with giving Day weekend, with ipation of teams in our na-
national championship im- Ohio State-Michigan and tion's national champion- Yes, it's all about the stu- could very well be a $2 bil-
plications and how many O k l a h o m a - O k l a h o m a ship tournament," Keenum dent-athletes, who now lion yearly payout to the
more fans will get to root State basically playing said. "And having only four will likely need to play 16 major conferences for the
for playoff contenders. elimination games and Al- teams, we felt like that's not games — maybe even 17 media rights to the new
"It will be a new day for abama facing Auburn with fair to our student-athletes — to win a national cham- playoff, and it is yet anoth-
college football," Missis- playoff hopes in peril. from a participation stand- pionship. er step toward players be-
sippi State President Mark That was pretty great. point." Combine that with what ing paid.q
Keenum said late last week
after the announcement
billed as "historic."
No doubt.
Expanding the College
Football Playoff from four
to 12 teams will fundamen-
tally change the sport on
the field and off — for bet-
ter or worse.
More regular-season
games will have playoff im-
plications, but the biggest
games will no longer have
winner-take-all tension.
The new format will break
up a conference caste
system fortified by the four-
team model, but it won't
stop the growing gap be-
tween haves and have
nots. More teams will play
in the championship tour-
nament and bowl games
that are suffering from
player apathy will be re-
placed by playoff games.
But a larger field probably
won't increase the number
of teams that have a real-
istic chance of winning the
whole thing.
How soon expansion will
come is still to be deter-
mined. As soon as 2024,
but no later than 2026.
"Overall, it's a day for cel-
ebration," CFP Executive
Director Bill Hancock said.
Maybe.
The Game of the Century,
that in-season matchup of
highly ranked teams with
seemingly everything on
the line, has gone from
being a staple of college