College football fans had the unique pleasure this winter to view the new 12-team college football playoffs format. This season marked the first 12 team playoff format after 10 seasons of the four team format. There were some highs and lows throughout the new format, but I believe it to have been a success. Having more teams competing is so much better for the sport and the league. Four teams wasn’t fair enough; there was always someone left off that probably deserved to be in. Last year’s playoff was a prominent example of a great team being left out when undefeated Florida State wasn’t selected due to a quarterback injury late in the season.
Let’s start with the positives from this first “trial run.” There was more excitement for all the teams that made it. A longer season also meant more time for fans to watch games. TV networks also got increased opportunities to show big games, with ratings incredibly high for most of the games. For the most part, the committee managed to do a great job of selecting the 12 teams, which was one of the biggest criticisms of the four team playoff, however the seeding was a little off. The National Championship game was also a big success. Even though it ended up pretty one-sided to Ohio State’s $20 million roster, Notre Dame put up a good fight and it was entertaining, unlike some of the four-team playoff championships such as the 2022 TCU blowout loss.
In the first year of any new system, you can expect there to be numerous flaws. The most obvious here was seeding. In what world are you giving Boise State a bye in the first round? I don’t think Arizona State deserved their bye, but at least their game was close. Boise State is not even in a Power Four conference. They’re in the Mountain West. It was a horrible call that they got a bye over teams like Texas, who was No. 1 in the AP poll ranking for most of the year. Clemson was another team that deserved a bye due to them being the ACC champions. Indiana and SMU were two teams that made the 12 team cut that definitely shouldn’t have. Indiana had the easiest schedule of the year and everyone knew it. I think that they deserved a shot to get in but the one time they played a good team like Ohio State in the regular season they got shut down. They also got worked in the playoff by Notre Dame. Their score doesn’t show it, but they had no answer to Notre Dame’s offense. I also think that SMU got lucky. They were good but they lost in the ACC Championship and I believe that teams like Ole Miss and South Carolina were better options than them to make the 12 team cut.
Ultimately, all of these problems are just nitpicking. They did an amazing job transitioning to this new format. It brings the excitement level to a new extreme. Fans love it, coaches love it and players love it. It is good for the sport and with some minor tweaks; I think it will get better every year. College football has a future to eventually become more entertaining than the NFL, and the 12 team playoffs were another step in that direction.
