On Thursday, college football fans rejoiced when the College Football Playoff announced that its teams would be seeded differently.
Instead of giving guaranteed berths to the top four ranked conference champions, the College Football Playoff will seed teams 1-12. The bracket will reflect that, and there won’t be any guaranteed seeds moving forward.
However, just because one common-sense decision was made, it doesn’t mean that common sense is coming to college football.
Some of the ideas being floated for the 16-team College Football Playoff proposal are a reminder of that.
According to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports, the Big Ten and SEC are considering implementing play-in games for the College Football Playoff on championship weekend.
Under the new proposal, both leagues would be guaranteed four berths, so there is talk of the top two teams playing for the conference championship, with playoff berths already guaranteed. The third-place team would play No. 6 for a spot, in addition to No. 4 vs. No. 5.
That would give the Big Ten and SEC three games to sell to TV partners on conference championship Saturday.
With unbalanced conference schedules, deciding the top four teams from the Big Ten and SEC is not the worst idea.
What’s nonsensical, though, is the 16-team bracket, because it wouldn’t be a straight 16-team bracket, at least according to Dellenger:
“Under one idea, two CFP games would be played the second weekend of December, when Army-Navy traditionally meet and when no NFL games are scheduled. Winners of those two first-round games — No. 13 seed hosting the No. 16 seed and the No. 14 hosting the No. 15 — would advance to a bracket of 10 awaiting teams.”
Essentially, the top four teams would get a double bye. The bottom four teams would play in the first round, then four games in the second round before the quarterfinals around New Year’s Eve/Day.
A team seeded 16th would need to win five games to win the College Football Playoff, while a team seeded fourth would need to win just three.
That places more importance on the regular season, but a clean, 16-team bracket makes more sense, just like the straight-seeded bracket adopted on Thursday.
College football needs more common sense. It finally had some on Thursday, but unfortunately, it was short-lived.
