We’re just days away from the first round of the inaugural 12-team college football playoff kicking off, and the number one question on my mind following the selection of this year’s field is: Do we really need 12 teams?

I am looking forward to seeing this whole thing play out, but if I’m honest, I initially wasn’t a fan. I wasn’t even a fan of the 4-team playoff at first. Was the BCS era perfect? Absolutely not, but the College Football Playoff didn’t solve the problem; it just pushed it further down. Instead of arguing over who was playing for the national title at number 2 and who was left out in the cold at number 3, the vitriol slid down to the 4th and 5th spots in the rankings, and in 2024, it slid down even more, now falling to the 12th and 13 spots. Same argument, new surroundings. I’ve said it for years, nothing’s changed. The only difference is, the participation trophy generation has entered the chat and now everyone wants their flowers, even if it comes at the expense of the integrity of the game.

Alright, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but after listening to the arguments for and against each team that was in contention for the 12-team field, I once again saw that same inherent flaw that has plague college football for decades when it comes to postseason play.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never understood the idea of expanded playoffs, period. College Football, the NBA, MLB have all added teams to their respective postseason fields in the name of ratings, but I think it defeats the purpose of playoffs. The whole idea is the BEST teams get a chance to compete for a title. The few, the proud. It’s meant to be a select group. Heck, with the addition of the NBA Play-In Tournament, the MAJORITY of teams in the NBA reach the playoffs, excluding only the ten worst team from competing. 20 teams make it and 10 don’t? That’s BACKWARDS! Heck, even the NCAA basketball mega-tournament expanded their field of teams from 64 to 68. I’M SORRY…was 64 teams not enough?!

Now, I understand that college football is different, and 12 teams really aren’t that many when you’re talking about more than 134 NCAA Division I FBS schools, but when it comes down to the selection of those schools, and the debate is about which 3-loss teams should get in, we’re missing the point entirely. Alabama’s 24-3 loss to 5-5 Oklahoma should’ve been enough to disqualify them alone, but that’s just my opinion. Vanderbilt too. But if you combine those losses, and then add another, there’s no argument that can be made that they deserve a chance to play for a national title. Come on. I know it sounds like I’m picking on Alabama, but that’s just an example of the arguments that were being made for the teams who were left out.

The guidelines around the playoffs in college and professional sports need to be retightened. The playoffs are an ultra-exclusive night club, and it’s time that they once again get patrolled with a tough, take-no-prisoners attitude akin to Patrick Swayze in “Road House.” Survival of the fittest, and everyone else is tossed out on the dirt. Better luck next year. Get good or get left behind.

Is my solution perfect? No, but nothing is. In a society where everyone is offended, and everything is a bed of coals on which wars begin, there is nothing I or anyone else can say that will ever seem good enough. Someone will always be left out, and their fans will raise their indignant fists high into the air as if to say, “I want to see the manager!”, but something has to be done. So, what is that solution you ask? Reduce the number of CFP teams from 12 to 8. No byes, not automatic top seeds for conference winners. Just the best 8 teams, period. Is it perfect? No. As I said, it can’t be. People still decide it. Maybe we come full circle and let computers crunch all the numbers and spit out the best 8 teams, I don’t know. But Arizona State jumping from 12th in the final CFP Rankings to 4th in the bracket and getting a bye just because they won the Big 12? No. The Arizona St. Sun Devils are not the 4th best team in America. They’re just not. They’d get in, but they’d get no guarantees otherwise. Boise St. gets a bye for surviving the weak Mountain West. SMU being above Clemson in the final rankings, despite Clemson defeating them in the ACC Championship? Try again. You may not like it, but I think having computers do the decision making and spitting out the 8 best teams, who then prepare to go to battle immediately – that’s a far better option than where we are now. The BCS computer model was flawed, but human error is worse. Computers work with numbers, and numbers never lie.