At the Big Ten media days, Gene Smith, Ohio State's athletic director, said thatSixteen just seems to be out there. "You have to pay attention to it."
This is the first time in the history of college football that there will be a four-round playoff to determine a national champion. The number eight is still out there despite the fact that twelve teams were voted down.
As we watch the tectonic plates at the very foundation of the sport continue to shift, what would a 16-team playoffs look like?
If this were to happen, how would the 16 teams be decided? Are we going back to the AP Poll decisions from the past? In a world in which more than four teams get a chance to take on the big stage each year, is there still a committee that looks at the College Football Playoff?
Does the conference winner get an automatic bid? If, as we have written about, we are headed toward a completely different conference structure in which the Big Ten and SEC dominate the sport while the Big XII andACC become sort of second-tier conferences, do the much larger.
Four more weekends would be added to the regular season in a world of a 16-game college football playoffs. Four more 60-minute periods, more physically demanding and emotionally draining than most games each team will face throughout the regular season, four more opportunities for career-ending injuries or tanking draft stock.
A 16-team playoff could be the end of conference championship games with the recent shirking of traditional conferences. It is more likely than not that the two teams that would have played in such a game will now both be in the hunt for a national title in such a playoff.
The health risks, the end-of-season exhaustion, and the full-time student status need to be remembered. This is an option for college football if cuts are made to the regular season or playoffs. The majority of teams play 13 games. With a 16-team playoff format, teams could play up to 17 games in a season, which would diminish the product at the end of the season, as we have now. Either an 11-game season with extra weeks off for the team would be implemented or conferences will cease to exist. Conferences are about to cease to be.
Ratings for the rest of the bowl games get messed over by the fact that the best teams play in a playoff. How will the rest of the bowls find a place in the sport and the sponsors to pay for it if the first eight games are all bowl games? Bowls are a tradition, but if the money isn't there, what will our future look like?
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