Expanding the College Football Playoff from 4 teams
I have been a proponent for making a College Football Playoff since the days of the BCS championship game. My idea has been to have a 32 team playoff with each bowl game set up as a playoff game. This would make every single bowl game an important bowl game. But, those who have opposed my idea say it would be too much football. Frankly, they are the ones who are misinformed, and all we have to do is look at Division II and their schedules and playoff format. For my example of a team schedule, I am using my mother's alma-mater, Northwest Missouri St.
http://www.bearcatsports.com/schedule.aspx?path=football
Looking at their schedule, they played 11 regular season games and then lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament this past year. 11 games, which is one game less than most FBS teams, like the Pennsylvania State University. I ended up growing up 9 miles away from Beaver Stadium.
http://www.gopsusports.com/sports/m-footbl/sched/psu-m-footbl-sched.html
So, at most the FBS teams play, if they win their championship game and get into the CFP, 15 games. Let's see how that compares to the Division II teams and for that I will be using the Division II playoff format.
http://www.ncaa.com/interactive-bracket/football/d2
Notice that they have a 28 team playoff, while FBS has only a 4 team playoff. If say, the 6th seed in any bracket wins the entire playoff, they would have played 11 regular season games and 5 playoff games! That is 16 games! So, essentially, Division II teams can play MORE football games that FBS teams, which actually throws out the "Too much football" argument. The FBS bowl games go until Jan 8, 2018 this season and have gone into mid-January in the past. So, again, the "Too much football" argument falls flat on its face.
If we have a 32 team playoff, with every bowl game venue being a playoff game; then each bowl will be relevant and we can get a true national champion as many teams can make a case to get into a spot in the CFP final 4, chosen by the committee as shown by Penn State last year, and Ohio State this year. We shouldn't have an arbitrary system to determine the top 4 teams, we need to do like Division II and allow the top 28 to 32 teams play it out on the field.
Here is what I propose. A 32 team playoff, while keeping the same current conference championship games and regular season, so the winner would play at most 18 games. As that only would be 2 more games than what is currently played by a potential winner of the Division II playoff, it is not too much football. OR, we can eliminate 1 or 2 regular season games, which would bring the number of potential games won by the champion to 16 or 17 games played.
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Here is my argument for a CFP format that uses all of the bowl games.