One of my favorite memes shows a bird's-eye view of a massive highway with 20 lanes, turnpikes, exits galore and the cars all at stand-still traffic.
The caption above the picture says, “Please, just one more lane, bro. Just one more, please. We’ll stop after I promise.”
The premise of the meme is that people think that if we keep adding more lanes, the traffic will eventually die down, but what you’re left with is just more concrete, more pavement, same amounts of traffic and the cycle continues.
That’s how I feel about the college football playoffs. If we expand to 14, 16, 20 teams, the problems with college football won’t be solved. They will still remain, and potentially make things even worse.
EXPAND, EXPAND, EXPAND
Before 2014, just two teams had a chance to compete for a national championship, which is admittedly not great for a season that is only 12, maybe 13 games.
You had scenarios like 2004, where there were three undefeated conference champions in USC, Oklahoma and Auburn who all had a legitimate case to play for a national championship. Unfortunately for the Tigers, they were the odd team out — one of the biggest injustices of the BCS era.
Two wasn’t enough. Let’s go to four.
With the four-team playoff, while more often than not the selection committee got things right, there were certain instances where 2014 TCU, 2017 UCF and 2023 Florida State all had cause to be in the final four, but were left out.
Four wasn’t enough. Let’s skip eight and go to 12.
In only the second year of the 12-team playoff era, the 2025 BYU Cougars have now been added to the list of all-time snubs. An 11-2 team with two top-25 wins, whose only losses are to No. 4 Texas Tech in the regular season and to the same Tech team in the conference championship game, was not even the first team out. They were the next team out after Notre Dame.
12 now isn’t enough. Let’s expand to 14 or 16.
The cycle continues. The snubs still persist.
If we were to expand to 16 teams, this year's version of the 2004 Auburn Tigers, who finished that season 13-0 with a Fiesta Bowl win over Virginia Tech, would be the — let me check — No. 17 Arizona Wildcats?
The Wildcats would then go up in arms about not being able to compete for a national championship in a season in which they have three losses and zero top-25 wins.
“Sixteen isn’t enough,” Arizona’s athletic department would likely say in an official statement.
The cycle would then continue.
The Group of Five is not your enemy
One “solution” I’ve seen in the past week from Notre Dame fans, BYU fans and many national pundits, is to get rid of Group of Five teams from the playoffs entirely.
Under the current format, the five highest ranked conference champions make the playoffs. Because the ACC champion was a five-loss Duke team — the odds of that happening ever are so astronomically low — both James Madison and Tulane snuck their way into the playoffs.
This year was not an exceptional one for G5 schools. Usually there is an undefeated or one-loss team that is legitimately a top-10 team in the country, but that is not the case this year.
Overall, the best G5 schools are not as good today as they were 10 years ago, simply due to modern NIL and transfer rules. The best players in the Mountain West and MAC hardly ever finish their careers at the same place they started. If you have a good season in the G5, a bigger school can poach you with no consequences, more money and more exposure. It’s how college football works these days.
But while 2021 Cincinnati was the last truly “great” G5 team, some of the talk about how bad the G5 is has gotten out of hand.
Some have proposed that the G5 should have their own playoff, separate from the CFP entirely.
The way that some of these pundits are talking about schools from the American and Sun Belt conferences are so belittling and dishonest.
CBS Sports’ Bud Elliot had a viral tweet claiming that G5 schools playing P4 schools was “literally a safety issue,” claiming that they should not be on the same field as each other.
Was it a safety issue when Alabama played FCS school Eastern Illinois in November? Or how about when Boise State played Penn State in last year’s playoffs? Was that a safety issue?
Do these people watch “Hoosiers” and get mad when they make the state championship game? Did they cheer for the USSR in the 1980 Olympics? How about when Boise State ran the statue of liberty to upset Oklahoma? Did they turn their television off out of rage?
If you’re going to expand to 12 teams, which in my mind is a ridiculously large number, the G5 should be guaranteed a spot. A three-loss at large team should never be in the mix to play for a national title.
What makes me most upset is when I see people close to the BYU program echo this same sentiment.
The 1984 BYU national championship team was the poster child of what schools from a non-power conference could accomplish if luck broke your way in the pre-BCS era. BYU for a long time was James Madison or Tulane, just asking for a seat at the table.
The Cougars weren’t even in a conference three years ago, but had it been in a situation to make the playoffs, I’m sure they would be begging for the selection committee to not overlook the little guy.
During the BCS era, 2008 Utah, 2009 Boise State and 2010 TCU were all good enough to compete for a national championship, but were denied that seat at the table. They all beat top-10 teams in their bowl games, even if it was a “safety issue.”
The 12-team playoff makes everything else worse
With Notre Dame declining to play in a bowl game after being left out of the 12-team playoffs, one must question the importance of non-playoff bowl games in the modern era. If teams don’t care, why should fans?
Even at the beginning of the four-team playoff era, non-NY6 bowls still mattered. The TCU-Oregon Alamo Bowl in 2015 was one of the greatest college football games ever played, and it wasn’t a playoff game or Rose Bowl. It was just a good bowl game against two good teams. Neither the Ducks nor the Horned Frogs declared their season a lost cause because it didn’t reach one of the top bowl games. They played their hearts out.
It seems that sentiment is somewhat dying out. Players sit out bowl games on the regular, and the playoffs go so deep into the school year that players on teams still competing for a title will transfer to another school before the season’s end.
Even a coach of the No. 6 team in the country will leave in the midst of his program's greatest season in decades, because he has to make a decision before the new semester starts.
Going back to a four-team playoff would solve many of college football’s problems. It would give a bigger emphasis on bowl games, it would decrease transfer portal madness and it puts a bigger emphasis on the regular season.
Pre 12-team playoffs, if a team lost one game in the regular season, every game following was life or death. That is not the case anymore, especially that a 10-3 Alabama team who did not win its conference championship safely got in.
The answer to college football’s problems isn’t to expand yet again, it's to cut back. The best time to do that is today.