How to fix the mess that is the college football playoffs MARK KISZLA
The Denver Gazette7 Dec 2025
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Georgia fans cheer during the first half of a Southeastern Conference championship game against Alabama on Saturday in Atlanta
On the dumbest day of the entire college football season, the legendary Nick Saban and Georgia coach Kirby Smart said something really intelligent.
“It’s all B.S.,” Smart told Saban, during a spicy interview that aired Saturday on ESPN.
I couldn’t agree more.
If college football had a brain, the win-or-go-home thrill of the playoffs would’ve begun this weekend, with Miami hitting the road to face BYU and Notre Dame trying to shut up ‘Bama about Southeastern Conference superiority.
Instead, we got a whole lot of balderdash.
Football that never should’ve been played.
In the era of mega-conferences, conference championship games have a duty to die. They’re superfluous.
In my not so humble opinion, I’ve got a far better idea.
Expand the college football playoffs to 16 teams, end the silly bickering by talking heads, and let’s decide who is No. 1 on the field.
Are you with me? Conference championship games are silly, not to mention irrelevant.
For example, it was a waste of everyone’s time and energy to watch Texas Tech throttle BYU 34-7 in the Big 12 title game, less than one month after the Red Raiders had established that they are clearly the league’s only legit national championship threat by thrashing BYU 29-7 on the first weekend in November.
Likewise, the only real meaningful entertainment derived from a rematch between Georgia and Alabama was a lively, profane exchange between longtime friends Saban and Smart on the set of ESPN’s “College GameDay” hours before kickoff.
Saban hilariously made it clear to Smart that when analyzing a big game, all the coach-speak about controlling the line of scrimmage, red-zone efficiency and getting off the field on third down was a load of crap, to put it mildly.
In a salty exchange not suitable for younger audiences, Saban and Smart got competitive about who could spell out BS the most.
OK, want to know the real nitty-gritty? As Georgia knocked the slobber out of Bama in a 28-7 shellacking that wasn’t as close as the score would indicate, it should’ve finally become evident to all except the most delusional SEC apologists that the Crimson Tide has struggled mightily to perform up to playoff-worthy standards for the better part of two months.
Yes, Ohio State vs. Indiana in the Big Ten championship game was a battle between No. 1 and No. 2 in the country, but it was also totally unnecessary exposure to injury for players with the playoff grind ahead of them.
And don’t get me started on how ludicrous it was to stage a charade of an Atlantic Coast Conference championship game between Virginia and Duke.
Kindly allow me to instead focus on making the college football playoffs more fun and profitable for everybody.
Hunter Yurachek, the knucklehead who chairs the confederacy of dunces known as the CFP Selection Committee, can thank me later.
Here goes:
The field will be expanded to 16 teams. Give the people what they want.
The four regular-season champs of the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and ACC will earn automatic bids. (Those bloated leagues can establish any arcane tiebreaker procedure they desire; I don’t give a hoot.)
The last two teams in the field will be selected from the highest-ranked teams from the new Group of Six conferences, thus expanding opportunity for football squads from the American, Pac-12, Sun Belt, Conference USA, Mountain West and Mid-American to wear Cinderella’s cleats in the playoffs.
Instead of good old boys on the committee bickering about who’s the ninth-best team in the country, the rankings will be a set-in-stone combination of computer analysis like the Sagarin ratings, quantifiable strength of schedule analysis, and the human element of the longstanding polls by coaches and media.
The tournament bracket will reward regular-season excellence.
The top four seeds will receive byes until the quarterfinal round, as is now the case.
Nos. 5-8 will receive a bye to a newly established round of 16.
The final eight teams will be pitted in play-in games, staged on college campuses the first weekend in December.
This year, Ohio State, Indiana, Georgia, Texas Tech, Oregon, Mississippi, Texas A&M and Oklahoma would enjoy a well-deserved rest as the top eight seeds in the field.
Instead of suffering through the outdated puffery of conference championship games, we could be spending this weekend enthralled by the win-orgo-home drama of four play-in games: Virginia-Texas, BYU-Miami, ND-Bama and Tulane-James Madison.
Can I get an amen from the congregation?
This is the tournament that’s best for everybody.
The college football playoff system we have now?
Well, to steal a phrase from that great philosopher Nick Saban:
It’s B.S.
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