For all of the hemming and hawing about the college football playoff, we may have a solution to it all closer than we think. It isn’t just anyone talking about it either. NCAA President Mark Emmert has thrown his support behind an expanded playoff.
Our own Ben Koo laid out a great pathway for the NCAA to go down, where all of the power five conference champions are included in the playoff. Where it could run into some trouble is with viewer rights and how those would be handled. More money is generally never a problem for these stations. It is an idea when broken down that makes a whole lot of sense and can bring one of the best parts of the NCAA basketball tournament to the gridiron.
Emmert spoke at the Learfield Sports Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, and while most of his talk was about the Penn State football program, he did also delve into the topic of the playoff. He even called it “fabulously successful” at one point. He believes it can be improved upon though.
“I’m kind of old-school about that, I guess, it would be really fun to have a model where those five champions all got a crack at moving forward. I don’t know what that looks like.”
The teams that would be in this expanded playoff would be Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Penn State and Washington. The three at-large teams would likely be Ohio State, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Obviously with the Big 10’s dominance this year, it makes for an interesting, yet tilted, theoretical playoff. Is it even that much better?
Emmert even talking about the idea of an expanded playoff should make football fans happy. Expanding the playoff after a short period of time seemed inevitable after they announced only a four team playoff a few seasons ago. This is a step in the right direction for football fans, and if the idea is out there, how far away is the possibility of an expanded playoff?
[ESPN]