Change it

The College Football Playoff, or CFP, has come a long way since its original four team layout and now features 12 schools in its current iteration. 

Although the tournament brings opportunities and recognition to an additional eight competitors, there is still work to be done to perfect it.

The most discussed and needed change has to do with James Madison and Tulane punching tickets to the big dance this season. 

These two schools received automatic bids to the CFP by winning their respective conferences, the Sun Belt and AAC.

I am all for giving smaller universities their time in the spotlight and earning the recognition they deserve, but the duo were no match for Oregon and Ole Miss. 

Both teams had to go into the opposing team’s stadium and win a playoff game against two of the top teams in the country. 

That is a difficult task for any team, let alone teams with less resources and lack of five-star recruits. 

The solution to this? 

Just put the 12 best teams in the country in the CFP. 

Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Texas were just some of the teams to be snubbed in this year’s postseason bracket.

 I think I can safely say college football fans would rather see one of these teams go into Autzen Stadium in Eugene to take on the Ducks rather than witness a game that was 33-6 at halftime. 

The home games in round one of the CFP are so special to fans, and we would rather watch a competitive game between two even teams than the blowouts we’ve been used to. 

It’s time to reformat the CFP.It’s time to give the fans what they want. 

Keep it

The first two years of the 12-team college football playoff format have clearly proven the playoff is set up just as it should be. 

For starters, let’s look at the seedings of the teams that have reached the national championship game so far: No. 1,  7, 8, and 10. It’s not like the top four seeds are beating up on everybody else as there has consistently been a strong sense of parity between higher and lower seeds. 

In fact, until Indiana beat Alabama in January, not a single top-4 seed had ever won a playoff game. 

While the idea of an expansion from 12 teams may sound enticing from the fans’ perspective, there are several reasons why it should be avoided.

With the addition of more teams comes the addition of more games. 

The national championship will be Indiana’s 16th game. Any more would make some teams’ schedules the same length as an NFL schedule. These are student athletes. While NFL players can dedicate their lives to the sport, some of these collegiate athletes are still heavily focused on their academics. The wear and tear of a 17-plus game season on top of the workload of college would be brutal. Keeping the auto-bid for the five best conference champions helps to avoid monopolizing the sport by giving smaller conference schools something to play for as well as incentivizing players to play for those schools. 

There have been some blowouts, but Boise State held its own last year, and the group of five schools aren’t the only ones getting blown out either. 

There are always going to be teams like Notre Dame that for some reason think they should be in, no matter how much you expand. Next thing you know, a 7-5 Nebraska team is going to be screaming its case to the committee.