I've posted my support for this 24-team playoff model over the past year (8 home playoff games in round 1 hosted by seeds 9-16 followed by 8 playoff games hosted by first round byes, seeded 1-8) with the remainder of the playoff schedule resembling current format. Conference championship games (which have become a complete joke) go away and no team would have a crazy 3-4 week bye period in December. The Top 16 teams all host 1 playoff game at home. Love it. As usual, I expect to get blasted by others with the rationale that this expanded format somehow diminishes the regular season (suggesting, I guess, that the regular season is somehow an equitable barometer between teams like Texas who play OSU and 4 other Top 10 teams versus other teams that qualified and didn't play a single Top 10 team all season).
This latest proposal seems like a big move in a constructive direction as Big 10 has moved off of their previous mandate for an obscene number of automatic qualifiers for Big 10 and SEC. It's simply the Top 23 teams seeded. Last season, the SEC would have had the most teams qualify with 7 SEC teams and 6 Big 10 followed by 5 Big 12 Teams and only 3 ACC plus ND and a G5. Put another way, each team's performance on the field sets the seeding but allows inequity in schedules to be settled through the expanded playoffs.
Curious what others think. Seems destined to either move to 16 or 24, but the Big 10 now offering a way to remedy the financial loss of conference championship games (proposing 10 new playoff games get packaged and put into media bidding war) and no AQs would seem to make the 24 team model much more appealing, especially the idea that the Top 16 teams all get to host 1 home playoff game. I love that aspect to this model plus many other elements.
Hook em!!
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/47917988/big-ten-eyes-24-team-cfp-no-league-championship-games