Verdict on the 12-team College Football Playoff’s debut season: The football is good, my friends

Verdict on the 12-team College Football Playoff’s debut season: The football is good, my friends

The first 12-team College Football Playoff includes Arizona State, a program with limited historical success, a team picked to finish last in its conference and led by the sport’s youngest head coach.

Kenny Dillingham, 34, sometimes looks and sounds more like a second-year linebacker for the Sun Devils, like on Saturday when he made a crucial play in his team’s 45-19 win over Iowa State to win the Big 12 championship. championship in Arlington, Texas. ASU trailed 7-3 in the first quarter and scored on a fourth-and-1 from its own 34, so it went out and threw deep for a 63-yard gain. How? Why? Dillingham said offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo made the call.

“I thought, ‘Oh crap,'” Dillingham said of that moment. “’All right, buddy. Let’s do it.'”

Yes. Let us. “Oh shit, all right, buddy, let’s do it,” perfectly sums up college football fandom in 2024. We played an exciting debut regular season of the 12-team era – “Oh crap” in the best sense – setting a playoff that couldn’t be more exciting.

The sport desperately needed it and got it.

We’ll see if the playoffs themselves are successful, but that’s the thing about increasing from four to twelve teams, from three to eleven games. One or two stinkers won’t mar the whole operation, as was the case at times during the four-team playoff run from 2014 to 2023.


The 2024 CFP will feature Kurtis Rourke and Indiana – the worst-losing program in college football history. (Jason Mowry/Getty Images)

We’ll get some good games out of the group the 13-man selection committee put together on Sunday. No. 9 seed Tennessee at No. 8 seed Ohio State? No. 10 seed Indiana at No. 7 seed Notre Dame? The winner of this game against No. 2 seed Georgia in the quarterfinals of the Sugar Bowl? I’m not admitting anything that’s obvious, including No. 12 seed Clemson and No. 5 seed Texas.

Undefeated No. 1 seed Oregon is the favorite, but not an overwhelming one — tell me the Buckeyes or Vols beat the Ducks in the Rose Bowl quarterfinals on Jan. 1 and those eyes don’t bat an eyelid. The sport managed to welcome the first 12-team field with something resembling parity, and perhaps that’s just how it worked out this year.

It appears that money and player movement can be effective starters on emerging teams of No. 3 linebackers and No. 3 receivers that once waited their turn at traditional powers. But we’ll see if this is a sustainable trend.

This year we know. This year, we don’t have much of a gap between Oregon and, say, the No. 11 team. That’s Alabama, which along with No. 14 South Carolina and No. 16 Ole Miss — the SEC’s snubbed three — could have done some damage in this tournament .

But that’s another benefit of a 12-team playoff. If you miss this thing, you’ve done enough wrong that no one should shed a tear for you or worry too much about whether the committee made a mistake.

Of course, if you hold a tournament to determine a national champion, that will become the focus of the entire sport and so it needs to be more inclusive than it has been in the last decade. This tournament features four from the Big Ten, three from the SEC, two from the ACC, one from the Big 12, one from the Mountain West and Notre Dame. It represents most regions of the continental United States, not just the South and Midwest. It extends in the northeast to State College, Pennsylvania, in the southwest to Tempe, Arizona, home of the Dillinghams Sun Devils, and in the northwest to Boise, Idaho.

That includes Indiana, the most-losing program in college football history, a team that media predicted would finish 17th of 18 in the expanded Big Ten. That includes SMU, which was last in the college football headlines when the NCAA gave the program the “death penalty” in 1987. SMU was picked to a respectable seventh place as a new member in the expanded ACC, although that is still six spots behind preseason favorite Florida State (final record: 2-10).

This playoff featured Boise State, which fielded perhaps the best football player in America in running back Ashton Jeanty and finished 11-1. The Broncos aren’t picked by many to win, but their only loss came on the road, 37-34, against the No. 1 team and favorite Oregon.

This thriller was a taste of things to come, in a season that saw Vanderbilt beat Alabama, Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame, Indiana apologized for not beating Michigan, Army and Navy moved into the rankings and the playoff race and Colorado came back to beat Baylor with a Hail Mary that capped one of the most improbable comebacks of all time. We also have a very special Heisman Trophy race between Jeanty and Colorado two-way player Travis Hunter.

These are specific to this season, but we’ve seen that the 12-team playoffs will continue to provide benefits in future seasons (even if it’s 14 and then 16, and then we’ll see). More games are important.

Let’s take the weekend of November 23rd. Ohio State defeated Indiana in a game that would have been an elimination game for both in the four-team system. Actually, Indiana still could have rebounded, but Florida upset Ole Miss and Oklahoma upset Alabama to help the Hoosiers. In a 12-team playoff, Ole Miss and Alabama were still alive this weekend, playing games that captured the attention of the entire sport. In the past, they would have played the string and hoped for a good bowl game.

Arizona State’s win over BYU, Kansas’ victory over Colorado and Auburn’s four-overtime upset of Texas A&M that day also had a profound impact on the field, as announced Sunday. Without the expansion to 12 teams, they would have been second-tier at the national level.

And yes, some of the games last weekend would have had more at stake in a four-team world, that’s true. Georgia-Texas wouldn’t have been a matchup between two teams clinching spots. But the Big 12 and ACC games would have involved three of four teams that certainly wouldn’t get spots. SMU would have been the only hope among the 33 teams in these leagues.

The 12-team playoffs enrich the sport, and this season makes that clear. Promising scripts always disappoint, but Martin Scorsese brought this one to life.

Now, before “Everything is great!!!” Let me clarify from the autoplays of “The Lego Movie” that college football still causes resentment. Arguing and complaining are indeed two pillars of sport, and nothing will change that. Let’s ventilate something.

The selection committee keeps confusing people with explanations of their criteria. The field should be seeded between 1 and 12 and not limited to the conference champions as the top four seeds. These top four seeds should get home games, not bowl games, for the quarterfinals. Conference championship games have lost some of their influence. The transfer portal has gotten a little out of control. The targeting rule remains unclear. Management needs to be improved.

But officials don’t deserve to see an athletic director – Utah’s Mark Harlan – dismiss conspiracy theories after he didn’t like a correct call in a bitter rivalry loss to BYU. We generally have too much public whining and sniping from athletic directors and conference commissioners. Some of them are directly responsible for the worst part of college football, conference realignment – a result of unchecked greed that leads to bloated, nonsensical leagues.

There is no lipstick for this pig. But the 2024 college football season and the upcoming 12-team playoffs have given us bacon. Let’s do it. Let’s eat.

(Photo by Cam Skattebo: Kelsey Grant/Getty Images)

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