Why expanding the College Football Playoff worked – and what still needs to be fixed
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Now that it’s all over and the Ohio State Buckeyes are the college football national champions, it can be definitively said: expanding the College Football Playoff worked.
The grand experiment to allow more teams to play for the national championship wasn’t perfect, but it ended up where it was supposed to: a worthy national champion with exciting, close games in the later rounds when the best teams faced one another. It gave us awesome scenes on campuses around the nation, created new legends and showed how a sport so steeped in tradition can evolve when faced with new demands from its fans and business partners.
Here are four reasons why the new version of the College Football Playoff worked – and the areas that can still be fixed.
The committee picked the right teams, even if some games were blowouts
Before the games kicked off in December, much of the focus was put on the inclusion of Southern Methodist University (SMU) and Indiana University – two teams that won a bunch of games but didn’t have the brand recognition of schools like Alabama, South Carolina and Ole Miss.
Here’s what else those teams had that SMU and Indiana didn’t: three losses.
The Hoosiers lost only once in the regular season – to eventual national champion Ohio State. The Mustangs had lost twice, once to Brigham Young University and again in the ACC championship game to Clemson.
In the first year of the expanded, 12-team playoff, could the committee really leave out a major conference team with 11 wins and punish another one for playing for a conference championship while other teams sat at home? Warde Manuel, the University of Michigan athletic director who served as chair of the committee, said they could not.
