College football roundtable – Playoff formats, opt-out incentives and more
[ad_1]
The college football season has finally dwindled down to the final game — Monday’s national championship between Alabama and Georgia.
With the 2021 season nearly in the rearview mirror, it’s time to look at the questions facing college football’s postseason as we forecast its future.
What will the playoff field look like in five years? What’s the best way to ensure the top players stick around for bowl games? And what other issues should fans be considering when it comes to the postseason?
The ESPN college football staff attempts to answer all these questions ahead of the national championship game.
After another year of semifinal blowouts, what is your preferred playoff format and why?
David Hale: The blowouts are far less of a big-picture problem for college football or its TV partners than the fact that the same teams are always playing in these games. Expansion is needed — partially for competitive reasons, but mostly to create more meaningful games all season. But the fact that the current system also creates a “rich get richer” scenario, expansion might also make a real dent in the number of competitive games, too, by giving bigger stages to more teams. Notre Dame-Oklahoma State would’ve been a fantastic playoff game this year, for example, and the revenue and prestige that came from it would’ve only helped the Irish and Cowboys long term. I’m all for 12 — and possibly even 16. But there also needs to be a tradeoff to make it work, starting with nixing the cupcake regular-season games and including more financial incentives for the players.
Paolo Uggetti: Even though the conference commissioners seem to be at odds about this very thing, I think we can all agree that 12 is the ideal number. Personally, I’d love it if there was a way to make eight work, but we all know that would only lead to having this discussion all over again and ending up at 12 anyway. It’s not a zero-sum game, though. Twelve would make more bowl games matter, but would…
[ad_2]
Source : espn
