COLUMN: Time to triple the fun and drama

So, did you like New Year’s Eve? No, not any late-night parties, but college football that afternoon and night.

Did it get any better than the two College Football Playoff semifinals – TCU 51, Michigan 45, and then after catching your breath, a missed field goal with three seconds left the difference in Georgia 42, Ohio State 41?

Changes in college football have often moved at a glacial pace. It took 133 years from the first game to the first playoff game. But lately it’s been change at mach speed.

In the last two years, there’s been seismic change in conference alignment, the transfer portal where now players can leave any program for another at least once with no penalty, and players able to get paid, and get paid well.

Texas and Oklahoma announced their move to the Southeastern Conference in the summer 2021 only to be topped by USC and UCLA moving cross-country with their announced move to the Big 10 this past summer.

There were more than 1,328 players in the portal last month. In the past, fugitives on the run had more freedom of movement than any college athlete who wanted a change.

The Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) initiative enacted this summer is a convoluted description of paying players. Scholarships are passe now. It’s “show me the money” with even backups pocketing $25,000 annually and top players on top teams raking in six figures, if not seven.

There’s reasonable arguments on both sides of these issues of how much it’s good for the game, or that at least there should be guardrails attached to them. There shouldn’t be any real argument to the other major change coming to the game.

In 2024, two seasons from now, the college football playoffs will expand from their almost invitational of just four teams to a more fair, more inclusive 12 teams.

That’s triple the pleasure, triple the fun, triple the intrigue.

It’s been said, and I agree, that college football has the best regular season followed by the worst postseason. At least it’s the most unsatisfying with a smorgasbord of bowls and teams thrown together like an arranged marriage. Then there’s the four-team playoff that started in 2014, which just seems to scream for more.

Perhaps you missed it. The College Football Playoff Board of Managers, comprised of university presidents and chancellors, approved the expanded playoff format just after Thanksgiving. That became possible only after the Rose Bowl amended its contract to give up its exclusive broadcast window of 2 p.m. PST on Jan. 1.

Translation: College football is going to a better format of 12 teams two years earlier than expected.

What will it look like? The six highest-ranked playoff teams will be the champions of the top six conferences – SEC, Big 12, Big 10, ACC, Pac 12, and AAC – and seeded in some order. The remaining teams will be the six highest ranked after that. Conference championships will have added value.

The top four seeded teams will have first-round byes. Seeds from 5-8 will host No. 12, 11, 10 and 9 on campus, so fans can experience a huge game in their own stadium. Those games are the week prior to Christmas.

Quarterfinals will be at the Fiesta, Peach, Rose and Sugar Bowls in that Dec. 31-Jan. 1 window. Semifinals at the Cotton and Orange Bowls will be Jan. 12, 2025, in the Cotton and Orange Bowls with the national title game in Atlanta on Jan. 20 that year.

Oh, there’s some muckety-mucks who don’t like it, saying it diminishes the regular season and waters down the playoffs. To which I say, borrowing a phrase more in use a couple of weeks ago – bah, humbug.

The regular season will be enhanced. Now huge games won’t be the domain of 10 teams or so over the last half of the season, but at least twice that. Your top teams will be battling for not only conference titles, but a coveted first-round bye. Other teams will fight for a seed to host a game, and others just to get into the tournament. It will be great October and November theater.

I’m usually loathe to add more playoff teams in most sports, but as it is now, college football has just 3 percent qualify. Even at 12 teams, that’s just 9 percent. By comparison, the NBA has 66 percent, NFL has 43 percent, and MLB has 40 percent. Any of those fans complaining?

As far as the other major college sport, basketball and the NCAA tournament, 19 percent of teams qualify. And in the lower college divisions of football – FCS, Division II and Divisions III – all have multi-levels of playoffs.

As I write this, Tulane had just come from 15 points down with five minutes left to upset blueblood USC, 46-45, in the Cotton Bowl. Tulane, with a 10-2 record, had no shot at the playoffs. Had this year been 2024, Tulane, as AAC champion, would not only be in the playoffs, but host a game.

Texas Tech will be on a level playing field in the new Big 12 in 2024. Suddenly, the improved Red Raiders under Joey McGuire have a legitimate playoff shot. That would never happen before.

The drama of those two semifinals on New Year’s Eve will likely be just a sampling of what’s ahead. March Madness will have some company.

Who’s up for December Delirium and January Jubilation?

Jon Mark Beilue writes about sports for The Eastern New Mexico News.