The 12-team college football playoff will solve one problem, but so many remain

Too bad college football’s 12-team College Football Playoff system doesn’t go into effect until next season — too bad on so many fronts.

If the 12-team plan were in effect this year, Ole Miss likely would be the 11-seed and would play 6-seed Georgia in a first-round game. No, the Rebels would not beat Georgia — no way, no how. But they would be in the first 12 team national championship playoffs, and that would be huge. 

More importantly – although not necessarily so to Mississippians – Georgia would also be in the tournament, and the Bulldogs might well be the betting favorite.

What’s more, Florida State, a perfect 13-0, would still be in the hunt, as well the Seminoles should be. Yeah, I know, FSU’s starting quarterback would not play and the Seminoles would not win it all, but if you win 13 straight games, including a 21-point smashing of LSU, you deserve to be part of the process. (I can’t even fathom how badly Greenville St. Joseph product Trey Benson must feel about all this. All he did this season is score 15 touchdowns and account for 1,132 yards from scrimmage for a 13-0 team and now must watch the playoffs on TV.)

Florida State, which would be the 5-seed, would play 12-seed Liberty in a first-round game. Other first-round games would include 9-seed Missouri at 8-seed Oregon in a delicious matchup, and 10-seed Penn State would play at 7-seed Ohio State. 

Then in the semifinals, 4-seed Alabama would play the Florida State-Liberty winner, 3-seed Texas would play the Ole Miss-Georgia winner, 2-seed Washington would play the Ohio State-Penn State winner, and top seed Michigan would play the Missouri-Oregon winner.

And then, when all is said and done, either Georgia or Alabama would be crowned champion. Just kidding. This is one year where the two SEC behemoths are not clearly the best in the country. (Although I would not bet against Alabama.)

As for this year’s four-team playoff, the CFP committee is simply making the best of a terrible system. And I know what many are thinking: How can Alabama, with a home loss to Texas, still be playing while Florida State sits on the playoffs sidelines? Well, Georgia, which just lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship game, is a 14-point favorite over Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Florida State, without its starting quarterback, is simply not one of the best four teams in the country. Not that injuries should decide who makes the playoffs and who doesn’t.

Even with the new playoff system next year, college football faces much bigger problems than this year’s CFP controversy. 

Quite simply, college football is a complete and absolute mess, a willing slave to the almighty dollar. So much is wrong with it, one scarcely knows where to begin.

Start with this: Next season, Southern Cal and UCLA, not to mention Oregon and Washington, will play in the same conference as Rutgers and Maryland. Meanwhile, Cal and Stanford, which are near the Pacific Ocean, will play across the continent in the Atlantic Coast Conference, named for that other ocean. UCF will play in the Big 12, which will have 16 teams. Not to be outdone, the Big 10 will be composed of 18 teams. The Big 18? Makes as much sense as Rutgers being in the same league with Southern Cal.

And we haven’t event gotten to the biggest issues college football faces. And those would be the NIL and the transfer portal. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule opened some eyes last week when he said that starting quarterbacks at the highest level of college football will cost you anywhere between $1 million and $2 million in NIL money. Meanwhile, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who has led his team to a 9-3 record, makes $875,000 a year. This is not exactly what administrators had in mind back when Rutgers and Princeton teed it up for the first college football game on Nov. 6, 1869.

Student-athletes? More like mercenaries. Don’t fall too deeply in love with your star player this year because he might play for your arch-rival next year. I don’t begrudge the players making some bucks – after all, they take the risks – but when college players make more than established pros, that’s not right. And we haven’t even talked about competitive balance. The NFL has a salary cap; college football does not. Without one, the rich will just get richer and the poor will get the hell beat out of them.

It’s all out of whack. Texas A&M is paying Jimbo Fisher $76 million not to coach and has hired another coach that it will presumably pay another $42 million over the next six years. The Aggies will be paying one man more not to coach than it will pay another man to really coach. How’s that for insanity? Ole Miss reportedly pays a starting running back about the same as it pays its chancellor. The Ole Miss football coach makes 74 times the annual salary of the Mississippi governor.

Meanwhile, if you plan attend a college football game in person, you won’t know whether it’s a day game or a night game until a week or so beforehand, and then you will sit through 14 TV timeouts averaging three minutes, 30 seconds each. That’s why a 60-minute game usually last three and a half hours or more, which is a long time to sit in 95-degree heat for an early September game that begins at 11 a.m.

TV pays the bills (and all those salaries). That’s why TV calls the shots. I hate it. Indeed, I have spent a lifetime going to college football games and most of a lifetime writing about it. Frankly, I have never enjoyed it less.

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