Saturday morning, before a full slate of college football games, including two Top-10 matchups (Ohio State vs Indiana and Notre Dame vs BYU), many media personalities got the chance to make their opinions known about the expansion of the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 24. Two of the most prominent voices were former Alabama head coach, Nick Saban and former Heisman Trophy winner, Tim Tebow.
Saban, sitting down with his fellow hosts on ESPN’s “College GameDay” on the campus of BYU, made a very definitive statement. “People want to see the best teams in the Playoffs. There’s not 24 teams in the country that deserve to be in the playoffs,” he started. “I don’t think there’s 24 teams in the country that can win the championship.”
Saban went on to say: “Bowl games are gonna be a thing of the past.”
In my opinion, bowl games were on life support once the NCAA introduced the 12-team College Football Playoff and NIL deals. They were instantly devalued and there wasn’t nearly enough incentive for players to participate in the Mom & Pop Mortgage Weedwacker Bowl (this is obviously not a real bowl, but you get the point). Why risk injury and participate in a bowl where there is virtually no upside? That’s the way most players and teams view bowl games now.
Saban also mentioned, “We’re gaining something but we’re also giving something up. There’s gonna be no SEC Championship Game now.”
NICK SABAN WANTS A DIFFERENT CRITERIA FOR JUDGING WHICH TEAMS REACH THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF
While Saban and the “College GameDay” crew acknowledged there are pros and cons in the expanded Playoff, it did seem like the cons outweighed the pros in Saban’s mind.
As for Tebow, he made his voice heard on the SEC Network. “We changed the goal posts. Before it was about how consistent can you be throughout the season? Now it’s can you just get in and get hot at the right time?,” Tebow stated.
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“It takes away the consistency. Before you had to focus every single week and you had to show up and you had to bring your best. Now, you have weeks where you don’t have to show up.”
“One of the biggest reasons why I don’t like it, is because when you’re looking at this game (college football), there’s a few things that separate us: It’s the regular season,” Tebow added. “The regular season is so critical. It’s so important. Now you’re diluting something that was so special and it was one of the biggest differentiators from the rest of the country, and all of these other sports (college and pro).”
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Tebow acknowledged that there will no doubt be some good things that come out of this, but in his opinion, there are some glaring issues that make college too similar to the NFL.
The proposal for expanding the College Football Playoff to 24 teams is nearly locked in, which would give teams seeded 1 through 8 a first-round bye, followed by a home game. The Playoff including home games for the highest seeded teams is a nice touch that many personalities seemed to agree was a positive. Other personalities, like Josh Pate said on Friday, while speaking on ESPN’s ‘Bussin’ & Pate On Campus,’ “The public overwhelmingly hates this.” He went as far as calling it an “embarrassment for the sport.”
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Is this about profit more than the betterment of the game? Is this setting up the sport for a positive future? That’ll be debated this weekend and beyond.