Expanding CFB Playoffs in 2020

 There have been many people, since the beginning of the playoff era, trying to get the playoffs to expand from four teams to six, eight or even more.  From the beginning, I always thought eight would be the perfect number so all Power 5 conference champions get an automatic bid and then three at-large bids. One of the at-large bids going to the best Group of 5 team and the remaining two to the best non-champion teams that didn’t win their conference. This will allow BYU to have a chance as an independent to get in, unlike Notre Dame who counts as their own conference basically since they always get special treatment unfairly.  This year especially since BYU looks pretty good and they have a great quarterback, Zach Wilson, who is barely getting any mention nationally and rightfully deserves to be in the heisman talk.

With the craziness of the 2020 season due to COVID-19, this year would be the perfect time experimenting to expand the playoffs since no one knows how many games each team will even be able to play. The PAC-12 champion is only guaranteed to play 7 games at most barring any cancellations. The B1G champion is guaranteed to play 9 games if there are no cancellations.  The other three Power 5 conferences can play a maximum of 10 or 11 games if they are lucky. Since there will be an imbalance of the number of games played along with conference-only games, the playoff committee will have to rely on the “eye test” more so this year than any other. 

We have seen a number of games being postponed or cancelled due to COVID outbreaks. Poor Houston finally was able to play their first game this past Thursday due to circumstances out of their control. I was glad to see the feckless commissioner of the PAC-12 Larry Scott finally speak up and push to expand the playoffs. He was shot down by the leaders of the playoff committee of course, but I’m glad he at least tried. I wish he got more support from the other commissioners of the Power 5 conferences to put pressure on the playoff committee to change their minds. Hopefully, that could still happen once the B1G and PAC-12 start playing.