FootballScoop: Fixing College Football's Manufactured Playoff Problem (College Football Playoff Expansion)

Much of the same group of college football luminaries who met just a few brief years ago to put the key components together for a 12-team playoff now are meeting again to discuss changing a system that's literally not even one month past its first conclusion.

The inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff culminated last month with No. 8 seed Ohio State's overpowering of No. 7 seed Notre Dame inside Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Two teams who had to slog through all four rounds were left standing. No team with a first-round bye won a single game.

And, yet, by and large, the event was a success. The Field of 12 was correct in assembly, if flawed in order.

Guarantee spots but not byes. But Greg Sankey now wants to team with the Big Ten and ensure Sankey's #ItJustMeansMore SEC gets at least four bids, with equal guarantees for automatic participation trophies for the Big Ten as well?

At least the Big Ten is coming off back-to-back national titles -- Michigan's, of course, forever clouded in its cheating scandal -- and a breakthrough campaign of its expanded version accounting for and earning its four CFP bids after the 2024 regular season.

The mighty SEC? None of its original members won a Playoff game; newcomer Texas carried the banner ... all the way to the CFP Semifinals before it lost by double digits to the eventual champion Buckeyes.

Yet, as Ross Dellenger has so deftly chronicled, those leaders are in New Orleans trying to push forth a system that guarantees at least eight bids of a potential 14-team CFP would be guaranteed to the Big Ten/SEC Dark Side Alliance.

College football, among the ultimate examples of meritocracy, wants to go Upward Basketball in its next Playoff iteration.

FootballScoop jumps in to discuss, in a rather lively debate.

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