Tennessee Football: 2019 is a perfect example why we need an 8-team College Football Playoff
The current College Football Playoff format was introduced in 2014 and has since held the same format, but it’s time to change it up.
Tennessee football won’t be competing for a spot in the College Football Playoff for quite a while, but even with Tennessee out of the picture, 2019 is a perfect example as to why we need an eight-team playoff to replace the current four-team playoff format.
This may change by the time we reach conference championship weekend, but as of right now, there are probably six or seven teams that could win the National Championship this year.
We’ve watched the handful of teams play throughout the first half of the season, and we have a pretty good idea of who those teams would be.
If I had to rank those teams in order, I would go 1. LSU, 2. Oklahoma, 3. Clemson, 4. Alabama, 5. Ohio State, 6. Wisconsin, 7. Penn State, 8. Georgia.
A lot of these teams will play each other by the end of the year, knocking a few teams out of the Playoff race, but imagine a four-team playoff with LSU (If they beat Bama), Oklahoma, Clemson, and Ohio State. That would be really fun but not near as fun as the eight-team Playoff above.
In a four-team Playoff, there isn’t much room for upsets. Since 2014, there have almost always been three teams we knew could win it, and usually, the four seed we knew didn’t really have a chance.
When we think of college athletics, upsets are a huge part of that. March Madness is a perfect example of that. If we could create some of that March Madness magic in the CFP, then it would be a new kind of fun to watch.
This year, I believe that almost every team in my top-eight above could find a way to win the College Football Playoff Championship.
Instead, we’re probably going to have four undefeated teams and three or four one-loss teams who could hang with the undefeated teams but won’t get that opportunity.
Could Wisconsin beat LSU, Oklahoma, or Alabama by holding their offense to less than 25 points? We might not ever find that out. The Wisconsin-OSU game in a couple of weeks will give us a pretty good idea, but I don’t think whoever loses that game should be eliminated from the Playoffs.
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The four-team Playoff was meant to be a test run for the Playoff to see if it would work. Well, it works pretty dang well, so give us more teams. I don’t know about a 16-team Playoff like Mike Leach proposed, but this year is a perfect example of why we need an eight-team Playoff.