College Football Playoff Plans 24-Team Field to Make the Season More Meaningful, Starting by Canceling the Conference Championships

THE PRESS BOX (THE BLEACHERS BEHIND THE SNACK BAR) — I have covered football in this Region for 31 years. I have seen a lot of bad ideas. I was there in 1997, when a referee I have named in my column every year since decided that a fumble was not a fumble. I have made my peace with nothing.

So you can imagine how I felt Thursday when I read that the College Football Playoff is about to go to 24 teams.

Twenty-four. The playoff is “nearing a deal” with ESPN to pay for the extra games, starting next season, according to ESPN, which would know. The new money is expected to top $300 million a year.

Here is the reason they gave. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti, the plan’s biggest backer, says a bigger field makes more regular-season games meaningful. It also rewards schools for spending tens of millions of dollars on their rosters, according to The Mercury News. I understood the second reason right away.

Now here is how they are making the season more meaningful. They are canceling the conference championship games.

Read that again. I had to. I read it four times and then I went out to my truck and sat in it.

To make room on the calendar, the conference title games go away. “They’re gonna be gone,” CBS Sports’ John Talty said. “That’s the reality of the situation.” The first weekend of December will be empty except for Army-Navy and the Heisman Trophy ceremony. The most meaningful Saturday of the year, gone, so that the season can be more meaningful.

Back in my day, the playoff was four teams. Before that it was zero teams, and two guys in sport coats voted on a champion over a ham sandwich. We complained every year. That was the point. Complaining was the postseason.

The sport ran a four-team playoff for 10 seasons. It is in only the third season of a 12-team playoff. Now it wants to double it. At this rate, my nephew’s flag football team makes the field by 2031.

The opening round would put No. 9 against No. 24, No. 10 against No. 23, and so on, at the higher seed’s stadium on the second weekend of December. The top eight teams get a bye. A lot of the games would be played on Thursdays and Fridays, because the NFL has Saturdays now too. The championship moves to the second half of January. By then, half the seniors will have graduated.

That is 23 playoff games over five rounds, instead of 11 over four. I asked the fellow who runs the snack bar what he thought. He said that is 12 more games of nachos. He is not wrong, and the nachos here rank third in my power rankings, behind the Legion field and a gas station off Route 9.

Here is my favorite part. The 24th-best team in the country gets a playoff spot. In 1997, the 24th-best team in the country was the team that got robbed by that referee. Now it would get a home game. I do not know whether to laugh or call my lawyer.

The fans, I should say, do not want this. Numerous public polls in recent months show more than 70 percent of fans oppose a 24-team field, The Mercury News reported. Nobody asked the fans. Nobody ever asks the fans. They asked ESPN.

The playoff said in a statement Thursday that “constructive discussions with ESPN continued this week.” I have had constructive discussions with ESPN too. I yell at it from my recliner and it does not change anything.

There is still time. The Big Ten and the SEC have until Dec. 1 to finalize the format. So here is my offer to the College Football Playoff. Keep the conference championships. Keep the 12 teams. Let the 13th-best team in the country do what the 13th-best team has always done: go to a bowl game named after a mattress company and complain about it until spring.

That is tradition. That is meaningful.

Twenty-four teams is not a playoff. It is a potluck.