An Unbelievable Saturday Immediately Illustrates the Travesty of a 24-Team Playoff

No. 1, No. 2, No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 all lost on Saturday. No. 3 Miami was pushed to the limit in double overtime by Florida State. Texas and Alabama are now on the brink of elimination from College Football Playoff contention. Notre Dame could be in big trouble. Georgia squandered much of its cushion with plenty of tough games still to come.

We may very well have witnessed the greatest college football Saturday ever. Almost none of it would really matter next year.

I can't understand for the life of me how someone could watch that incredible Saturday of college football and make the argument that we need to completely eliminate the urgency of the regular season and double the size of the Playoff field. Those people will tell you, however, that because there has been an increase in parity in the sport over the last few years, we must include all those teams in the Playoff because anything could happen.

This is, of course, nonsense that does not withstand a modicum of scrutiny if you think about it for more than two seconds.

Would more parity in the sport not indicate that we would have more variance in the Playoff field from year to year while also not devaluing the importance of the regular season? Expanding the field guarantees we see at least half a dozen of the same teams in the CFP every single season regardless of what happens to them from September to November. We are turning college football into college basketball, where many teams will never play a meaningful regular season game ever again and the entirety of the conversation surrounding them will be about the Playoff.

Call me nuts, but if Texas loses a third of its games, I really don't think it deserves a chance to play for the national championship. Why have we decided games in December we've created out of thin air are "meaningful," but losses in October aren't? If Notre Dame only plays two real games in the entire regular season and loses both of them, should it be safely in the Playoff field?

You will also have people tell you an expanded Playoff field will help determine a more "true champion." This is less defensible than the parity point.

Introducing more teams creates more variance. If 8-4 Alabama beats 10-2 Miami in the first round, you didn't help determine a more worthy champion, you allowed a team that proved it did not deserve to be there to eliminate a team that did. Nobody argues that a 15-seed beating a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament helps determine the best basketball team in the country. But most people agree they like it because it's fun and exciting for casual viewers, so just be honest about what you want out of this whole deal.

The 13 Saturdays we get in the fall are what make college football special. When we get one like we were lucky enough to experience this week, we should cherish the stakes that come with it. Why does anyone want to get rid of them to be able to shift them to unnecessary games in December?

I am thankful we got a day of college football as awesome as this Saturday in the final season of a reasonably-sized CFP. This same slate of results next year will be an entertaining footnote en route to the real season, which won't begin until Christmas.