Category: History and More

The only certainties in life are death, taxes and people getting their undergarments in a twist when discussing the College Football Playoff.

Folks can sit back and passively watch the world burn around them, but they’ll start screaming and frothing at the mouth if you think your team deserved a spot in the field more than theirs.

But every sports fan has an opinion on it, and the Sports Fan’s Handbook demands that we are obligated to share that opinion.

So, what do I think about the 2022 CFP seeding (1. Georgia, 2. Michigan, 3. TCU, 4. Ohio State) ?

Meh.

There are 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams and 10 conferences. Having just four teams vie for a championship is, shall we say … lacking. Certainly, it beats the old Bowl Championship Series (which beats the old Bowl Alliance, which beats the old Bowl Coalition, which beats the old days of awarding “mythical” national championships). But as I’ve said and written many times, four participants mean you have an invitational, not a playoff.

Hearing folks cuss and discuss it amuses me, though.

Alabama fans are mad that a one-loss Ohio State team made it in over their two-loss team.

“But they got smoked at home by Michigan, 45-23, and our losses came on the last play of regulation (52-49 to Tennessee) and overtime (32-31 to LSU).”

I respond with, “Tennessee and Alabama have the same record and the Vols beat the Tide head-to-head, so shouldn’t they get in over Alabama?”

The return argument is that Tennessee was badly beaten by South Carolina, 63-38.

But …

Tennessee dismantled LSU 40-13 in Baton Rouge, and LSU beat Bama in Death Valley. The Tide didn’t play the Gamecocks, so who’s to say they wouldn’t have suffered a similar fate?

And what about Clemson? The Tigers are 11-2, and they won the ACC Championship Game.

Then there’s Tulane, which also finished 11-2 and claimed the AAC title. Oh, and the Green Wave defeated Big 12 champ Kansas State in Manhattan during the regular season.

Ohio State, Alabama and Tennessee didn’t even win the divisions of their respective conferences.

Before you start pelting me with debris, keep in mind I’m not advocating for any team; I truly couldn’t care less. That said, if you had to pick four under the current guidelines, I don’t have a problem with the four that were picked.

Thing is, fans can justify in their minds whatever narrative works best for their favorite sons.

And it’s always bugged me that in a four-team playoff, league championship contests only matter when the CFP wants them to matter.

If LSU had upset Georgia, the Bulldogs would’ve still made the playoffs but a three-loss LSU team – the SEC champions – would not.

And look at K-State. They have a nice trophy, but the team they beat last Saturday (TCU) is in the CFP while they get the consolation prize of playing in the Sugar Bowl.

Fortunately, there’ll be just one more season for the teams who finish fifth and sixth in the CFP pre-bowl rankings to whine. Starting in 2024, it’ll be the 13^th and 14^th-place schools that’ll get to bitch and moan because the field will be tripled to 12.

Obviously, that’ll be a lot closer to a playoff than what we have now and overall, I think it’s a positive change.

The format will feature the six highest ranked conference champions plus the next six highest ranked teams in the CFP poll.

Seeds one through four will receive first round byes, while seeds five through eight will host first round games. The quarterfinals and semis will be played in traditional bowls, followed by the CFP Championship Game.

Although flawed, I find a lot to like with this setup … perhaps because I, too, am flawed. Conference championship games will truly matter again, and as a fan of a Group of 5 school (UAB, which heads to the American Athletic Conference in 2023) there is realistic CFP access for mid-majors. It’s not as good as the Football Championship Subdivision’s 24-team playoff, but it’ll do.

Now, what gets the four-team playoff supporters spitting and convulsing is this whole “access” argument.

“You’ll be putting teams in who don’t deserve it!” they shout. “This is just about money!”

Well, yeah, of course it’s about money. I didn’t think that was a secret.

As for expanding the field with teams that – on paper – have little shot at winning it all, I think that’s great. It’s one of the beauties of tournament play.

When the UMBC Retrievers made the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in 2018, they had no realistic chance of winning the national championship. But they became the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed with a 74-54 beatdown of Virginia.

If only bluebloods had been allowed in the field, something as monumental as that would’ve never happened. And merely being in a championship chase has value.

Isn’t that part of what competition is all about, giving an underdog a chance to punch above their weight?

Once the CFP grows to 12 the last team in on Selection Sunday will usually be the first team out on First Round Saturday, but that won’t always be the case.

There’ll come a time when a Sun Belt team beats an SEC team in December. Outcomes like that make the playoffs a whole lot more interesting to me.

And while we discuss the merits of any postseason, it should be noted that tournaments don’t necessarily determine the best team, only the best team in that particular competition.

I joked last week that if you really wanted to crown a true champion in the FBS, the schools would need to play a round-robin, 130-game schedule. Then at the end, the one with the best record would be the undisputed king of the hill.

So sure, with a 12-team playoff you’ll have schools that probably don’t “belong.” But no one knows for sure until and unless they get the chance.

And I’d rather have a bigger tourney that includes pretenders than an invitational that excludes contenders.

But, that’s just my opinion …

When Roger Goodell was in London to spread the National Football League gospel earlier this month, he spoke at a UK Live event before the Green Bay Packers-New York Giants game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Now that the league is a regular visitor to England (Denver meets Jacksonville today at Wembley Stadium), rumors of international expansion come up quite frequently.

Goodell isn’t exactly trying to squelch them.

“I think there’s no question that London could support not just one franchise, but I think two franchises, I really believe that,” Goodell said at the fan gathering hosted by Sky Sports.

“And that’s from a fan perspective, a commercial standpoint, from a media standpoint, I think you (the UK fans) have undoubtedly proven that and thank you for that.”

Talk of a London franchise has been a hot topic for several years, although possibly awarding two to the Swinging City is a fairly recent development. The biggest news to me, however, was how Goodell responded to a question from Sky Sport’s Neil Reynolds.

Reynolds pointed out the three NFL-ready stadiums in London (Wembley, Twickenham and Hotspur) as well as future games scheduled for Munich and Frankfurt, and asked the commish about the possibility of an international division in the NFL.

“That’s part of what we’re doing, right?” Goodell answered. “We’re trying to see could you have multiple locations in Europe where you could have an NFL franchise because it would be easier as a division.”

While I’d love it for my friends there who want a team (or teams) of their own, I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around the logistics of having one or two European squads when the other 32 are in the contiguous United States. It wouldn’t be an issue if we had a transporter, but according to Star Trek, human teleportation isn’t scheduled for mass use until 2121.

Anyway, let’s say the NFL does grant London two teams (I’d put one in the AFC East and the other in the NFC East). It seems the only way to deal with the travel issue is to have long home stands by the London teams followed by extended road trips.

Sure, the NFL has plenty of money to make weekly junkets from an American NFL city to England, but it’d be asking a lot of a player to spend Week One in London, Week Two in San Francisco, Week Three back in London, etc. I don’t see how their body clocks could ever sync up.

If I had to come up with a plan for this (and I don’t, so you needn’t worry) it would be for the London teams to go with a four road/four home/four road/four home/plus one (17^th game) scheduling format. Maybe a couple of U.S. cities without NFL franchises could be the home-away-from-home for the Londoners, serving as a base camp to train and fly in and out of when they have their month-long stays in America.

It’s not perfect, but it seems workable.

The division plan is a better idea, but it still has pitfalls.

Let’s say London 1, London 2, Frankfurt and Munich make up what we’ll call the European Division. Playing each division foe twice along with the balance of a 17-game schedule, that gives the United Kingdom/Germany wing of the NFL 11 or 12 games on their side of the pond plus five or six in the United States.

You’d still have to go with a wonky home and road slate, though. And aside from that, what do you do with this one division dangling all by itself?

Is it part of the AFC, NFC, or neither?

Of course, the biggest question of all is how to stock the teams. It seems logical (and necessary) that the four European franchises be part of the regular NFL draft. But there would be culture shock issues to deal with and – in the case of players drafted by Frankfurt and Munich – potential language barriers.

While some athletes would love a chance to live and work abroad, many would likely be trying to find a way to get the German teams to make trades with those based in the Lower 48.

“The question I think is going to come down to, not so much the logistics about travel, that’s clearly a challenge, it really comes down to whether you can do it competitively,” Goodell told Reynolds. “Where the team here or the teams in the States coming over can continue to be competitive and that was the challenge when we did the regular season games.”

Ultimately, the NFL will have to figure out how big is too big. Thirty-two franchises are a seam-busting number for the top tier of any professional sports league, and growing beyond that runs the risk of diluting the product.

Plus, you’d have to feel for fans in places like St. Louis and Oakland who’d love to have an NFL team back only to see franchises go to places where tackle football was nothing more than a novelty just a few years ago.

For now, all this is just talk – interesting talk, certainly, but with no definitive plan of action behind it.

Yet with the NFL continuing to expand its footprint and develop an international fan base, it’d be silly to dismiss the idea of a team or teams in Europe, whether through expansion or relocation.

Besides, the rivalry between the London Spitfires and London Skylarks would be fantastic.