If there were a 24-team College Football Playoff bracket in 2025, this is what it would have looked like.
The 24-team college football playoff bracket is continuing to gain steam as the leaders in college football continue to try to ruin college football.
It is not debatable that the negatives will completely and totally outweigh the positives that will come from a 24-team bracket. Really, the only positive that comes from this is the networks making a few extra bucks and passing that along to the schools.
The negatives are too many to list. It's bad for the players, it's bad for the coaches, its bad for their futures, its bad for the fans. The idea of a 24 team playoff is literally only a positive for the television networks.
That said, if there were a 24-team playoff bracket in 2025, this is what it would have looked like.
The Buckeyes check in as the top seed in the tournament because this implies that there would not have been a Big Ten Championship game under this format. With that as the reality, Ohio State would be the one seed while Indiana would have been the two seed.
The Buckeyes would have played the winner of the 16 vs. 17 matchup between USC (9-4) and the Virginia Cavaliers (10-3).
In this format, even after a bye week, the Buckeyes, as the No. 1 seed, would have to win four playoff games to hoist the trophy. If a team were to make a run from the first round, they would have to win five games.
This means that the National Champion will have to win in 16 or 17 games, which, truthfully, isn't too different from what they have to do now.
While that is still terrible, it is our current reality, so that part gets a pass. What doesn't get a pass is the complete and total non-existent barrier to entry.
In this scenario, a total of five teams would make the Playoff with four losses. Five.
USC, Houston, Arizona, Iowa State, and Michigan all finished the year last year with four losses. Each of those teams lost to at least one, if not more than one, other team in the bracket.
That quite literally shows that this idea makes the regular season completely irrelevant. For teams like Ohio State, Indiana, Oregon, Notre Dame, or Texas, when you look at their schedule in May, there aren't even four close games, let alone losses, on their schedule.
In May they are already in the College Football Playoff.
This idea, as it grows legs, just continues to get worse and worse. It is getting close to the point of going too far. They will continue to push this until the consumer stops consuming. Maybe that happens, maybe it doesn't, but the more that this grows, the worse that the sport
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