College Football expert Josh Pate blasts the idea of college football expansion, and Ohio State is a perfect example of why.
Thursday featured the most succinct explanation that we have heard about why the expansion of the college football playoff is one of the biggest mistakes that we are facing.
College football analyst Josh Pate asked a simple question: "What makes college football great?"
Is it the offseason? Is it the conference championships? Is it the Heisman Trophy? Maybe the college football playoff? How about the National Championship?
None of those is the correct answer. The crowned jewel of college football is the regular season, which is Saturdays in the fall. It's weeks 1 through 13, where every Saturday, college football fans throughout the entire country wake up, put on their team colors, and get ready to cheer their hearts out for their team.
No matter if that team already has six losses or if they are in contention with the giants of the sport, that's what we get up for. Saturdays are important because it's what every fan loves the most on the outside, and then on the inside, the players and coaches' jobs are evaluated on how far they go.
It's a perfect marriage of having to put the best possible product on the field every Saturday while fans enjoy the fact that they have a date with their team every weekend, no matter what.
If the College Football Playoff expands to 24 teams, one-half of that agreement is broken. The players and coaches are far less incentivised to win football games. Expanding this thing to 24 teams makes programs like Texas, Notre Dame, Georgia, and Ohio State a near lock every year.
The Buckeyes could, in theory, lose three, maybe four games every year and still chase the title at the end.
That takes the onus off of weeks 1-13 and puts them solely on weeks 14-18, the Playoffs. If and when this becomes reality, this will be a death blow to the sport that we have all come to know and to love.
The day that Buckeye fans wake up on an October Saturday with a game on against Indiana or Oregon or even Iowa that they could lose and their response is, "ehh, it doesn't even matter, wake me up in December," is a horrible day for college football.
That same logic goes for Longhorn fans, Fighting Irish fans, Bulldogs, Tide, Trojans, or whoever. Decentivising a regular season that only has 12 games in it is a horrible idea.
Not only that, it is the most universally disapproved idea that we have ever seen, no matter the industry.
