The way things are trending, the SEC is the last major holdout standing between college football moving towards a 24-team playoff. As a quick history lesson, the BCS started in 1998 to guarantee that the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams would play each other in a true national title game. That made way for the four-team playoff that started during the 2014 season, which was then expanded to 12 teams for the 2024 season.
But since the powers that be have decided 12 is not enough, there is a major push going on to expand things to 24 teams.
Make no mistake about it, Florida would make a 24-team playoff more times than not as long as Billy Napier is not the coach.
Also, make no mistake about it, a 24-team playoff does Florida fans zero good in the long run.
Florida would not benefit from a 24-team playoff
The Big 10, ACC, and Big 12 have all declared that they would like to see the college football playoffs expand to 24 teams. A new survey from CBS Sports revealed that within the SEC, opinion is split. Some want to move to 24 teams, while a decent number of others want to go no further than 16 teams.
For Florida fans specifically, one has to wonder what actual benefit would exist from a 24-team playoff?
Sure, it sets up a format where the Gators are going to make it more times than not. Not counting the Billy Napier Era, Florida would have made the playoffs in a 24-team format in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
But ask yourself, would you really have wanted to watch those squads in the playoffs? Outside of the 2012 and 2019 squads, none of those teams had a legit claim at being anything more than a token addition to the playoffs.
There is also a downside to letting teams in that don’t need to be in.
Expanded playoffs would have turned Florida’s 2024 squad into a bubble team that might have snuck in under the guise of “Well, they played a hard schedule and have been surging with DJ Lagway.”
The problem, too, is that it creates an artificial justification to hang on to coaches who no longer need to be coaches at Florida. Does Jim McElwain still get fired in 2017 after leading Florida to the playoffs in back-to-back seasons?
It also creates a system where individual wins and losses just don’t matter that much anymore.
Expanded playoffs would have rendered Florida’s 2024 win over Ole Miss and 2025 win over Texas to be meaningless because both those teams would have still made the 24-team field. Likewise, Marco Wilson’s shoe throw would have been meaningless because Florida would have been locked into the playoffs at that point.
So, beyond money, why exactly are conferences asking for this?
It’s not fans, it’s not pundits, it’s not the players.
Because, in a quest to let everyone in, the end product isn’t going to feel important because you let everyone in.
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