The first 12-team College Football Playoff includes Arizona State, a program of limited historic achievement, a team picked to finish last in its conference, which is led by the youngest head coach in the sport.
Kenny Dillingham, 34, sometimes looks and sounds more like a sophomore linebacker for the Sun Devils, such as on Saturday when he described a pivotal play in his team’s 45-19 rout of Iowa State to earn the Big 12 championship in Arlington, Texas. ASU was down 7-3 in the first quarter and had fourth-and-1 at its own 34, so it went for it and threw deep for a gain of 63. How? Why? Dillingham said offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo made the call.
“I was like, ‘Oh crap,’” Dillingham said of that moment. “‘All right, bud. Let’s do it.’”
Yes. Let’s. “Oh crap, all right bud, let’s do it,” sums up college football fandom perfectly in 2024. We’ve rollicked through an enthralling debut regular season of the 12-team era — “Oh crap” in the best possible way — setting up a Playoff that can’t be much more compelling.
The sport needed it, badly, and got it.
We’ll see if the Playoff itself delivers, but that’s the thing about going from four teams to 12, from three games to 11. A stinker or two won’t besmirch the whole enterprise, as it has at times during the four-team Playoff’s run from 2014 through 2023.
We’re going to get some good games out of the bracket that the 13-person selection committee constructed Sunday. No. 9 seed Tennessee at No. 8 seed Ohio State? No. 10 seed Indiana at No. 7 seed Notre Dame? The winner of that game against No. 2 seed Georgia in the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal? I’m not conceding anything as unwatchable, including No. 12 seed Clemson at No. 5 seed Texas.
Unbeaten No. 1 seed Oregon is the favorite, but not an overwhelming one — tell me the Buckeyes or Vols bounce the Ducks in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal on Jan. 1 and these eyes don’t skip a blink. The sport has managed to greet the first 12-team field with something that resembles parity, and maybe that’s just how things fell this year.
It does seem money and player movement can make effective starters on upstart teams of the No. 3 linebackers and No. 3 receivers who used to wait their turns at traditional powers. But we’ll see if that’s a lasting trend.
This year, we know. This year, we don’t have an enormous gap between Oregon and, say, the No. 11 team. That’s Alabama, which along with No. 14 South Carolina and No. 16 Ole Miss — The SEC’s Snubbed Three — could have done damage in this tournament.
But that’s another benefit of a 12-team Playoff. If you miss this thing, you’ve done enough wrong that no one should shed a tear for you or worry too much about whether the committee made a mistake.
If you’re going to have a tournament to decide a national champion, it will naturally become the focus of the entire sport, and that’s why it has to be more inclusive than it was in the past decade. This tournament has four from the Big Ten, three from the SEC, two from the ACC, one from the Big 12, one from the Mountain West and Notre Dame. It represents most regions of the continental United States, not just the South and the Midwest. It stretches as far northeast as State College, Pa., as far southwest as Tempe, Ariz., home of Dillingham’s Sun Devils, and as far northwest as Boise, Idaho.
It includes Indiana, the losingest program in college football history, a team media predicted would finish 17th out of 18 in the expanded Big Ten. It includes SMU, which last made college football front-page news when the NCAA gave the program the “death penalty” in 1987. SMU was picked a respectable seventh as a new member in the expanded ACC, though that’s still six places behind preseason favorite Florida State (final record: 2-10).
This Playoff includes Boise State, which features perhaps the best football player in America, running back Ashton Jeanty, and finished 11-1. The Broncos won’t be picked by many to win the whole thing, but their sole loss was on the road, 37-34, to No. 1 team and favorite Oregon.
That thriller was an early-season indication of things to come, in a season that saw Vanderbilt beat Alabama, Northern Illinois beat Notre Dame, Indiana apologize for not blowing out Michigan, Army and Navy both enter the rankings and the Playoff race and Colorado come back to beat Baylor on a Hail Mary that capped one of the most improbable comebacks in memory. We’ve got a pretty special Heisman Trophy race going, too, between Jeanty and Colorado two-way player Travis Hunter.
Those are specific to this season, but we saw benefits of the 12-team Playoff that will continue in seasons to come (including when it gets to 14, and then 16, and then we’ll see). More games matter.
Let’s take the weekend of Nov. 23. Ohio State beat Indiana in what would have been an elimination game for both in the four-team system. It actually still could have bounced Indiana, but Florida upset Ole Miss and Oklahoma upset Alabama to help the Hoosiers. With a 12-team Playoff, Ole Miss and Alabama were still alive that weekend and playing games that had the entire sport paying attention. In the old days, they would have been playing out the string and hoping for a good bowl game.
Arizona State’s win over BYU, Kansas’ win over Colorado and Auburn’s four-overtime upset of Texas A&M on that day also had a profound effect on the field that was announced Sunday. They would have been afterthoughts, nationally, without the expansion to 12 teams.
And yes, some of the games of the past weekend would have had higher stakes in a four-team world, that’s true. Georgia-Texas would not have been a matchup of two teams assured of spots. But the Big 12 and ACC games would have involved three of four teams assured of not getting spots. SMU would have been the only hopeful among a combined 33 teams in those leagues.
The 12-team Playoff enhances the sport, and this season makes that clear. Promising scripts disappoint all the time, but Martin Scorsese brought this one to life.
Now, before “Everything is Awesome!!!” from “The Lego Movie” autoplays, let me be clear that college football still inspires grievances. Arguing and complaining are two pillars of the sport, in fact, and that’s not changing. Let’s air some.
The selection committee consistently confuses with explanations of its criteria. The field should be seeded 1 to 12, not confined to conference champs as the top four seeds. Those top four seeds should get home games, not bowl games, for the quarterfinals. Conference championship games have lost some clout. The transfer portal is a bit out of control. The targeting rule remains unclear. Officiating needs to improve.
Officials don’t, however, deserve an athletic director — Utah’s Mark Harlan — throwing out conspiracy theories after he didn’t like a correct call in a bitter rivalry loss to BYU. We’ve got too much public whining and sniping in general from athletic directors and conference commissioners. Some of them are directly responsible for the worst part of college football, conference realignment — a result of unchecked greed, resulting in bloated, nonsensical leagues.
There’s no lipstick for that pig. But the 2024 college football season and the 12-team Playoff to come have given us bacon. Let’s do it. Let’s eat.
(Photo of Cam Skattebo: Kelsey Grant / Getty Images)
