8 Teams 'Ideal' for College Football Playoff, Says ACC Commissioner

The first College Football Playoff hasn’t even happened yet, and as expected, there are already cries for an 8-team playoff. Here’s ACC Commish John Swofford today in Durham:

"“in terms of the number of teams, would probably be ideal … You have four teams that get a chance to play for the national championship, which is twice as many as before, but whoever’s fifth or sixth is not going to be happy. There will be some conferences that won’t have a team in the playoff.” “The question is asked a lot, ‘Why not eight?’ or ‘Will it become eight in a few years?’ I can tell you why not eight, right now: The presidents made the decision as to how far we can go with the playoff, and the bookends are exams in December, and the presidents don’t want football to become a two semester sport. Those concerns are education-based. So I think they’re appropriate.”"

This isn’t too difficult, in terms of options: You could trim one game off the regular season, and since half the country goes to bowl games now, very few teams are going to lose that much revenue, given all the TV money in place and the money recouped from the playoff.

As I wrote weeks ago, a well-known national power like Alabama or Notre Dame getting left out of the playoff while TCU got in would be the impetus for an off-season full of “8-team playoff” talk. Notre Dame has stumbled and fallen out of the picture, but this week, all the talk is about unbeaten Florida State getting bypassed by a 1-loss team for the second week in a row, and Ohio State charging hard on the outside.

Oh, and what happens when the mighty SEC has a team that’s 11-1 with its lone loss to No. 1 Alabama, and it gets left out?

So … 8-team playoff by 2017? Five conference champs and three Wild Cards?

Giddy up.

Team chaos. [via Herald Sun]