Clemson football: 3 reasons Tiger fans would hate 12-team CFB Playoff

2. The regular season becomes watered down

One of the big things that happens when you add a playoff is that the regular season becomes watered down.

Those ESPN College GameDay feature matchups in October or even November become less important. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’ve got a matchup between two top-7 teams who are undefeated in late October. In the current four-team format, the winner of that game would vault themselves strongly into the field and would just need to finish their season out to ensure a spot in the final four.

Well, now the winner of that game is basically a lock for the playoff because even if they lose, they won’t fall out of the top-12, and the loser of that game doesn’t even feel the sting of a loss because they’re likely still in the field, as well.

It becomes more like the NFL than College Football.

An NFL team can lose one or two games in a row and it doesn’t matter. In this type of field, you will have teams with 10-2 records inside the playoff every year and you’ll even have seasons where 9-3 teams get included.

If you can go 9-3 and still make the playoffs, then you can’t argue that “every single Saturday matters.”