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Is a 12-team College Football Playoff good for all conferences? | College Football Enquirer

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the consternation over expanding the College Football Playoff from 4 teams to 12 teams, and debate whether expansion is good for all conferences.

Video transcript

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DAN WETZEL: We had a widespread excitement over the summer when the 12-team playoff came out. The proposal, we were we are arguing details. Should there be more home games? Should there be this or that? It was all, I think, [? Clive ?] said it's all in the margins.

And then Texas and Oklahoma moved to the SEC and everyone got all hot and bothered and angry. And then they all hit the brakes, and you get these bizarre statements. Greg Sankey who's under the heat lamp here with his peers. He just basically told the Orlando Sentinel he doesn't care.

We can stay at four. I can go to 16. This is about looking at the big picture of college football. He's right. I hope so.

The Big 12, the ACC, the Big 10 and the Pac 12 should be running to this deal. Take the 12. Get yourself an automatic bid.

Stop letting personal animosity and politics get in the way of what's best for your league. If the Big 12 opposes this thing and tries to punt it, it literally could be the end of the Big 12, which is already pretty much on the doorstep of being over because they haven't supported this for the last 20 years. Am I wrong, Pat Forde?

PAT FORDE: No, you know, you're right that this is, I mean, the SEC should be the only league that's OK with four. Everybody else should be saying bigger, bigger, bigger because the SEC is the only one that's been guaranteed to be in every playoff. Everybody else should be giving their league a better chance to be in what matters, not the Duke's Mayo Bowl or the Sun Bowl or any other bowl game or any of that crap it doesn't matter.

It's nice little filler for ESPN for their, you know, inventory. It's OK for a few fans. Some of the players like it. Some of the players don't. But everybody should want to be in the playoff and should be trying to get an expanded playoff.

The roadblock of course, is very much aimed at we don't want the SEC to tell us what to do. And we sure don't want ESPN to tell us what to do and for ESPN to make all the money on the playoff. And I understand those reactions. But don't spike an expanded playoff out of spite for that and out of a network kerfuffle.

PETE THAMEL: The strategy of the ACC, Pac 12, and Big 10 is a strategy of obstruction not a strategy of outcome because the outcome favors all of them. I believe the Big 1o, if you historic back the playoff and made it 12, would actually have gotten more teams in than the SEC over the history of the college football playoff. That's a good outcome.

The Pac 12 hasn't had any good outcome since Mark Helfrich was the coach at Oregon. People have already forgotten Mark Helfrich was the coach at Oregon. And the ACC has been a one-man band marching down the street for a long time with Clemson. They could use some people riding shotgun.

So they get it. The SEC is pulling away from everyone, everybody freaked out and decided "they didn't like the process." "We don't like the process." Well, guess what, you like the result.

So let's get to the results. And the tension with the result remains do we let ESPN broadcast the rest of it? The Fox leaning conferences, which are the Big 10 and the Pac 12 are not going to let ESPN be the sole broadcaster of this. They've made that very clear in their statements. And that is understandable.

That is the one objection that makes some sense. There is a very smart fiscal rationale going forward of having two broadcasters of your postseason. And so that's the-- that's the needle that needs to be threaded here. So yeah, here we are simmering over the creamed corn again. Hopefully the-- hopefully we can be outcome focused and not obstruction focused.