Football is NOT basketball!

That is not the goal.

BLSS - EXACTLY!!!!! And if people want to say the goal is to keep all the money, they need to show, where the MAC Champion or AAC, CUSA champs really are one of the 12 best teams in the nation.

EXACTLY!!!!! The primary interest in expanding the playoff is to expand eyeballs and clicks.... i.e., money!!!! No one thinks the #12 (let alone #7) team has a legit shot at winning the championship. But you expand the number of games and thus expand the TV contract. The audience also likes drama, the "what if" - so put in a UCF, a W. Mich., Boise St. in the mix. No one is saying they'll win it all, but maybe pull an upset of the #5 or #6 team. People would rather watch that then the 4th place SEC Miss St play USC.

Also, by throwing a G5 team in (instead of the 3rd place Big Ten Mich St.), the NCAA can act like they really care about giving all players a shot (even though they only care about the players making them money). So its good PR - keeps the media and Congress from getting all up in their face.

"Best Teams" - no - but we all know only 4. 5. 6 teams really have a shot. So flavor the mix.

As an aside, the coach of Coastal Carolina was on the radio the other day and said he was all in. Said he would be walking into recruits' homes and talking about how they can make the playoffs (once it gets closer).

Saw this just now:

Why are these men smiling? Because they're in familiar surroundings. (Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
By Jay Busbee
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Today I'm going to talk about the 12-team College Football Playoff. But first, a declaration: I hate the Steve Miller Band.
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Steve Miller and his various bandmates may be wonderful people. I wouldn't know, I've never met them. But what I can say is this: if I never hear "The Joker," "Fly Like An Eagle," "Jet Airliner" or any other of their room-temperature-oatmeal rock, I'll be just fine.
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And it's not just the Steve Miller Band. The Eagles, John Mellencamp, Fleetwood Mac*, Boston — package 'em all on a reunion tour and then send that tour to the moon.
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(*-Except "Silver Springs." That song rules.)
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Why do I hate all these Greatest Hits-peddling bands so much? Familiarity. Constant, numbing familiarity. The first piano chords of "Cold As Ice" or the first syllables of "Carry On My Wayward Son" make me mad enough to grind my teeth. I spent my formative years hearing all them and more being played nonstop on the radio.
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(For those under the age of 35: a "radio" was kind of like Spotify, except it was attached to your car, you couldn't control the playlist, and you didn't own that music either.)
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ANYway. Why this long divergence into classic rock in a sports newsletter? Because for all the hype the new 12-team College Football Playoff plan is drawing, I fear it's going to end up a whole lot like classic rock: great the first couple times you hear it, but eventually you'll long for a trip to the dentist to avoid seeing Clemson, Alabama or Ohio State yet again.
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Granted, a 12-team playoff is much better than a four-team one, since those three teams have a stranglehold — to quote classic rocker Ted Nugent — on the playoff as it is. But assuming these programs continue on their current trajectory, and there's no reason to expect they'll fall off, you're going to see Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia and Oklahoma lurking — or clogging — every playoff for the foreseeable future. All the other teams are likely to be interchangeable side dishes on a Thanksgiving table.
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And then there's Notre Dame, which, as our Dan Wetzel notes, somehow managed to work a triple benefit out of this: it retains access to the playoff without having to join a conference, it keeps its ability to recruit nationwide in play, and it gains the possibility of a ridiculously lucrative first-round game at home. The Irish may not hold the elite on-field status of the Tide or the Tigers, but their ability to remain in the college football conversation remains unmatched.
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Look, the College Football Playoff is going to be tremendous fun, and maybe someone will even score an upset now and then. But the blue bloods tend to spend a whole lot more money (cue Pink Floyd) than anyone else, on everything from facilities to coaches to PR. And that means that once we get to the semifinals, we're likely to see a bracket that looks a whole lot like it does right now ... again and again and again.
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Have a great weekend, friends, and we'll see you back here Monday. Play whatever music you like, I promise I won't judge.

If a team can finish in the Top 12 they can play for a title no matter where they are from. That is a realistic shot for almost everyone in FBS while Top 4 was improbable aside from the very top G5 programs with a slim chance if the conditions were right.

Finishing in the Top 12 is one way to get in. The second way is to be a Top 6 rated conference champion which the MAC offers up from time to time. This is not for a New Year's bowl but to actually play for a national title.

Under the Top 2 and Top 4 formats there are P5 programs that never could quite get to play for a NC that can do so now. Think West Virginia or TCU very close in a few seasons but not quite.

The playoff record of a coach at places like Michigan and LSU could be used as grounds for firing. Coach 5 years and go 0-2 in the playoff spells failure. If that happens at Ohio you'll have a stadium named after you. For the extra large programs playoff failures could hurt like it does for an NFL coach.

I don't see how having the MAC Champion in the playoffs every year just to get clobbered helps the MAC. If the MAC starts to build a super poor record in the playoff that will hurt recruiting. If instead it places a team in the playoff every 5 years and plays competitively it won't be as rough on recruiting.