Expanding the college football playoff is just logical

A healthy chunk of you have already decided that I'm dead wrong on this, and that's OK with me.

But after four full editions of the college football playoffs, it's never been more clear to me that the bracket needs to be expanded to eight teams. Before you think you're two steps ahead of me, this isn't just because Alabama won an All-SEC final. I actually wrote that the eight-team field was ideal after the first playoff year.

That doesn't mean Bama isn't central to the idea of an expanded bracket, though.

First of all, the obvious claim for a bigger field: Champions getting left out. Ohio State and, to a lesser degree, Southern Cal, both won major conferences while Alabama was sitting at home because the Crimson Tide couldn't win their division. My eight-team bracket would have all five major champions and probably the top non-major champion - UCF for this year - with the field rounded out by two at-larges chosen by a committee. That means teams like Bama would still get in, but others would have a chance to earn a bid in a concrete way.

The second reason relates to Bama in a different way: Bama - the actual national champion - almost didn't get in. A couple more plays by Wisconsin, and the Badgers would've gotten the Tide's spot in the field. A couple plays that Bama had zero control over could've left out the team that ended up winning the whole thing. 

There will be, of course, opponents to the eight-team plan who will say that it diminishes the importance of the regular season. Tim Tebow said that exact thing during some of the lead-up coverage for the national title game.

That, quite simply, is garbage.

First of all, under the current system, Bama got in the playoffs without winning its conference or division. The Tide also beat zero teams that finished the regular season in the top 15 nationally, meaning they didn't have to put together a particularly impressive resume to overcome their lack of a title. Does their inclusion not mean that the current playoff format devalues parts of the regular season?

On top of that, about eight games in the final week had any chance of impacting the playoff field, and that's if you include the Iron Bowl. If you expand the bracket to eight teams and give the above guaranteed spots, that number expands to about 16. That's one week with 16 games in which at least one team is still potentially vying for a potential playoff spot. Imagine how many more games throughout the year would've carried added significance if every major conference champion got in? 

Another counter-argument is that no matter how many teams get in, someone will always complain. And that's true, but it also doesn't matter. The goal shouldn't be to make everyone happy; the NCAA basketball tournament is proof you'll never reach that goal. The goal should be to make sure you have the most fair, accurate championship as possible. 

The basketball tournament has that. Every conference champion in the country gets a bid, and dozens more teams get chosen based off their resumes. Any team that gets left out had at least one way to guarantee itself a trip to the tournament and came up short.

This year, UCF won every game it played and won its conference. Then, the Knights beat the Auburn team that beat both Alabama and national runner-up Georgia. In any other level of any other sport, leaving them out of even being considered for the national championship would be unacceptable. 

Beyond that, we aren't even guaranteed that an undefeated major conference champion wouldn't be left out. Alabama, Oklahoma State, Clemson, Ohio State and Southern Cal could've all been undefeated this year, and there are countless other combinations of major conference teams that could say the same based on scheduling. Under this system, one of those teams would be left out..
It's time to take that possibility, even if the likelihood is small, off the table and expand the playoffs.