Why I might almost miss the 4-team College Football Playoff. Almost | Toppmeyer

PASADENA, Calif. – If more College Football Playoff semifinal games had been like these two, I might almost miss this four-team format when the field expands to 12 next season. Almost.

The playoff’s first eight years served an unrelenting helping of semifinal blowouts, plus a few national championship routs. Last season’s semifinals were thrillers before Georgia trashed TCU in the national championship.

Now, after a Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl doubleheader in which each game came down to the final play, we’re one compelling national championship away from this being the best playoff in 10 years of this format.

Never have all three playoff games been decided by one possession. Early betting spreads list No. 1 Michigan (14-0) as a 4½-point favorite against No. 2 Washington (14-0) for Monday’s game in Houston.

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Either the Big Ten will produce its first national champion since 2014 Ohio State won the inaugural playoff, or the Pac-12 will supply a playoff champion for the first (and possibly last) time. Washington is off to the Big Ten as soon as this season ends, and the Pac-12 will become the Pac-2.

Twice in a five-year span, the national championship featured twin SEC powers separated by 270 miles. On Monday, a national championship will be played without SEC representation for the first time since the playoff’s first year.

The playoff selection committee did not choose the four most-deserving teams. Such a field would have included Florida State. And, contrary to what committee chairman Boo Corrigan claimed last month, the committee also did not select the four best teams. That field would have included Georgia, winner of 30 of its last 31 games.

What the committee achieved, though, was a successful creation of two incredible semifinal games. I suspect that was an unspoken goal of this matchmaking.

Instant classics, really.

Often, a super team emerges throughout the fall before bullying its way through the playoff. No such juggernaut exists this season, replaced by a touch more parity and a handful of very good teams, in the absence of a great one.

As Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh would say, who’s got it better than us? No one had it better than college football fans Monday.

Michigan needed a fourth-down stop in overtime to fend off Alabama. Washington defended Quinn Ewers’ final pass into the end zone to withstand the Longhorns’ rally.

Outside of the playoff, Liberty’s 39-point loss to Oregon foreshadowed the blowouts that await in the 12-team format. If the expanded format were in place this season, Liberty would have been a playoff qualifier.

So, yeah, a bigger playoff will prevent neither blowouts nor controversy, and it won’t ensure semifinals as good as Monday's.

Still, as bowl games recede from relevance, trumped by the CFP, opt-outs and winter free agency, I invite more playoff games, which should help keep most players on the 12 playoff qualifiers in uniform.

I embrace this expanded format that will deliver first-round games on campus sites.

I welcome access for the Group of Five. The reward of the occasional David-topples-Goliath upset is worth the risk of Liberty getting trounced.

I appreciate that programs that never would have made a four-team playoff will contend for a berth to the 12-teamer.

Plus, I hope a bigger playoff will encourage teams to reduce the number of regular-season cupcake games. No longer will a team need to be undefeated or strapped with just a single loss to qualify for the playoff.

And yet I wonder, if previous iterations of the four-team playoff had supplied semifinals as good as Monday’s, would the playoff be expanding to 12 teams in 2024?

My instinct is expansion was inevitable. A bigger playoff will be a revenue boon. Money fuels these decisions.

In its final gasp, though, the four-team playoff finally showed us what it could be, just before it becomes something else.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's SEC Columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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