Why the 12-Team College Football Playoff Will Fail

The format. The schedule. The locations. They’re all wrong. But other than that, the 12-team college football playoff will be fine.

This week, the people running college football again proved they have absolutely no interest in promoting the game of college football. The schedules for the first two years of the expanded playoffs are out, and they make no sense.

Who else is excited about a semifinal game at a neutral site on a random Thursday in January? Who isn’t excited about on-campus college football games four days before Christmas with no students?

College football is about to learn why “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is a lesson most of us learned before leaving our teenage years.

The reason for the impending failure is the same reason for its rushed start — greed. The people running college football see dollar signs and they’re chasing them, much to the detriment of the sport.

To be clear, an expanded playoff is needed.

The BCS wasn’t working, and the four-team playoff only proved to be a cruel tease. We aren’t quite there yet to the utopian vision of a 16-team playoff, but we’re getting there. It’ll be messy through 2024 and 2025, as the 12-team version falters.