I ask again: What is wrong with letting the teams settle it on the field instead of in the polls?
I can't speak for medina, but there's actually nothing wrong with it being settled on the field.
I argued in the past for the 5+1+2 playoff (5 of the P5 champs, top G5 champ, 2 at-large) because it would bring back the value of the conference championship. Want to go to the playoff? Win your damn conference. It's in your control, it is not poll- or committee-based, and you get into the playoff based on what you accomplish on the field. It's true that the G5 champ might be a bit of a beauty pageant (top ranked), and obviously the 2 at-large is a beauty pageant, but every conference that matters has a
clear and objective entry path to the CFP.
We now have that in the 12-team playoff. Top 6 ranked conference champs get in. While there is some subjectivity there (what if 2 G5 champs are higher ranked than one terrible backdoor P5 champ?), it's
almost clear and objective. Certainly an improvement on objectivity compared to the committee and 4-team CFP.
However, if you go back and read medina's original post in this thread, it was less about the playoff and more about the
entire changing tapestry of the sport. It's about the transfer portal and NIL, not about the playoff. It was about a system that was rigged, to be sure, but that seems to be getting MORE rigged year by year.
I believe that a lot of the changes from 1970->recently were about increasing parity, rather than decreasing. Continual reduction of the scholarship limits. Restrictions on the number of on-field coaches. Investigation (although imperfect) for shady recruiting / bagmen / pay-for-play. Efforts to cracking down on oversigning. Transfer restrictions to reduce the ability for one school to poach another's players, as a player would have to sit out a year.
You can argue that some of these (lack of money via NIL or explicit pay-for-play, and transfer restrictions) are unfair to players, and perhaps you'd be right. But they improved parity in the sport.
NIL and the transfer portal will reduce parity in the sport. Which, as someone who was a fan of a "peasant" per Mandel, basically means that as the rich get richer (medina's post title), the have-nots like my school will be increasingly excluded from competition.
Edited to add: One more aspect is now the 18-team conference, and the potential for eliminating divisions and making the CCG the "two best teams" in the conference, rather than division winners. This makes it even less likely that my team would get to play for, much less be likely to have a chance in, a conference championship game. It's a numbers game.
It's true, a 12-team CFP theoretically means there's greater opportunity for a school like mine to actually get to play for the title. But the flipside of NIL / transfer portal is that it is MUCH less likely that a school like mine can recruit and keep enough talent to practically ever get there.
I believe that lack of parity will be bad for the sport, long-term. It's one of the reasons I no longer watch Purdue athletics. It no longer interests me when the deck was already stacked against my school and the changes in the game make it even more so.
