23 pages later and I think it's really three things: (1) there will always be argument about selection, no matter how big or small the tournament (see NCAA basketball tournament); (2) with a tournament, teams that did not have "the best" season have a chance to win the championship--as we have discussed elsewhere, this means we are now crowning the tournament winner, not necessarily the "best" team, but that is an American tradition, so CFB has merely fallen in line with how our other sports crown their winners (at some point soon, a 3-loss team will win the championship); and (3) change. Change is constant, and this is change. My old-fogey belief is that one of the charms of college football has always been its regionalism. That's part of the reason for the big rivalries between IU and Purdue, Wisconsin and Minnesota, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, Cal and Stanford, largely/historically teams that no one outside of their regions cares about. Frankly, it's even a big part of the reason for the major rivalries: if you aren't sure whether you will get a shot at the MNC, you can at least celebrate your win in The Game, or the Iron Bowl, or the Red River Shoot Out. The CFP marginalizes regionalism in favor of an exciting tournament that sports fans will love, even if the regionalism (including the bowl games that featured #3 conference A vs #3 conference B) suffers. That's fine--it's trading one thing for another, and very likely the majority of sports consumers will like it better. And for those of us who grew up feasting on the regionalism and the bragging rights between teams that no one else cared about, it won't feel quite as good until our team makes it into the playoff, at which point we will love that we are there, just like teams celebrate their inclusion in the NCAA basketball tournaments, even when they have effectively zero chance of winning.
