Big Cat praises impact of expanded College Football Playoff: 'Nothing about the Playoff has ruined the regular season'

The Andy & Ari On3 show had a special guest on Tuesday as Big Cat from Pardon My Take joined the duo to discuss the 2024 college football season. In particular, Dan ‘Big Cat’ Katz spoke with Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman about the first season of the expanded College Football Playoff.

Wasserman has said repeatedly that expanding the playoff to 12 teams was a bad move, but Big Cat shared why he wholeheartedly disagrees.

“The way I see it is you just added more depth to the regular season, more storylines to the regular season,” Big Cat said. “This is going back to the fact that it’s flattened out a little bit. So you have more upsets. And I just, I love it. I think this has been an incredible college football season, and I think a lot of it has to do with the NIL and the transfer portal, but also the College Football Playoff and a lot of these teams feeling like they have a legitimate chance.”

When NIL and the transfer portal first came along, a lot of people believed that the top teams in college football would widen the gap and become even more dominant.

Instead, the opposite has happened. Just past the halfway point in the season, there are only seven power conference teams who are still unbeaten. In addition, every SEC team has at least one loss.

“College football is completely flat now. The NIL, transfer portal. There are more than three teams now that can win the national championship. There are a lot of teams that could when a Playoff game now. So it’s way more flat,” Big Cat said. “I think it’s going to continue to get flat. Everyone who said the NIL and transfer portal are going to make the rich richer, it did the opposite. And that’s why I think we’re in the middle of one of the best college football seasons we’ve had in a long time. And nothing about the Playoff has ruined the regular season for me.”

Wasserman did acknowledge that this has been an entertaining college football season. His complaint is that every game doesn’t mean as much as it used to. With that said, Wasserman did open the door for him to change his stance.

“If we get to a world where every single year 15 teams legitimately are good enough to win the national championship, then I will lay my sword down,” Wasserman said. “And I have had a hard time accepting that, because I have grown up and was forged in the fire where there are five teams who have a roster who are built to win it and everyone else is kind of playing along.

“So if last year’s Michigan–Washington national championship is the beginning of the norm and not a weird year… if the 11-seed can win the national championship, then we should have this.”