How the 12-team College Football Playoff could elevate late-season Big 12 games

With the College Football Playoff expanding to 12 teams, the changes coming to the sport go beyond the postseason format and will likely impact how regular season games are viewed.

Andy Staples, responding to a question he received for Andy Staples On3, explained that the concerns that late-season games could lose their luster because more teams make the College Football Playoff isn’t something that should worry fans. Instead, it should actually make things more exciting, especially for programs in a conference like the Big 12 as it will elevate late-season games.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to have buyer’s remorse about the 12-team Playoff,” Andy Staples said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and the people who fought it for years are gonna be like, ‘Wow, we were very stupid.’ There’s a reason everybody else in the sporting world does it this way. It’s not just because they’re all trying to be the same. It’s because this thing works. Like, a single elimination tournament with super high stakes games at the end of the year that matches the best teams — it’s a very dramatic way to decide a champion. People enjoy watching that.”

One concern is that non-conference games are going to be less valuable, so there will be fewer marquee matchups. However, Staples argued that it’s going to depend on how the selection committee weights those games.

After that, there’s also concern that a 12-team Playoff will make it so conference championship games don’t matter. To that point, Staples argued that they never really mattered and weren’t good games outside of the SEC anyway. One example he used came from the Big 12.

“Big 12 Title Game two years ago, Kansas State and TCU,” Staples said. “Who won the game? Kansas State. Who went to the Playoff? TCU. Did that matter? Was that important? I think everybody romanticizes this stuff, but history tells us, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

For a conference like the Big 12, which will be highly competitive in 2024 and beyond, the expanded College Football Playoff actually means that games late in the year are going to be for a Playoff spot or multiple spots, which hasn’t always been the case.

“What the 12-team Playoff will bring us is some late-season games that could have some serious meaning where there was no meaning before. Basically, the entire Big 12 schedule in November is going to be highly meaningful because I don’t think there’s gonna be a team that runs away with the Big 12. I think there will be a bunch of teams in the mix to make the Big 12 Title Game and it’s going to be very cutthroat at the end of the season to see who gets into it, and the winner of that game is going to the Playoff and getting a bye,” Staples said.

“The loser of that game, maybe an at-large team but may not. May get knocked out, or there’s going to be some other team there that’s also an at-large team. So, we don’t know but we do know those games are going to mean a lot, and a lot of those games wouldn’t have meant anything.”

The chance for those great late-season games where the result could knock someone out of the Playoff goes beyond the Big 12, though. Staples cited teams like Notre Dame, USC, and Iowa as potentially good teams competing for a spot next November when in past seasons they would have already been eliminated from Playoff contention.

“How much more interesting is that game than it’s been the last few years? I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem at all,” Staples concluded.