Penn State Sports Magazine
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M A R C H 2 0 2 5 5 7 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M E D I T O R I A L MATT HERB MATT.HERB@ON3.COM N o one in recent years has been more vocal about the lack of leadership in college football than Penn State's James Franklin. It's been a longstanding complaint of the Nittany Lions' head coach. Franklin has frequently campaigned for the estab- lishment of a commissioner who would prioritize the overall health of the game and the student-athletes who play it. Back in December, Franklin made headlines when he suggested that Nick Saban would be the right man for the job. Franklin also nominated former Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson in case Saban didn't want the position, which, being of apparent sound mind and body, he didn't. But really, almost anyone would do. If you've ever coached, played in, admin- istered, officiated or even just watched a college football game, you would likely be an improvement over the status quo. "I think one of the most important things we can do is to get a commissioner … who is waking up every single morn- ing and going to bed every single night making decisions that are in the best in- terest of college football," Franklin said. That would be a refreshing change. College football has always been a ram- shackle collection of special interests that have tended to look out for them- selves rather than for the good of the sport as a whole. If, for example, you were designing a sport from scratch, you would probably not come up with a system that often prevented the two best teams from facing each other for the championship. But that's what the bowls and conferences wanted, so college foot- ball lived with that system for decades. It took years of lurching, incremental steps to get a real playoff. And now that it's finally here, we're seeing yet another example of how quickly the biggest of the sport's special interests can rush in to fill the power vacuum. There has been talk in recent weeks of bumping the current 12-team College Football Playoff to 14 or 16 teams. While changes aren't imminent, it's all but cer- tain that the field is going to grow in the years ahead. One could make the argument that a dozen teams are sufficient and maybe even optimum. It was probably by ac- cident, but the CFP hit the sweet spot this past year. The new format expanded opportunities for deserving teams like Notre Dame and Ohio State that wouldn't have made a four-team field, and those opportunities did not come at the expense of the regular season. Any- one who watched the final minutes of PSU's 26-25 win at Minnesota with their hands over their eyes understood viscer- ally that every game still mattered. The expansion of the playoff to 14 or 16 teams would likely open the door to a few three-loss teams that didn't win their conference championship game, and that would be significant. If a 16-team CFP had been in place this past season, there would have been four three-loss teams in the field: Alabama, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Clemson. It's hard to see how that wouldn't devalue the regu- lar season. That's not the most irksome part of the proposal, though. The real eye-opener is that the Big Ten and the SEC are report- edly maneuvering to ensure that they get four automatic berths apiece, while doling out two to the Big 12 and ACC and one to the top Group of Five finisher. That would leave only three at-large spots to be filled in a 16-team field. As with the bowl tie-ins that often prevented real championship games — like the game that No. 1 Nebraska and No. 2 Penn State should have played in 1994 — this is another case of the sport's power brokers protecting themselves by adding needless complexity to a system that ought to be simple. What's wrong with just letting the CFP committee rank the teams the way the Associated Press does, without re- gard for their conference affiliation? Most years, the Big Ten and SEC will get what they want anyway. Why should anybody be guaranteed a spot in the field or a high seed? Over the years, Franklin has been a big proponent of equity, at least in terms of scheduling, describing it as a way to en- sure that rankings and seedings are more accurate. "I think everybody should play a con- ference championship game or no one should play a conference champion- ship game," he said prior to Penn State's matchup with Notre Dame in the CFP semifinals. "I think everybody should play the same number of conference games." In Franklin's perfect world, the SEC and ACC would match the Big Ten and Big 12 by adding another league game to their slates. Also, Notre Dame would join a conference. For now, at least, we don't live in that world. If anything, we live in a mirror universe in which equity is the last thing the two biggest conferences want, and Commissioner Saban isn't coming to set everything right. ■ James Franklin has advocated for a commissioner of col- lege football who would act in the sport's best interests. PHOTO BY MARK SELDERS/PENN STATE ATHLETICS Big Ten, SEC Flex Their Muscles With Playoff Proposals VARSITY VIEWS