As Playoff nears, the pros and cons of a four-team setup

For decades, college football crowned a national champion with polls after the bowls. Then came the Bowl Championship Series, which used computers and other factors to select the nation's two best teams for a title game. Fans pilloried both systems as unsatisfying and unfair.

Now comes the inaugural College Football Playoff, in which a blue-ribbon panel will pick the best four teams to decide the national championship. This new coronation vehicle looks like a resounding success with TV ratings at an historic high.

One week after 12 ranked teams met head to head, No. 1 Mississippi State is scheduled to play No. 3 Alabama on Saturday in a game that promises to shake up the playoff picture.

So the college football world must be giddy at its good fortune, right? Well, no: Even before the first four-team tournament begins, calls for an eight-team tournament are as common as passes on third-and-long.

"I think the concept of the College Football Playoff is fantastic," Baylor athletics director Ian McCaw tells USA TODAY Sports. "I think we've taken a step in the right direction. I just think we need to take this next step to get this system right.

"(Eight teams) would be a better model and certainly would reduce the controversy that's likely to be created here."

Coaches from Arizona State's Todd Graham to Ohio State's Urban Meyer have suggested in recent weeks that an eight-team format seems inevitable. And that was before their teams were placed in the top 10 of the College Football Playoff selection committee's rankings, as they are now.

Supporters of an eight-team field point to the latest Playoff Top 25 rankings, where six major-conference, one-loss teams find themselves outside the top four. By regular season's end, as many as three of the five major conferences may find themselves unrepresented in the playoff.

In an eight-team format, the champions of the five major conferences — the Atlantic Coast, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-12 and the Southeastern — could each receive an automatic bid. The remaining three berths could go to the most qualified teams at-large.

"We haven't even played a full season yet, but I'm seeing more and more speculative, 'Well, if this happens, you've got to go eight teams,'" Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson says. "I think it will play out, and I know the party line of (the Playoff) is we've got a 12-year contract."

The contract, signed with ESPN, pays out approximately $5.64 billion during the duration of the 12-year agreement.

"If you look at the NCAA men's basketball tournament and the popularity of that, you're selecting 68 teams out of 350," McCaw says. "Here we're talking about selecting four teams out of 128."

Even so, College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock believes four is the Goldilocks number — not too many and not too few.

"At some tipping point, a big postseason tournament would erode the regular season and diminish the bowl experience for the athletes. Four teams doesn't go too far; it goes just the right distance," he says by email.

"We are committed to this four-team playoff for 12 years; there has been no discussion of expanding."

What remains to be seen is whether this format, like others before it, succumbs to public opinion and adopts an eight-team playoff model — continuing the evolution of college football's hunt for the national championship.

"I have stated repeatedly, and I probably won't be here in 12 years," Thompson says, "but I can't imagine that it will stay a four-team playoff for 12 years."