The playoff was going to expand regardless. The current format is silly. It makes sense in the basketball tourney to allow at large bids from all conferences because there are 68 teams. In that big a field, every team that deserves to make the field gets it. If you aren’t one of the 35 or so best at large teams, tough. But in a 12-team format, wasting auto bids on teams that have no chance to win the championship, or even advance a couple rounds, is dumb. If the SEC and Big 10 can agree on anything, it’ll go to 16 teams sooner than later. But it is annoying that we will likely have two boring first round games again.
As for ND, setting aside the debate about them and Miami, the issue is that if you continue to refuse to join a conference, and only play a handful of decent teams in a season, you can’t afford to lose to the two best teams on your schedule, even if you are a huge brand that generates huge ratings. I think the committee messes a lot of things up, but respect them for not just giving them a bid for ratings purposes.
