Scarbinsky: The good fight against a 24-team CFP may be lost

By Kevin Scarbinsky | Special to AL.comThis is an opinion column.They’re going to do it, aren’t they? They’re going to ignore the wishes of a majority of the people who pay their salaries, fill their stadiums and balloon their TV ratings. They’re going to make the latest worst decision in the history of decisions and expand the College Football Playoff from 12 teams to 24.The only variable now appears to be time, and as SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Wednesday, this mistake will be made official “probably sooner rather than later is my expectation.”Don’t misunderstand. Sankey did not come right out and say that the SEC, which has been the final holdout, has offered its full and total endorsement of doubling the current size of the playoff field from 12 to 24 two years after it was tripled from four to 12.It’s not the Sankey way to provide a direct answer to a direct question. His educated mind moves his agile mouth in often meandering and occasionally maddening ways. So you have to interpret his professorial ponderings and strip away the bark in search of clues to his true meaning.Call it erudition by subtraction.Appearing at SEC Basketball Media Days in Birmingham, Sankey was asked this direct question: “Are you open to a 24-team (playoff) model?”Let’s highlight the more relevant portions of the commissioner’s answer for brevity and sanity.“I think I’ve always communicated that we’ve never said no, that that won’t happen, that won’t be a point of support.”Uh-oh. A reminder that the door has been and remains open to tossing four-loss teams into the playoff field because who doesn’t want to see Iowa play in December. Insert eye roll here.“I think there’s an openness to playoff expansion on our part. I certainly think there’s an openness.”Yikes. Is it me, or is that creaking sound the door opening wider, like the hatch to the Ghostbusters containment unit from which only terrible, horrible things can escape?“I think in general, we have achieved some of the progress we’ve expected on scheduling commitments. We’ll see if we can finalize those across the nation.”Oh, well. The best regular season in sports was fun while it lasted.Georgia’s thrilling victory at Alabama drew 12.24 million viewers to ABC on Saturday night, the largest college football TV audience of the week and the second-largest of the season. Oklahoma’s shocking upset of No. 1 Texas attracted 9.82 million viewers to ABC for a late morning kickoff.Those huge numbers happened even though most fans of the sport understood that a single loss was not going to eliminate the Bulldogs, the Crimson Tide or the Longhorns from the playoff race. Those rivalry games, while not all-important, win-or-else encounters, still qualified as big games.At what point does that calculation and motivation change in a negative way? When do must-see matchups become less compelling? When a 24-team playoff is overpopulated with 8-4 and 9-3 teams, that’s when.When do fans stop spending an arm and a leg to sit in the rain as the outer bands of a hurricane blow by? When both teams can feel confident of receiving a playoff berth before the opening kickoff no matter the outcome, that’s when.Expand the playoff to 24, and you drain the color from the Third Saturday in October. You make it like any other fall Saturday in September, October or November. You throw cold water on the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry in a far more insulting fashion than Auburn turning its water cannons on Georgia fans in Jordan-Hare Stadium in 1986.Trust me. It happened. I was there, and it’s true. Nothing smells like a wet dog.So enjoy Alabama’s trip to Knoxville and Auburn’s visit to Athens this weekend. Those games still command our attention even though upsets won’t end the national championship hopes of the Crimson Tide or the Bulldogs. That’s with a 12-team playoff.Go to 24, and those games start to resemble glorified exhibitions. What’s to stop these alleged stewards of the game from stopping there? How soon before everyone gets a juice box, a trophy and a playoff spot?Kevin Scarbinsky, a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame, is a special contributor to The Birmingham News. Follow him on X @kevinscarbinsky. Watch his Scarbo Knows podcast on YouTube.