Opinion: Why the College Football Playoff needs to expand after Sunday's Rankings.

Fans for a while having been calling for a expansion of the College Football Playoff but after Sunday's top four, the noise around that just got a little bit louder. Alabama and Clemson being one and two in totally fine. When you get down to three and four there starts to be a lot of controversy. Ohio State was able to get the number three seed despite only playing six games. The other three teams in the top four have played in 11 games. That could be considered a competitive advantage for Ohio State because they are fresher than the other teams and they didn't have to play on consistent basis like the other teams Even head coaches Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney were not in agreeance with them being in the playoff.

Now we have Notre Dame. They were undefeated going into the ACC Championship, and they ran into a fully healthy Clemson team that beat them 34-10 in a dominating fashion. After this loss, this brought up a debate between them and Texas A&M. They both were 1-loss teams that didn't win their conferences and both had blowout losses to the top two teams in the country. This loss had just happened for Notre Dame and A&M is currently on a 7-game winning streak. There were arguments for both schools to get in

Here is where is the expansion is needed. There were three undefeated conference champions in Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina, and San Jose St that did not even get any consideration for the playoff despite playing more games than even a Ohio state team. Under the current format, the Group of Five conferences will have no shot at making the playoff because of the criteria's that the committee goes by with strength of schedule. However, Ohio State and Cincinnati both had comparable strength of schedules. Ohio States ranked 67th in the country and they only played six games while Cincinnati is not far behind at 77th. Cincinnati also had more wins against teams with winning records and played in three more games. CFP Chairman Gary Barta said that Ohio State got in because they were "Undefeated, had two wins over ranked teams and won their conference championship." Cincinnati did pretty much the same thing plus had more wins against teams with winning records and playing in more games so how did they not even get in the top six even?

The Solution to the playoff: 16 Teams

The College Football Playoff needs to expand to 16 teams. My thinking is all the conference champions need to be in the playoff along with six at-large bids from any conference. This would give every team in the country an equal chance to win a national title without guaranteeing spots to some teams. This would a similar format as March Madness where all the conference champions get in and have at-large bids as well. This would give smaller schools like Coastal Carolina an opportunity to prove that they belong in the same conversation as Alabama and Clemson. This would also add excitement to the postseason like it does in college basketball with March Madness. This would probably result in a slightly shorter regular season a potential reduction of bowl games

In conclusion, the College Football Playoff will continue to have controversy as long as this format stays the way it currently is. This season is proof that there needs to be change and it needs to happen soon to save the sport.

This is what the playoff would look like with 16 teams (note that these are how I think they would be ranked)

1. Alabama

16. UAB

2. Clemson

15. Ball St.

3. Notre Dame

14. Oregon

4. Cincinnati

13. San Jose St

5. Texas A&M

12. UNC

6. Ohio State

11. Georgia

7. Coastal Carolina

10. Florida

8. Oklahoma

9. Indiana