The 12-team playoff won't fix college football

The 12-team playoff won't fix college football.

After the committee botched the final rankings, selecting neither the four best or most deserving teams, one response given by ESPN's Paul Finebaum and others was that with this being the last year of the four-team playoff, complaints are unnecessary.

In a vacuum, that line of thinking is understandable. But college football is not a vacuum. The simple fact is that the committee robbed Florida State's seniors of receiving their just rewards. There is no guarantee that the committee will suddenly begin operating consistently and competently going forward, they just will have more leeway next year.

The automatic bids for the top five conference champions will fix some problems (Florida State could take out its anger on not receiving a first-round bye by obliterating Liberty, for example), but no one should trust the committee to get the at-large bids right. Based on this year's final rankings, the College Football Playoff going forward might as well be rebranded as the "Big Ten vs. SEC Invitational."

If the 12-team playoff was in place this year, the Big Ten and SEC would still get all of the at-large bids when accounting for conference realignment.

The revamped playoff will most greatly benefit those two conferences, furthering the divide between them and everyone else.

The nonstop debate about "best" and "most deserving" will rage on, with Big Ten and SEC teams arguing their higher recruiting rankings and tougher competition automatically make them better than teams with fewer resources, results on the field be damned.

We'll also have to deal with more absurd logic by the committee, such as Jordan Travis's leg injury being enough to knock the Seminoles out of the playoff and the injury to SMU quarterback Preston Stone not playing a role in the Mustangs' spot below Liberty, or the Flame receiving the New Year's Six bowl invite simply for going undefeated.

The 12-team playoff won't save the sport. Instead, it will further reveal how broken it is.