'This is a greed play, it's a money play for everybody involved including this network.'
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PTI's Michael Wilbon Calls Out ESPN for 'Greed' Around 12-Team College Football Playoff
"This is a greed play, it's a money play for everybody involved including this network."
The expansion of the College Football Playoff to 12 teams has largely been celebrated, although some have argued for tweaks to the system, like an expansion of on-campus games to the quarterfinal rounds or the reseeding of teams to create more favorable matchups for higher seeds.
For
Pardon the Interruption's Michael Wilbon, the size of the playoff itself is the biggest issue, and he believes it is a result of greed from those invested in the sport, including the network that broadcasts his long-running show: ESPN.
"12 is too many," Wilbon said on Friday's episode of the show. "It needs to be an eight-team tournament. ... College kids don't need to play 16 or 17 games in a tournament. That's heinous. Now secondly, if you have eight, you don't have byes. You don't need byes. The teams that had byes got beat, and they were rusty. Oregon doesn't deserve that fate. ... Get in with eight, you seed them one through eight ... and you get those eight teams out there and say, 'Let's go.'"
Of course, a reduction in terms from 12 to eight means a reduction in game inventory for ESPN and any other networks that bid on games in the future, which means it is extremely unlikely.
"They're not going to go from 12 to eight because this is a greed play," Wilbon added. "It's a money play for everybody involved including this network."
His co-host Tony Kornheiser is less concerned with the 12-team number, but was aligned on the seeding issue. He also believes some SEC bias crept into the equation, something that ESPN, which owns rights to the entire playoff as well as the SEC's media rights, has caught plenty of flak for during the year.
"I don't hate it, I just think it needs adjusting. One of the things we just saw is it belies the fact that the SEC is by far the best conference. That's not true. Tennessee went out in their first game, Georgia went out in their first game. Texas is in but they're not really an SEC team yet. They came in the transfer portal... And Alabama then lost to Michigan in a bowl game, so I don't want to hear any more about how they got hosed by the committee."
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