If you’ve spent any time on the internet over the last 24 hours, you’ve probably been buried in hot takes about the new 24-team College Football Playoff that will begin in 2027.

It seems like everyone in sports media is lining up to explain how the expanded playoff is going to make college football worse. The big argument is that it devalues the regular season. The theory goes that nobody will care about big conference games in October because winning or losing won’t impact a team’s playoff chances the way it did in the 12-team era.

I truly don’t understand all of the complaining, whining, and doomsday scenarios we’re getting from everyone – from national media members to your buddy in the office a few doors down. The way some folks are talking, you would think that college football banned the forward pass.

College Football Playoff implications aren’t why most of us watch on Saturdays

Maybe this is just me (I don’t think it is), but I’m not watching college football every Saturday because of playoff implications. I’m watching because the games are compelling and competitive.

When Kentucky beat LSU in a game that went down to the wire last weekend, I never once stopped in the moment to think about what it meant for LSU’s playoff hopes. I was only thinking about one thing: “Holy crap, Kentucky is about to beat Lane Kiffin and LSU.”

I watched Tennessee games for more than a decade that had zero postseason implications, and I hung on every snap just like I do now. I watched every one of Tennessee’s games through the Derek Dooley, Butch Jones, and Jeremy Pruitt eras. The Vols had no shot at a national championship during that stretch, and those games still mattered to me.

For my entire adult life (the last 23 years), I’ve watched football the same way. Like most people, I can’t watch every single college football game. A lot of my spare time is devoted to family. But when I sit down on a Saturday or Sunday with the remote in my hand and Tennessee isn’t playing, I’m flipping back and forth between whichever games are close.

That might mean watching the fourth quarter of Wake Forest vs. Georgia Tech because it’s a tight game. It might mean checking out the second half of Oregon vs. USC because it’s close. Maybe I’m locked in on a close game between Missouri and Florida instead of a featured Saturday night game on ABC that turns into a blowout.

That’s how I’ve always watched football, and I don’t see that habit changing because of the playoff. Four teams, 12 teams, 24 teams, the BCS era, it doesn’t matter.

And honestly, I think most of us watch football in a similar way. So what’s it really going to change about the sport? The made up national narratives? (And look, I promise you that the national media will do whatever it takes to build up storylines, whether it’s playoff seeding or whatever the case may be).

The games mean whatever they mean to you in the moment.

Are you only watching college football because of what it means for someone’s playoff chances? Or are you watching because it means something when Mississippi State goes to Baton Rouge and tries to knock off LSU, regardless of how it impacts anyone’s postseason?

Are you watching because it means something when a Tennessee team out of the playoff picture goes down to Gainesville and beats Florida for the first time since George W. Bush was in his first term as president?

That’s why I watch college football every Saturday. I love the competition between high-level athletes.

We can talk about the playoff when late November rolls around. But this sport isn’t all about the playoff, and it hasn’t always been about the postseason. It’s about the competition each Saturday. The game that’s being played isn’t changing. 

I truly think the 24-team playoff era is going to be like any other playoff era. Some years will be more compelling than others. There will be crazy years full of close games and outcomes nobody saw coming, kind of like last season when Indiana went all the way and beat Miami in the national championship game.

Then there will be years where the way it looked in September is exactly how it plays out. It’ll be a little boring, and we’ll move on to the next season.

You can’t control outcomes in this sport. You never know what you’re getting each Saturday – and that’s more true than ever in the NIL era. 

So just watch the games and enjoy what happens that particular Saturday afternoon. Then we’ll talk about it for a week and move on to the next Saturday, just like we’ve done for decades.

And to be clear, I’m not saying I’m a proponent of the 24-team playoff. I’m not saying it’s the best solution. But if that’s the format of the sport, then that’s the format of the sport. And I’ll keep watching football just like I have since before the playoff existed.