MSomebody just went and built college football a sixty-eight team March Madness bracket, and the internet cannot stop staring at it.
LOh, I'm in. One seeds — Miami, Ohio State, Georgia, Indiana. Tarleton State gets a bid, Stephen F. Austin's in, Youngstown State's in.
MAlright, time-out. Before you fill out your bracket — this thing is not real.
LWhat do you mean not real?
MIt's a what-if. Jason Kirk at The Athletic drew it up as a thought experiment. The actual playoff is twelve teams. Twelve.
LOkay, fine, the bracket's imaginary. But you cannot tell me the idea doesn't slap.
MI can absolutely tell you that. Sixty-eight teams? Do you know how many games that is?
LThat's the point! March Madness rules. Cinderellas. FCS teams crashing the party. That's the best part of sports!
MIn basketball, a Cinderella plays a couple games and the fairy tale's over. In football, that Cinderella is a running back taking thirty-five carries against a line of future first-rounders.
LSo what? They line up, they play. That's why we watch.
MLiam, this sport is violent. You're asking college kids to play sixteen, seventeen, eighteen games to win one trophy.
LYou know what's violent? Watching the same programs grab every title shot while a team like Indiana gets told to sit down.
MIndiana won the actual playoff last year! A team nobody picked. The twelve-team field already gave you your Cinderella.
LOne year? We just expanded to twelve and it worked — that's an argument to go bigger.
MThat's like saying one good meal means you should eat seventeen cheeseburgers.
LNo, no, wait — that's exactly backward. Craig Mish posted it today — it's now March Madness every Saturday. The chaos is the product.
MThe chaos is the product because the regular season still matters. Expand to sixty-eight, and an App State over Michigan turns into a quaint little tune-up.
LSo you want the rich to stay rich. No room for Youngstown State unless they buy their way in.
MI want the games in October to count for something. You make the field sixty-eight, every big team just coasts.
LEvery big team's already coasting on name brand! You know how many two-loss SEC teams got the benefit of the doubt?
MOh, here we go.
LI'm serious. Expand the field and the Montana States of the world finally get an actual shot, not a participation trophy in the FCS.
MExcept they play in a different division for a reason! You know what happens to Montana State against Georgia's twos?
LWe'd find out. That's the fun part.
MThe fun part for who? Not the Montana State defensive end trying to block a nineteen-year-old who weighs three-forty.
LThen don't watch the blowout rounds. March Madness has blowouts too.
MFine. You want my actual hill? We haven't lived through the twelve-team format more than a season or two, and people are already drafting sixty-eight. Give it five years.
LI'd rather try the bracket now than sit through five more years of a committee handing the same teams a bye.
MAlright, TJ Salomone found the funniest version of this whole fight.
LOh, the Norvell one. Basically — Florida State's Mike Norvell loves a twenty-four team playoff because it gives him a new excuse: we finished seventy-eighth, we were right there.
MThat's mean and I respect it. Though to be clear — we don't even know if Norvell actually said he wants twenty-four teams.
LDoesn't matter. The joke lands because Florida State fans have heard every version of we're rebuilding for years.
MHarsh. Accurate. But harsh.
LHey, you want a team that actually rebuilt into something? One college football account says Wake Forest has quietly become one of the biggest stories this season.
MThe same account says they won on the road at then-number-sixteen Louisville and have rolled everybody since. If that holds up, that's a real story.
LI want to believe it. Demon Deacons... quietly elite. Has a nice ring.
MWe'll see if the numbers back it up. But if Wake Forest is actually rolling like that, the twelve-team field gets a whole lot more interesting.
LAnd if they're not, there's always the imaginary sixty-eight-team bracket.
MWhich Jason Kirk should absolutely keep making. As long as nobody confuses it with a rule book.
LYou're no fun.
MI'm the fun police. Somebody has to check the math.