After just one season of the 12-team College Football Playoff, the format is already receiving a shakeup for its second year of implementation. Hopefully, none of you found yourselves overly attached to last year's shakeup, or this could be a devastating development for you.
I respect your patience in this trying time.
So what is the shakeup? What's going on? Can somebody tell me what's happening to the never-criticized formula of the college football championship?
Do you member last season, when the top four automatically-qualifying conference champions received a ticket to the second round due to their postseason accomplishment? Well, after just one season that saw teams like Arizona State and Boise State drop their first and only competitions of the bracket, the playoff committe had seen enough and elected to alter the way conference champions are handled moving forward.
This season's tournament will be an all-out free-for-all, as the top-five ranked conference champions will retain their automatic bids to the postseason, but with a catch, as their automatic jump to the quarterfinals has been revoked in favor of the top-4 ranked teams as selected by committee.
Yes, the new playoff format will be almost entirely in the hands of a specific group of individuals -- more than ever.
Per an announcement, Rich Clark, the executive director of the CFP, said of the change, "After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP Management Committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment. This change will continue to allow guaranteed access to the Playoff by rewarding teams for winning their conference championship, but it will also allow us to construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performance on the field during the entire regular season."
Barring a very special season, I wouldn't count on BYU being rewarded with a first-round bye.