(01-04-2021 08:40 PM)bullet Wrote:  It was expanded because of the Alabama-LSU rematch disaster. That year failed in every way. It wasn't fair to LSU. It was an ugly game. And it was a ratings disaster. ESPN did its best that year to pretend Oklahoma St. didn't exist. They talked about Stanford vs. Alabama.

Alabama vs LSU was a big impetus for the playoffs, but not because of anything inherently wrong with two conference teams playing. Ratings were poor because the game was ugly, but that would have happened no matter who was playing. Oklahoma vs USC in 2005 had even worse ratings, because that was a blowout. It created no impetus towards a playoff, though.

The real reason that game prompted playoffs was because the other major conferences didn't like the SEC putting two teams in the game at their expense. Expansion meant twice as many places so more conferences get in even if the SEC does hog two of them.

The irony, of course, is that as Delany says in that interview, because there are more spaces, getting left out is much more conspicuous and negative these days for a power conference than it was in the BCS era. In the BCS era, there were just two slots so it was a given that most conferences would get left out each year, so no stigma. The BCS title game was about teams, not conferences.

But with the CFP, it is always the case that a majority of P5 conferences will get in, so if you do not, you look like a tail-end loser.