Jonas Knox (25:02)
Well, the, the, the change I think is going to be more in regards to the seating of how they go about doing it, which I think most would agree. If the top four teams, the way they're ranked, however, that that falls out, those teams ultimately should be able to get the buy. And I think as far as how the rankings are awarded, it was a little bit confusing for some out there because they didn't really understand how the automatic qualifiers worked for the conference champions. And then when you had a team that was not within the autonomous 4 Power 4, call what you will, in Boise State, who gets a buy, people were scratching their head going, wait a second, I didn't think that was possible. Or for example, the ACC champion Clemson, who was outside of the top 12 in the rankings, they still obviously get an automatic bid into the playoff. And so people are like, that doesn't make any sense. So I think what you're going to see is a change in the seating as far as how the teams 1 through 12 are going to be seeded once they get to the playoff. Now, it could, by the way, it could be 1 through 14. It could be 1 through 16 at this point, which if it's 16, we don't have to worry about buys or we shouldn't. We should make them all play. I would say this, though, is my biggest concern about where we are at with the College Football Playoff as it currently exists. If you start creating automatic qualifiers, what bothers me is this is not the NFL. And when I say that, I mean we understand that winning your division is paramount. All right? A division's comprised of four teams. Well, look at how some of these super conferences are constructed. I mean, you have big ten with what, 18 teams. You know, maybe it stops there, maybe it keeps growing, the SEC, etc. Big 12, ACC. And what we saw in year one was the difference sometimes in scheduling, where a team Like Indiana could potentially not have to really play anyone difficult outside of Ohio State. I guess you could throw Michigan in there. Even though it was a down year for Michigan and they beat them, they got them at home. So credit to coach Signetti and crew, but that wasn't the best Michigan team we've seen, right? Clearly the top teams were Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State, as far as that goes, and then Indiana you'd probably say was somewhere after that. So the general point is that if you start creating automatic qualifiers for the Big Ten and the SEC and really any other conference for that matter, it takes away from the games. Like you're like, everyone knows the ending to the story. So it takes away from the intrigue of the regular season. Like to me, that's one of the greatest things about sports, is the fact that your regular season has to matter. And if you're now basically saying that, well, the top four teams from the Big Ten will get in, the top four from the SEC will get in, it's like, well, okay, I mean, how really hard is your schedule going to be? You know, as far as your non conference, do you need to schedule anyone tough anymore then? Or is it just about how you finish within your conference and how that that works out, how those tie breaking scenarios work out. So if they don't figure out a way for the final weekend, because ultimately what's being sacrificed is the conference championships, they're basically null and void because if there's an automatic qualifier, you'd almost rather not play. As long as the season is, you'd almost rather be able to get a break, get extra rest and if you're Ohio State, for example, be able to prepare for that home first round match versus Tennessee and then go on the rest of the way on a war path to win, to win a national championship. So I sit there and just say we got to be careful because if some of the powers that be aren't and they get a little too greedy, and I keep talking to you guys about how well you can do the math on this too. Think about this. If you get four guaranteed teams in for each one of those conferences every year, you're guaranteeing what your conference is at least being paid out through that first round, which is obviously important for those conferences continuing to separate themselves from the Big 12, from the ACC, from every other Group of 5 conference that's out there. So in part it's about money, but. And it always is. But the other portion of this is we can't sacrifice the sanctity of what has always been a regular season sport and the different ways we've kind of anointed our champion with the way we're going about looking on at this playoff format, like, that's what concerns me the most about some of the discussion about these automatic qualifiers.
