Expansion tale

I know what I saw Saturday, down there indoors in Atlanta, Ga. I saw two of the top four teams in college football.

One of them will get credit for that, thanks to the recovered glory of a previously glorious quarterback. The other will not, because there are certain inimitable laws about this constricted creature called, with a woeful absence of imagination, the College Football Playoff.

One of those laws is Thou Shalt Not Make The Playoff With Two Losses.

Sadly for fans of the Bulldogs, that applies to Georgia, which lost to LSU earlier in the year before coming from ahead to lose to previously unchallenged Alabama last night. Just as in the national championship game back in January, the Bulldogs dominated 'Bama for most of the day, leading 28-14 deep in the second half. And just as in the national championship game, 'Bama somehow pulled it out, 35-28, behind its backup quarterback.

The only difference was, the backup this time was Jalen Hurts, who was the starter in the national title game. And the starter was Tua Tagovailoa, who won the national title game in relief of Hurts, then had to give way to Hurts yesterday after Georgia sent him limping to the sidelines with the Tide down by a touchdown.

Enter Hurts, who scored the winning touchdown on a 15-yard run. Enter also Georgia coach Kirby "Maybe Not All That" Smart, who called for a fake punt with the score tied, saw it get stuffed and then watched Hurts cash in the brain cramp.

So Alabama remains unbeaten and likely will remain the top-ranked team in the upcoming CFP. And Georgia, per the inimitable laws, will go off to maul someone in some halfway decent bowl game somewhere.

But you know what?

To hell with the inimitable laws. I know what I saw.

I saw two of the top four teams in the nation, on one football field. And one of them won't get to prove it in the CFP.

Oklahoma?

Yeah, the Sooners will likely fill the No. 4 spot after beating Texas by 10 in the Big 12 title game. And that will happen because Ohio State didn't bury Northwestern in style points in the Big Ten title game, And yet neither one, for my money, is better than Georgia. The eyeball test is rarely wrong, and that's what my eyeballs tell me.

Which gets me to thinking about numbers. Specifically, two of them: Four and eight.

Four is what the CFP consists of now. Eight is what it ought to consist of.

An eight-team playoff would mean the champion of every Power 5 conference would get an automatic bid, just like the NCAA basketball tournament. That would leave three at-large bids for, say, a Central Florida, which just completed its second straight unbeaten season. Or for a Georgia, which paid dearly for that misstep down in Baton Rouge back in October.

Without that, the Bulldogs are a one-loss team. And likely would have remained in the playoff even with the loss to Alabama, simply because they're the only team that's given the Tide even a moment's pause this season. And thus seem pretty clearly one of the four best teams in the nation.

And, yes, I understand expanding the playoff to eight teams perhaps opens a floodgate the NCAA is loathe to open. If eight teams make it, why not 12? Why not 16? On and on and on.

I also understand this is a reaction to a circumstance specific to this one year. There will not be a two-loss team as good as Georgia most years. So, yeah, there's a little knee-jerkery going on here.

And yet ...

And yet, I know what I saw.

And I wish I had the chance to see it again.