OT: The CFP expansion to 24 teams...

There was a time, like all of a few months ago, when college football mastered the art of the regular season and college hoops solved the conundrum of the postseason. The magnitude of fall football Saturdays gave way to the madness of March, and – even if it was an imperfect split – both got something right.

RIP to that.

With the announcement that the College Football Playoff will expand to 24 teams, college athletics officially enters its Violet Beauregarde stage, engorged by gluttony just like the famed character from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” who essentially turned herself into a human blueberry. The Oompa Loompas eventually rolled poor Violet into the juicing room, squeezing her back to form, though leaving her permanently blue.

There is no such quick fix for college athletics. It is permanently bloated almost beyond recognition.

Beginning in 2027, a nice, even 100 Division I teams – 24 in football and 76 in hoops – will find their way into the postseason. A generation reared in the youth sports “everyone gets a trophy” era will now get their participation hardware even in college, and coaches can cash bonus checks for making a diluted bracket.

The collateral damage?

Meaningful college football Saturdays, fraught with the tension that a loss could be costly for a more selective playoff field. This past Saturday, Alabama whacked LSU and Utah claimed the Holy War, leaving the Tigers and BYU clinging by a fingernail to their playoff hopes. Next year, both likely survive for the first-round games between multi-loss teams that we once might have simply called the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl.

If college football wants a peek into its future, may we present college basketball? The sport has tried and failed for years to inject meaning into its early-season games. Good teams are doing a much better job of playing good teams early, but Virginia’s 19-point drubbing of Arkansas in November is the sports equivalent of a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it. What will it really matter come March?

And now it really won’t matter. This spring, the beautiful basketball bracket will become but a bastardized version of itself.

Similarly, middling power conference teams, given all of the resources and opportunities available but unable to win actual games, will instead be gifted a ticket to the ball. Meanwhile, Cinderella sits outside barefoot, wondering about the frauds scurrying around in their Manolo Blahniks.

Because to be clear, this is not about expansion for the everyman and everywoman, the betterment of the game or a more engaging postseason. It is about money, pure and simple.

The Athletic reported the expanded football playoff would be worth at least an additional $300 million and the bigger NCAA college basketball tournament an additional $50 million.

Revenue sharing requires, believe it or not, revenue, and this is a way to not merely generate more of it, but to ensure that it is properly distributed. They’re called power conferences for a reason. The scales always tip in their favor and – when they don’t – a well-placed elbow can ensure that they do.

The power brokers – the conference commissioners, university presidents, athletic directors, TV executives whose eyes cartoonishly pop like Scrooge McDuck’s with slot machine dollar signs, and the NCAA administrators who preferred the ostrich approach to an incoming earthquake – have crafted a model where the revenue is not shared; it is simply hoarded.

Four Power 4 teams will be guaranteed spots in the new football playoff model, compared to just one reserved for the Group of Six.

The NCAA Tournament, allegedly, will continue its meritocracy approach but anyone who thinks the Southern Conference is getting an extra bid over the SEC hasn’t been paying attention. Last year, 31 of the 37 at-large bids were split among the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC. Even the Big East only received two.

The rich will get richer, and the last shreds of college athletics being anything but minor-league stomping grounds will continue to erode into oblivion.

The reality, and everyone in charge knows it, is that people will still go to games – regular season and postseason. And they will continue to watch.

A quick and very unscientific survey of a few friends on a tailgating text chain offered what sounds like the general consensus among fans about the college football expanded playoff: No, I don’t want expansion, but if my team plays, I’ll go if I can and certainly watch.

But it is also fair to question at what point fans start to feel like Violet: deflated and still blue. Extra playoff rounds and extra NCAA Tournament games mean more money – for tickets, for travel, for hotels – from fans who already are being asked to foot the bill for skyrocketing costs.

The vicious cycle of revenue generation requires fans to pay more for tickets to attract better players so a team can win more games and thereby attract better players, who will then cost more money. That same text chain has bemoaned escalating prices across the board – for seats, for parking, for beer – with little return on their personal investment via current results on the field.

Which is the one thing no one, not even the power-brokering power conferences, can manipulate. Whether the brackets include 24 teams or 76, only one ends up happy at the end.

At what point does the juice not become worth the squeeze?

Source: CNN