Michael Lev: Best case for a 12-team College Football Playoff? Your 2023 Arizona Wildcats

Four was never the right number for the College Football Playoff.

When the overseers of the sport finally came to their senses and established a postseason tournament a decade ago — college football was the only NCAA-sanctioned sport that didn’t have one — they got it wrong.

The math is pretty simple, or at least it was: Through this year, college football had the so-called “Power Five” conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. Yet there were only four spots for those five leagues. Which meant that one league — two some years — was left out. Does that make any sense?

“Four is too small,” said Arizona coach Jedd Fisch, for whom this issue might be, well, personal. More on that later.

“There’s no question,” Fisch continued. “Every other league, every other sport, has more than four teams in their playoffs.

“I was thinking a little bit about college basketball today. They go into the postseason, and they have 68 teams now. Go try to win a championship.

“Our regular season ends, and if you’re not one through four, you don’t have a chance to win the championship. Imagine if it was just the four No. 1 seeds in basketball, and those are the only four that had a chance.”

More often than not, the CFP lucked out and avoided the multicar pileup that could happen this weekend.

If Alabama defeats Georgia, both teams likely will make the final four-team tournament (another SEC Invitational ... yay). Michigan, one of four remaining unbeaten contenders for the crown, is a lock; the Wolverines are favored by 23 points over a one-dimensional, somehow 10-2 Iowa team which has no chance of winning that game (bet the mortgage, folks!).

If undefeated Washington defeats Oregon, the Huskies are in; the Pac-12 has been the deepest, toughest league all season. If Oregon wins, the Ducks would deserve to go; no one is playing better. But would they?

Again, the math is problematic. Florida State is one win away from going 13-0. You can’t keep an unbeaten Power Five team out of the playoff, even if its quarterback is injured. Right?

Then there’s Texas. The Longhorns are 11-1. Their only loss came in the final seconds on a neutral field against a Top 12 Oklahoma team. Texas’ résumé includes a nonconference victory at Alabama ... the same Alabama team that will be 12-1 if it beats two-time defending national champion Georgia.

How could the CFP Committee justify putting Alabama in ahead of Texas when the Longhorns beat the Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa? How could the committee keep the Tide out if they beat the Bulldogs? What about the others?

What a headache.

Starting next year, this won’t be a concern anymore. The CFP is expanding to 12 teams ... which still isn’t the right number.

The problem with 12 is that there’s too little drama. It threatens to devalue the regular season — the best, most meaningful regular season in any sport — and to neuter championship weekend.

All that craziness outlined above? The potential pileup that we wouldn’t be able to avert our eyes from?

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Most of it will be gone. The losers in those conference title games will make the 12-team field anyway. The biggest carrot will be a first-round bye. And those teams don’t even get a home game. Thrilling, huh?

For a sport that held out for more than a century — refusing to put together a legitimate playoff tournament — 12 is too much, too fast.

Eight — the midpoint between the current four and the future 12 — has always been the magic number.

An eight-team field in the Power Five era would have worked like this: The five league winners get an automatic berth; the top-ranked “Group of Five” team gets one; and the final two spots go to the top two at-large candidates. Just imagine how heated those debates would be.

In a “Power Four” world — sans the Pac-12 — the at-large number goes up by one. But the battle for three spots would still be more riveting than the battle for seven. That’s what we’re looking at next year.

By this point, it should be pretty clear where I stand on all this.

Four? Not enough. Twelve? Too many. Eight? Just right.

However ... there’s another way of looking at it.

Through blue-and-red-colored glasses.

You know who’d be in the running for a playoff spot if the CFP had expanded to 12 teams this year?

Your Arizona Wildcats.

Arizona is No. 15 in the latest CFP Rankings released Tuesday evening. The 9-3 Wildcats, winners of six consecutive games, would be right there. They’d be on the brink, in the mix, part of the discourse.

And it would be glorious.

Just imagine how fun it would have been — how much more fun — if Arizona had been pursuing not only a program turnaround but a CFP berth down the stretch. Every Saturday would have been consumed with scoreboard-watching. Every day in between would have been filled with message-board scrolling. Are the Wildcats on the bubble? Are they in? Are they out? What does Joe Lunardi have to say about all this?

As it stands today, there are multiple 10-2 teams in front of Arizona. The Wildcats likely wouldn’t have made it. But the CFP Committee assuredly would have examined their case. And depending on which criteria the members used — it’s always a moving target — maybe Arizona would have snuck in. No team in America is hotter right now, they could have argued. The Cats are the team no one wants to face.

If Dave Heeke and the UA administration can keep the band together — from Jedd Fisch to his assistants to his top players — Arizona will be in that discussion next year. If this squad remains mostly intact, the Wildcats likely will be a preseason Top 15 team. They’ll compete for the Big 12 championship. Even if they finish as the runners-up, they’ll have a good chance of making the expanded CFP.

Maybe 12 is the right number, after all.