Well, it's the offseason. So now is the time when if there's ever going to be some college football playoff expansion news. There's no better time than for it to be happening right now. It helps us get through the off season. I'm Pete Mundo. And let's welcome on and say hello to Bill Bender Sporting News. He joins us here in Heartland College Sports Weekly. So Bill, let's get right into it. Reporting this week came out from Yahoo Sports as Pete Tham.

We'll talk it about how the 12-team playoff is supposedly the early frontrunner to replace the 4-team playoff.

I know you wrote a great piece about this at Sporting News on the pros and cons of this,

but just your initial gut reaction, do you like 12? Do you prefer 8? Do you want to

stay at 4? I think expansion's coming and we're all open to that now. I mean, I previously,

I would say stick with 4, but now that we kind of know it's coming, out of the 8 or 12 team model,

I prefer to go to 8 and i put up a twitter

poll this morning and that that seems to be the leading option i would say that i'm looking at

it now it's 53% want eight about 24% want 12 and then what's left about about 22% or so, they would say 4 or 6.

So I think 8's the best middle ground.

I think, Pete, aren't we skipping a step by going 4 to 12 when you haven't even tried an 18

model that might be the best fit?

Yeah.

You know, I wonder this too, Bill, and I saw Thamel's reporting, and I wonder, geez,

it feels to me like the SEC is the driver behind all this, because in reading between the lines,

they're basically saying, hey, if it's eight with six automatic bids, the power five,

and the group of five, well, we may only get one more team, even if we have, let's say,

three or four teams ranked in the top eight or ten or whatever it might be. Is that your inkling on this as well?

Is this being driven by the SEC to get as many at-large bids as they can?

No, I would say it's driven by somebody else. I mean, maybe the Pack 12 once 12, another

conference. The SEC has no inclination to increase the... by somebody else. I mean, maybe the PAC 12 once 12 and other conferences.

The SEC has no inclination to increase the playoff format now.

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