The College Football Playoff selection committee was tasked with choosing the top four teams in the nation Dec. 7 to play in the first-ever NCAA Division I FBS football playoffs.

The committee’s task became difficult when all six conference champions of the Power 5 conferences — the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC — all won big during the weekend of Dec. 5 to Dec. 7 and made convincing arguments for their spots in the Football Bowl Subdivision playoff.

Ultimately the committee chose to give the four playoff spots to Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State. It chose not to include either Baylor and TCU, who are cochampions of the Big 12 and who finished fifth and sixth in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Going into Dec. 7, the fourth spot in the playoffs, which Ohio State received, had the most questions surrounding it. While Ohio State won the Big Ten conference championship against Wisconsin handily, many questioned whether the Big Ten or Ohio State’s schedule was difficult enough to earn a playoff spot.

However, some believed that the Big 12’s lack of a conference championship game or a sole conference champion played into the committee’s decision to exclude the Big 12 from the playoffs. But TCU’s only loss came against Baylor while Ohio State was defeated by a Virginia Tech team that finished the season with a 6-6 record.

There are numerous arguments for all three teams who vied for the fourth College Football Playoff spot. What factors should be weighed more heavily than others? That was the question the committee was up against Dec. 7 when it was tasked with deciding who would make the playoffs.

However, we believe the committee should never have had to decide who gets the last spot out of Ohio State, Baylor and TCU. Is four teams in a playoff really fair when not all Power 5 conference champions will be able to make it in each year?

This year serves as the perfect example of why a four-team playoff is a flawed system. If there is a controversy in the first year of the playoff then an improvement to the playoff system already needs to be made.

An eight-team playoff would be significantly better than a four-team system. This would allow for all Power 5 champions to be included in the playoffs as well as leave room for any cochampions or other highly ranked teams. Also, after eight teams, it is much more unlikely that the ninth-place team would win a national title than a fifth-place team.

Some may raise the question about how to handle extra games and extra time that this may add to the schedules of the playoff teams. However, schools in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, the level below the FBS, have a 12-game regular season schedule, and the division plays a 24-team playoff. If FCS schools can handle an even larger playoff, an eight-game system is not unreasonable to ask of schools who are competing for a national title. 

It seems as though Baylor, TCU and Ohio State all had good enough resumes to compete in the playoffs and have a shot at the national title. So is it really fair for a committee to choose who does and does not have a chance at the championship?

The college football playoffs were originally created to solve biases and to make it so more qualified teams have a shot at the national title. However, a four-team playoff does not go far enough to solve that problem.

Increasing the number of teams in the playoffs would have avoided the drama faced by this year’s selection committee altogether and made the road to the national title more fair for those who got snubbed.