College Football Playoff expansion -- 12-team historic simulations, storylines and more

To see how a new development might affect the future, take a look at how it would have affected the past. That's a go-to of mine — see: how larger playoffs would have worked in 2020 or how a much bigger, earlier playoff would have affected things — and with the long-awaited news that we will be moving toward a 12-team playoff in 2026, we have a reason to dip into that well once more.

I had never really paid much attention to a 12-team format until it arose as an option last summer. An eight-teamer — six conference champions with two at-large bids — had long seemed like an inclusive, interesting and logical next step. But as it turns out, a 12-teamer works quite well in terms of political calibration.

A 12-team playoff, with six spots guaranteed for conference champions, not only offers playoff paths to at least one team from the Group of Five conferences; it also assures that as the balance of power shifts within the Power Five — with the Big Ten and SEC acquiring more and more money and influence at the expense of the Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC — the winners of each of those conferences will have a place at the table in most seasons. It assures that college football's national title race is actually inclusive for just about the first time ever.

But it also assures that the most powerful conferences and teams benefit massively from extra at-large bids. And the news that quarterfinal games would take place in bowl games (presumably the four New Year's Six bowls that don't host semifinals in a given year) instead of home fields conveniently allows the most influential bowls to remain relevant. We lose home-field atmospheres, but a game like the Rose Bowl, with its influence weakened and wobbly after the Big Ten kneecapped the