It’s the college football season! That time of the year when normally behaved people transform themselves into superfans, bedecked head to toe in team gear, when long held loyalties and rivalries rise to the surface – sometimes pitting close friends against each as their teams fight for wins. It’s that time of year when Ohio State seems to be at the top of the list of teams that everyone wants to see lose, except that is, the seeming millions of alumni that stand by their team, sometimes referring to it as The undisputed champions – a reference to a national championship win from 2015 when the first College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship game was played. It’s a great time of the year for fans of college football!

So naturally the CFP Administration thinks that what fans would like most is, well more of it. No, we’re not talking about adding one second to the season. We’re talking about a lot more time – many more games worth of time in fact. The CFP is set to expand to 24 teams starting in 2027. That’s up from the original four that produced that 2015 Buckeye championship, and it’s up from the current 12-team playoff series that was supposed to resolve problems of not including teams that really should have been part of a playoff schedule. The new 24-team playoff means that we’ll get 12 more games than we currently have.

Think about that for a moment. The CFP along with the NCAA is taking something that college football fans love-something that has always been associated with the start of the school year and that has always ended around New Year’s Day and is now stretching it out to the end of January.

This all brings up the question of utility maximization. Is the CFP going too far with its expanded playoff plans? What happens to the value of something if suddenly there’s a lot more of it available? Will companies still pay for game-time ads when the season stretches for so much longer? Can the players – arguably more motivated now thanks to NIL money – continue to play at a high level for what could be many extra games – to get a chance to call themselves The undisputed champs? Perhaps most importantly, will the fans continue to turn out as the season goes on?     

Discussion Questions:

  1. Discuss the law of diminishing marginal utility as it relates to the expansion of the playoff schedule for the CFP. How, if at all, does your response change if you look at it through the lens of the fan, the player, or the school? Explain.   
  2. With time (hours) as your unit of currency, apply the utility maximizing rule to an expanded playoff schedule. What does your analysis tell you about whether, all else being equal, the move to expand the playoff schedule to include 24 teams will be a success?