Boise State and Arizona State have an uphill climb ahead of them, as Yahoo Sports' Ross Dellenger relayed: preventing the College Football Playoff semifinals from being an exclusively SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame affair.
Dellenger notes that such a situation would be bad news for college football stakeholders.
"(The CFP having blowouts) isn’t completely new. Don’t you remember all those CFP semifinals the last decade? Fourteen of the 20 semifinal matchups resulted in outcomes of at least two scores. Eight of those were at least three-touchdown blowouts," Dellenger wrote.
"It happens.
"But what it does tell us, as someone here in the Ohio Stadium press box whispered to this writer, 'Maybe this will show everyone that we shouldn’t expand anymore.'
"Fourteen teams? Sixteen?
"Maybe not.
"And it’s now up to Boise State and Arizona State to prevent a nightmare for many college football fans and stakeholders: an All-SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame semifinal."
Complaints about the CFP's first round dominated Twitter on Friday and Saturday as Indiana and SMU looked completely overmatched against Notre Dame and Penn State, respectively, Clemson was overwhelmed by Texas and Ohio State dominated Tennessee too, but no one questioned the Tigers and Volunteers. Clemson was the ACC champion and Tennessee was a two-loss team; one with a loss to Arkansas.
With so many focusing on the potential that the system is broken, Boise State and Arizona State suffering the same fates as the Hoosiers and Mustangs would cause the sport's decision-makers to reconsider an expanded playoff.
That means potentially fewer games in the future, which means less revenue for everyone in the sport.