In this summer's expanded FIFA World Cup , the entire world got a taste of peak March Madness. And it loved what it saw.
Lower seeds -- in this case, small or unproven countries like Cape Verde and Congo DR -- defined the early part of the tournament, pulling upsets (it's soccer, so draws count as upsets) and giving us a bracket we didn't quite expect. The heavyweights eventually took over, but despite the fact that this was the biggest and longest World Cup ever, the underdogs gave the tournament almost endless momentum.
Something breathless was almost always happening. It was great.
Of course, being the biggest World Cup -- 48 teams in all, up from 32 in 2022 -- had its advantages: We had more underdogs, and therefore more had opportunities to make noise. Not all of them did, but there were few mega-blowouts.
The underdogs came to play, as I was confident they would. And getting to watch the celebrations when Cape Verde qualified for the knockout rounds (where they would damn near beat Argentina ) was one of the cooler sports moments of the decade .
Despite naysaying from a number of fans and journalists, and despite extremely apt judgments regarding why FIFA wanted to expand the World Cup -- an even larger money cannon, plus the votes president Gianni Infantino needs to remain in office -- I was extremely confident that expansion would pay off precisely because of the March Madness angle. Pure law of averages suggested we would get upsets and chaos in the early going.
And the floor for soccer has risen enough that if you're, say, the 44th-best team in the world, the gap between you and the top teams isn't as vast as it once was. Congo DR, for instance, has half its roster (13 of 26 players) playing in major leagues in England, Spain or France.
The underdog buzz from the early weeks of this tournament was so strong that, when I would put on my college football hat and do a radio bit the moment after a huge result, I would inevitably get asked the same question: If the expanded World Cup is this awesome, what does that say about the expanded College Football Playoff that is being proposed ? "Nothing," was my answer.
Because what's being proposed in the world of CFP expansion has nothing to do with how the World Cup expanded. I loved World Cup expansion, and I hate the proposed CFP expansion I have my reasons .
Adding a fifth round to the tournament when we can't even finish a four-round tournament before the end of January seems a bit foolish. After a couple of more preposterously late title games, it appears we'll be moving the title game back to a more acceptable range , but will that remain the case with an extra round?
Plus, one of the major solutions for shrinking the calendar -- ditching the conference title games that define the season for a number of conferences -- seems extremely short-sighted. (Flex-week championship weeks could be incredible, but that idea hasn't taken hold just yet.
Give me time.) Plus, all of the integrity-of-the-regular-season concerns that people expressed when first the four-team and then 12-team playoffs were proposed would be a legitimate issue this time around if we're openly letting in a majority of 8-4 teams from the Big Ten and SEC. With 12 teams, we've found a nice balance between the drama of playoff pushes and the stinginess of the mulligans we hand out, and we shouldn't take that for granted.
Those concerns are somewhat negotiable, however. The calendar could be adjusted without mitigating the fun of conference title races, and the playoff could be expanded in ways that don't result in Ohio State never again playing in a meaningful regular-season game.
What I hate most about the 24-team playoff currently being proposed is access: There's almost none of it. Big Ten commissioner Tony Pettiti is proposing a structure that would guarantee that the top 23 teams get into the field, with only one spot reserved for a team from a Group of 6 conference (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, Sun Belt).
Based on the final CFP rankings of 2024, that would have resulted in 22 so-called power programs getting in: seven SEC teams, six Big Ten teams, five Big 12 teams, three ACC teams, plus Notre Dame . Two G6 teams finished the 2025 regular season ranked in the top 24 -- No.
20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison -- but with the disdain the playoff committee has shown to mid-majors through the years, I would say there's a good chance that JMU would have ranked 25th had there be