Flock Talk: The River

 

With Oregon set to host James Madison this weekend, while we have focused our work at Duck Sports Central on the matchups and as objective a view as possible, the questions about the playoff format have reached a familiar bend in the road once again. The Ducks will take the field against a team that — in most other seasons, under most other formats — would never have crossed this threshold, creating what many consider a non-compelling matchup that should not have existed.

That doesn’t make it unearned.
It just makes it complicated.

Oregon is a 21.5-point favorite. That number hangs over the weekend like a quiet acknowledgment of reality. It doesn’t diminish what James Madison accomplished to get here, but it does frame the conversation we’ve all been circling without quite wanting to say out loud: the playoff did exactly what it was designed to do — and revealed the cost of doing so.

This is where the College Football Playoff finds itself now. Not broken. Not illegitimate. Just standing in the middle of something it can no longer outrun.

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Where the River Begins

When the playoff expanded, the intentions were clear. Expansion was not sold merely as entertainment or television inventory. It was sold as a correction — an answer to years of exclusion, frustration, and the growing sense that the sport’s biggest stage was shrinking rather than growing.

Automatic bids for the five highest-ranked conference champions were not an accident. They were a promise.

A promise that winning mattered.
A promise that conferences outside the power structure would not be shut out.
A promise that access itself was part of the sport’s integrity.

For players in programs that had spent decades on the outside looking in, it meant something real. For fans, it meant belief still had a place in December.

And for a moment, it felt right.

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When the Current Picks Up Speed

In 2025, that promise was kept. Two Group of Five teams made the field. Tulane entered as the No. 11 seed. James Madison as the No. 12. The door opened not because of sentiment, but because the rules said it must.

The ACC champion finished unranked. The system followed its own logic. The bracket took shape.

And almost immediately, the pushback began.

Fans didn’t revolt against James Madison. They revolted against the idea that this was the best version of what the playoff could be. Against the feeling that the sport’s biggest moment was being asked to carry something heavier than it was built for.

This is where the river widens — where what began as fairness starts colliding with expectation, and the current grows harder to control.

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The Pull of “Just Take the Best 12”

There is a reason the “best 12” argument feels so clean. It promises simplicity in a sport that has grown increasingly tangled. Strip away conference labels. Remove guarantees. Let rankings decide. Let the sport be honest about what it values.

And yes, even under a best-12 model, not every matchup would sing. The 5-12 and 6-11 games would still carry risk. But they would feel earned in a different way. Less procedural. Less forced.

That’s why this weekend feels different to so many fans. Not because Oregon is favored. Not because James Madison is overmatched. But because this game exists at the intersection of philosophy and consequence — where what the sport said it wanted meets what it now has to live with.

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What Lurks Beneath the Surface

Every version of “just take the best teams” runs aground on the same unseen obstacle: you don’t get to undo your own reasoning without paying a price.

The CFP didn’t stumble into inclusivity. It articulated it. Defended it. Used it as justification for expansion in the first place. The four-team era failed not because of television ratings, but because access had become too narrow to defend.

That history doesn’t disappear.

Remove guaranteed access now, and the sport doesn’t just change a rule — it contradicts itself. And that contradiction is exactly where antitrust questions live. Not in outcomes, but in intent. In consistency. In who controls the flow.

The power conferences might win that fight in court.
They might not.

But “might” is not how billion-dollar enterprises sleep at night.

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The Weight of What’s Been Built

So we arrive here — at a playoff that is neither wrong nor fully right. A format that tried to honor hope without abandoning excellence, and discovered that the two don’t always move at the same speed.

The SEC and Big Ten see it clearly now. Their push for guaranteed spots in a future expanded playoff isn’t about balance or fairness. It’s about certainty. About narrowing the channel so the current can’t surprise them anymore.

But even that solution doesn’t resolve the deeper tension. It just moves it further downstream.

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Where the River Empties Out

James Madison didn’t create this moment. Tulane didn’t ask to be the example. Oregon didn’t design the bracket it’s about to host.

This game is not a mistake. It is a consequence.

A consequence of a sport that wanted to keep everyone dreaming, while still crowning the strongest at the end. A consequence of promises made in good faith that now collide with the reality of what fans want to watch in December.

Saturday at Autzen will matter. It will matter to the players who may never see this stage again. To the seniors playing their final game beneath these lights. To a fan base that waited years for a home playoff game — and didn’t imagine it would feel quite like this.

Autzen won’t decide the future of the playoff this weekend. It will simply be the bank where the river bends, where the current reminds us how strong it’s become.

And like the river, college football doesn’t ask permission — it just keeps flowing, long after the cheering fades.