Pate calls for 14-team, AQ CFP to maintain the 'urgency of November'

With Big Ten Media Days underway in Las Vegas, college football analyst Josh Pate joins us on Tuesday's edition of TexAgs Live to discuss the top teams in the conference. Pate also covered the proposed College Football Playoffs expansion, highlighting the benefits of an AQ model.

Key notes from Josh Pate interview

• I have been quoted no less than four times, with me saying, “I wish they kept this thing in Indiana.” Everyone's looking at me like, “What are you talking about?” “What do you mean, what am I talking about?” Are we here to do Big Ten Media Days or vacation? There's a 12-minute walk to the convention center. These are first-world problems. I digress.
   
• It’s the same as the SEC. You have a top dog in Ohio State, maybe Penn State is up there, but Ohio State just won the title. You could say the same thing as Georgia, Texas or Alabama. Are we just 100 percent sure you're going to get good quarterback play? If so, then they'll be right there at the end for the national title.
   
• If we rub the magic eight ball and find out with any of those teams, but Ohio State in particular, will they get sporadic quarterback play this year? Is the collective of the rest of the team enough to lift them up?
   
• Even if they do get good quarterback play, is Penn State really the team to get over the hump? I’ve watched for several years. I've thought the conversation around James Franklin has always been stupid because everyone's waited for them to do the one thing they haven't been able to do. To beat a couple of the big boys in the Big Ten, then win the whole thing.
   
• After you try and try and try, people say you're overrated. No, you're not. You're rated right behind the teams you can't beat. That's exactly where you should be ranked. I think this year is Penn State’s best shot to do that. That brings with it a lot of competitive pressure. Not job security pressure, but if not now, when?
   
• Also, I think the biggest question for the Big Ten is: Are you going to find a way as a conference to have a very competitive second tier of your league? The SEC has that very deep, even though last year was a down year for the conference. Will the Big Ten get that? Matt Rhule has got to have a lot to say about that. Jonathan Smith at Michigan State has got to have a lot to say about that. Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota have to be what Ole Miss, South Carolina or Tennessee have been in the SEC.
   
• The benefit for the Big Ten is that the big boys elevate and detach from the pack. The downside is, if you're watching the Big Ten slate on Saturday, most of the time past the first or second game, we’re watching Rutgers vs. Maryland. There's not a whole lot to draw your eyes in.
   
• It just shows you that the same few people are always involved. I don't know if people have noticed, but those same people are distracted by other matters right now. Trying to figure out the playoffs and fool people into thinking something is in their best interest when in reality, it just deepens their pockets. I think it's just that the hands that are normally on that wheel are a little distracted. Don't you worry. Once they get the can kicked down the road a little bit, they'll get their eyes back on the prize.
   
• I hate super big playoffs. Eli Drinkwitz said people miss his main point because they get caught up in “30.” He said we need to get the committee as far away as possible from selecting the teams. He wants a model where everything is decided on the field.
   
• You could go the bad semantics route, saying everyone always had to play their way in. Go sit in the corner for a second if that's how you feel. I agree with Drinkwitz. I didn't want the thing to expand, but that ship has sailed.
   
• If we are going to 14 or 16, I want 14 with the full AQ format. The AQ format used to be satanic for me. I didn't want it in the same room as me. That's when the field was small. The field is too big now. There's no way you can go to the best teams with just straight seeding and maintaining any value on regular-season games. What we both agreed on is that if you go 14 teams with 4-4-2-2-1, everyone got so caught up in guaranteeing the SEC or Big Ten something. It sure does, but my question is which teams does it guarantee? The answer is none.
   
• The only ones guaranteed at the end of November are the No. 1s in the conferences. Out of the six vs. three and four vs. five on play-in Saturday. The No. 3 in the SEC could be cooked. The No. 6 is theoretically alive, but they have to go in and win some games.
   
• The alternative, my thing I care about, is the regular season. All my motivation is on that. I'll give you 8-1 Tennessee in the first week of November. If we take the 5+11 format, they know they can lose two of their final three games to make it into the playoffs. What does that do for the urgency in November? Can you imagine saying we want to win them, but we've bought ourselves some cushion? We can lose two of the final three and still be in.
   
• We just watched Ohio State lose to Michigan. While it was gut-wrenching for them, we watched it and said they went and won the national title anyway? What did the rivalry loss mean? Should I have been on the edge of my seat?
   
• This is the ultimate mechanism and the reason why the AQ won't take the route. I'm looking at it holistically. 99.999 percent of people have a rooting interest. Someone's going to watch a game and say, “Hold on, if we have the AQ model and say we may face our third or fourth loss, and we'd still be in the playoffs. That means the AQ route is best for us.” It’s what is best for your flawed team to still make a 15 or 16 seed in that given year. What does that do to college football?
   
• There's something on the line with these regular-season games. If you look at college football the way you look at the NBA or NFL, we have different world views. There are people who look at it and say, “All do respect, who cares what happens to the regular season as long as the playoffs…” I care about the regular season more than the playoffs. That won’t make sense to anyone else because college football is unique to any other sport when it comes to that.
   
• I've heard people say that if you didn't have the four-team playoff, Ohio State wouldn't have been in it. People think it's a “gotcha” moment. My reaction is, “Yeah, I know. That's called consequence.” Losing not just one regular-season game, but losing as a three-touchdown favorite at home to close out the season. They haven't earned their way into play for a title. It wouldn't have bothered me at all.
   
• Notre Dame would've been out as well. What about that? The team that lost to Northern Illinois as a four-touchdown favorite would've been out as well. That's called consequence. That means when you watch those regular-season games and it happens, it's huge. That vibe exists in college football. Up until five minutes ago, they were all playing each game on the edge of a cliff.
   
• We are very new to these meaningless bowl games. You aren't getting the romanticism of bowl games back. Even if you put me in charge today, I wouldn't take us back to four or two teams. People think strictly “playoff or bust.” That's why I think you keep it the size it is now, or I think the 14-team AQ model is better than what we have now. It doesn't have any at-large spots. Every spot has to be earned in the conference title game or by winning play-in games. You play the whole regular season to position yourself there. It's exclusive enough that it doesn’t feel watered down, but what's good is that it doesn’t guarantee anyone anything. I've been hammering that drum.
   
• I used to be so against the concept of AQs. I used to say, “Why does anyone deserve anything?” With a playoff field this big, I have found reasons why it makes sense to maintain the sport I love.
   
• I'm a traditionalist. I'm the last one to want to fundamentally alter college football.
   
• Bowl season now is a painful shell of what it used to be in terms of meaning. I don't really care if it doesn't feel like it has meaning anymore. I have to give you at least your five minutes on the floor, but how do you incentivize players to play in bowl games? The answer is money. Do you share the revenue between the program, media sponsors and the players? I always thought that if they did that, they should give 80 percent to the winner and 20 percent to the loser. I am very open, as the future commissioner of this sport, about what to do with bowl season. If we were expanding the playoff, at least if you did move bowl season off its classic placement, we have a lot of playoff inventory to fill those spots. It doesn't have to feel desolate with no football around Christmas time, because there would be.
   
• I look at it as gas in the tank. If you need 12 weeks of gas in the tank, there's no way to know until Week 12. We realize that around Halloween, they had eight weeks of gas in the tank. That can't be how it is. When you work how you work in spring and summer, you aren't working for Week 1 or 2. You're working for Week 12 when you have to go to Fayetteville... This dead-in-the-water team has you on the ropes in the fourth quarter. Just avoid the cataclysmic dips into the terrible.