Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin Wants CFP to Change to 16-Team Bracket Format

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin is lobbying for expansion to the College Football Playoff.

"The system doesn't have it right," he said to USA Today's Blake Toppmeyer. "I don't think anybody, after watching the games, would say those are the best 12 teams in America. In my opinion, that's what it should be: You should be getting the best teams."

Kiffin went on to say the field should expand to 16 teams because it would widen the number of fanbases emotionally invested in the playoff.

"Forget giving (automatic bids)," he said. "Figure out the best teams. Let an educated committee figure that out with analytics."

Kiffin is notably advocating for a format that would've benefited his team last year. Ole Miss finished 14th in the CFP selection committee rankings, and the Rebels watched 16th-place Clemson punch a ticket to the playoff by winning the ACC.

Kiffin sounded off once it became clear they weren't going to move up into the top 12:

Playoff expansion is probably inevitable because more games means more money for all of the stakeholders. Adding four more teams is unlikely to bring the kind of satisfaction that Kiffin is suggesting, though.

One idea behind increasing the number of participants from four to 12 was that it might finally eliminate or minimize arguments over who missed out.

To use Ole Miss as an example, a team that lost three games seemingly forfeited the right to claim it deserves to contend for a national title. If the Rebels had beaten Kentucky or Florida, they almost certainly would've been playoff-bound.

The same is true for Alabama, which lost to Vanderbilt and mustered only three points against a pedestrian Oklahoma team. Miami watched its CFP hopes evaporate when it lost to Syracuse in its final game.

The fact that the Rebels, Crimson Tide and Hurricanes all missed the cutoff for justified reasons didn't stop their fanbases from feeling a sense of injustice.

The only real change in a 16-team format is that a different group of programs will be arguing they were snubbed. At the end of the day, there's never going to be a perfect formula to crown a national champion in college football.

People have been futilely searching for one ever since the inception of the Bowl Championship Series in 1997. The only constant through multiple postseason iterations is that nobody seems satisfied.