Mike Cagley, Co-Host Sports Spectacular

December 22, 2025

It’s been a light week as Finals dominated Illini thoughts and actions. That said, with the College Football Playoff (CFP) and the floundering Michigan head football coach search, it has been an entertaining week.

Hail Mary #1 – Can We Have the Top 12 Teams Face Off

Apparently, I am a very bad person who just wants to buy-in to the corporate overlords of the CFP. Why do I say this? I’m the bad guy because I want to see the top 12 teams face off. I don’t care about conference affiliation much, but the top 12 teams are needed to make this playoff be all that it can be. I don’t need the P5 representation. Give them their own playoff.

Instead, we could’ve watched Notre Dame visit Ole Miss and Vandy head west to take on Oregon. Two games that would struggle to be less interesting than the squashes that were applied by Ole Miss and Oregon in what I am now calling CFP NFL Throwaway Games.

We all know that the NFL is the king of television and likely streaming. That said college football is a ratings force as well. Let’s see the NFL earn their ratings dominance by beating the best of what college football has to offer. Not lay down by counterprogramming against the NFL with two games that were expected to be non-competitive which proved to be exactly what prognosticators predicted.

I know this means I’m a heartless jerk who wants to stop any future Cinderella stories before they are even born, but this is football. The talent difference not only makes for bad games, but it could also end up with someone getting maimed out there on the field. I should know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen all sorts of Illinois teams get destroyed over the years – up to and including this year’s destruction at the hands of Indiana. No one else should have to watch that type of contest. Certainly not in two of four games that are meant to show off the best college football to the nation.

I have one other belief that makes me a heartless jerk. This leads me to Heat Check #2

Heat Check #2- The CFP Needs to Expand to 16 Teams - and Stay There Forever

Again, apparently, I have been controlled by the conferences and their broadcast partners in wanting a 16-team field for the CFP. According to many in the sports media, it's wrong to want even more enjoyment out of the CFP and the format I'd like would add some fantastic games for college fans to savor. For my tastes, 16 is the perfect number that allows for one heck of a parade of games in December that would be unmatched in college football history.

I would set up the 16-team tournament to match up teams closer in seeding than the NCAA basketball tournament. This would mean having a one-week bye for seeds #5-8 and a two-week bye for seeds #1-4. This may be controversial, but it allows for 3 consecutive weekends each with 4 CFP games (one on Friday and 3 on Saturday). It avoids an 8-game weekend when there really aren't enough time windows to adequately spotlight such huge games. This strategy also throws down the gauntlet at the feet of the NFL forcing them to fight if they want December Saturday dominance, and it allows as many as 12 teams to host a post season game. The Final Four and Championship can be held at either bowl game sites or up for bid like Super Bowls.

Full disclosure, this plan would require moving the season up a week in the early fall and a rethinking of championship week. In a perfect world you’d like the Final Four or the Championship Final to be on New Year’s Day. The tournament would look like this (roughly):

If automatic qualifier bids were handed out by each conference (the trick is how many per conference), you’d then have no incentive to stop scheduling inter-conference games like Michigan at Alabama as conference standings and tiebreakers would determine tournament entrance. The regular season would be even more entertaining as playing tough teams out of conference wouldn't hurt a team's chances for CFP participation.

Clearly deciding which teams enter the tournament will be the second biggest obstacle. Once that is figured out, let the games begin. They will be fantastic and profitable.

There are a lot of wins to be achieved in handling the tournament this way. The biggest obstacle is adding an extra game playoff game for some teams and adding a two-week bye to the top four teams. One must consider that a team seeded #1-4 who is dealing with a lot of injuries might really appreciate this format.

Most importantly, all the games would be featured; there would be no competition from another CFP tournament game being broadcast at the same time and many more teams would have an opportunity to host a post season game.

Hail Mary #3 – Congratulations to Illinois State for a Record-Setting Run to the Championship Game

The Illinois State Redbirds have made an unlikely run to the title game I the FCS Football Championship tournament. Remember, the disparity between dollars spend and the “purchasing power” of the top teams versus “lesser ranked” teams is much less than in P5 football where as much as 40 million may separate roster costs between two potential teams playing a game.

Illinois State wasn’t ranked in the top 16 seeds. Their path to the championship game has been a challenging one. ISU has defeated the following teams – all on the road:

• #16 seed Southeastern Louisiana 21-3
• #1 seed North Dakota State 29-28
• #8 seed UC Davis 42-31
• #12 seed Villanova 30-14

On January 5^th at 6:30 pm CST, the Redbirds face #2 Montana State in Nashville on ESPN. The Redbirds might be wanting to play one more “true” road game as the teams that Illinois State beat in the playoffs had only been beaten one time at home all year (combined) and the Redbirds are the only team to win 4-straight games on the road during the playoffs. Good luck to ISU as it should be a great game against a perennial power in Montana State.