This CFP first round kind of stinks. Here’s why I can live with that

• The 12-team College Football Playoff has been a gift for the sport – just not for its postseason. The regular season got better.
• Expanding playoff to 12 teams increased access while retaining exclusivity. It strikes the right balance.
• College football season peaks from September through November. Maybe, that’s OK.

The 12-team College Football Playoff has been a gift for the sport — just not for its postseason.

The expanded playoff improved the regular season. More games matter.

As for the playoff? Well, if we’re willing to be frank about this, these first-round matchups mostly stink.

Two games will feature over-matched Group of Five teams as three-score underdogs. Add in a rematch of the Oklahoma-Alabama game we saw a month ago, and this lineup won’t threaten to put the NFL out of business.

To put it bluntly, this first round is set to serve one of the lamer offerings of games of this entire season.

Can we return to Week 5? Here were some of the scores involving top-25 teams that weekend:

• Virginia 46, Florida State 38 (double overtime)
• Arizona State 27, TCU 24
• Oregon 30, Penn State 24 (OT)
• Mississippi 24, LSU 19
• Alabama 24, Georgia 21
• Texas A&M 16, Auburn 10
• Indiana 20, Iowa 15
• Tennessee 41, Mississippi State 34 (OT)
• Illinois 34, Southern California 32
• Brigham Young 24, Colorado 21

That’s 10 games involving at least one ranked team that were decided by a single possession. The playoff’s first round will be a snoozer, by comparison.

College football’s regular season rules, while playoff lags behind

So, why do I consider the 12-team playoff a gift? Because, this playoff has proven to be an ideal size and shape to elevate the regular season. This bigger playoff makes conference championship weekend worse, but it made September through November better. That’s a worthy tradeoff.

As CFP stakeholders continue to debate playoff expansion formats, I have one request: Don’t ruin the regular season in the process. Don’t bloat the playoff to such an extent that USC falling at Illinois loses significance or that the outcome of BYU-Texas Tech becomes irrelevant.

Fall Saturdays filled with high-stakes tussles, that’s college football’s beauty. If improving the playoff means degrading September Saturdays, that’s simply not worth it.

I’m up for playoff formats that enhance December and January, but only if they won’t dilute October.

College football has the greatest regular season in all of sports, accompanied by an underwhelming postseason. The season peaks in November, two months before its conclusion. It’s the opposite of college basketball or the NHL, where, if you just watched the postseason, you saw what you needed to see.

In college football, if you missed the regular season, then you missed the magic.

The conference clashes, the firings and the hirings, the debates of “my conference is better than your conference,” the rankings rat race, the rivalry games consumed alongside Thanksgiving leftovers, therein resides college football’s heartbeat.

The playoff? Well, James Madison at Oregon is like being served a plastic-wrapped snack cake after a five-star meal. It’s the underwhelming dessert you’re not sure you want. Empty calories. Another bite of the main course, please.

12-team CFP bracket balances access with exclusivity

The playoff matchups should get better in the quarterfinals, and the semifinals could be a couple of doozies, but, the fact remains, we’ve been on the season’s downslope since watching rivalry games on full bellies while waiting for Lane Kiffin to award his rose.

Concerns that the playoff going from four to 12 teams would devalue the regular season were misguided. This 12-team bracket amplifies the regular season’s splendor.

The 12-team playoff increased accessibility while maintaining exclusivity. Dozens of teams enter November with a shot at the playoff, but the playoff remains selective enough that regular-season results matter greatly.

A field goal in August in Miami can be the difference between making the playoff versus howling about being snubbed.

A September trip to Champaign, Illinois, can deliver a gut punch that reverberates throughout your entire season. Ask USC.

An October loss to UCLA can be the day the canary dies in the coal mine, informing Penn State it’s not going to the playoff — instead, it’s a week away form firing its coach.

November brought together a tremendous collision of firings, hirings and playoff jockeying. Conference championship weekend was a letdown, outside of the Big Ten, but we revived to get all hot and bothered about the playoff snubs, and now … pfft, here comes a whimpering lineup of first-round games.

We’ll always have November.

This 12-team playoff didn’t solve college football’s postseason problem, but it further glorified the Saturdays that come before the unsatisfying finish.

Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.