The CFP's Evil Plan is Working.

We kind of hate to say it

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If you can, glance at the College Football Playoff bracket up above and, for a second, just forget the seedings and rankings. I realize that I’m asking a bit, since the numbers are plastered right there next to each team’s logo, but give it a try.

I’m suggesting this because, you know, the bracket actually works. It does. I didn’t want to love the sport jumping from a tidy four-team playoff straight to this 12-team scrum, which is sure to morph to 16 teams as soon as the football gods of avarice can ram that change through. But on the other hand…

Well, just look.

Forget the numbers. The four teams left are Penn State, Notre Dame, Texas and Ohio State. That’s an absolute banger of a final four. It is heavyweights straight down the line. And if you didn’t know the seeds, you’d easily be forgiven for thinking to yourself, They were probably the top four, right?

Sure — close enough. In reality, those teams were seeds 5 through 8. This may suggest that the CFP seeding committee shouldn’t have lined up jello shots before they went into the boardroom to draw the bracket, but it more likely suggests that this is Exhibit A for why so many people wanted an expanded field in the first place.

I didn’t love that idea, no. I cop to it. But when Notre Dame and Penn State square off in the Orange Bowl today, and when Texas and Ohio State go in the Cotton Bowl on Friday, I’ll be watching. I certainly won’t remember that, say, Boise State was the 3 seed or that Arizona State was No. 4. I’ll just be watching titanic matchups.

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The larger field of teams accounts for margin of error. That’s it in a nutshell. So the committee got it wrong in seeding Ohio State No. 8 — any real harm done there? The Buckeyes have scored 83 points in two playoff games. Not having a bye didn’t faze them in the least, because they are legitimate national title threats.

More playoff entrants, in theory, mean that at some point in the future, a very deserving team will get knocked off by a bottom-scraper of a seed that suddenly has a superlative day. It could happen; it happens in other sports’ playoffs all the time. And if it does, we’ll all chirp about the upset and then go look for the next game with our remotes.

It will be strange, I grant you, to watch the Orange Bowl on Jan. 9 and the Cotton Bowl on the 10th. But since they don’t play the Cotton Bowl in the Cotton Bowl anymore, and since the actual Orange Bowl was demolished in 2008, I guess we can’t clutch our pearls too tightly.

You get it wrong in a four-team bracket, you’re hosed. You get a few teams wrong in a 12-team bracket — well, play on. The cream will rise.

I admit it. It works.

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