I agree with Chuck that the arguments made about injuries and academics are nonsense.
I do, however, think that going to a playoff would greatly reduce the importance of the regular season. Remember a few years ago when Ohio State and Michigan were ranked 1 and 2 and met in the final game of the regular season? The winner got a shot at the title. The loser did not. If there was a playoff that year, both teams would have been in it regardless of the outcome of that game and the game may have resembled one of the final games of the Colts' season this year rather than the classic battle that it ended up being.
The current system severely punishes every loss a team suffers in the regular season in a way that an 8 or 16 team playoff never would. By definition that would mean that regular season games would be less important than they are now.
Clearly there would be things gained by going to a playoff - and those gains are obvious - but I also think there are some less obvious things that would be lost. It is pretty cool that the national championship is on the line every single time a team takes the field in the college football season. You never have a college football team with championship aspirations playing in a regular season game that means absolutely NOTHING the way you had the last couple of weeks in the NFL. If they do ever go to a playoff, I would hope that they do a 6-team playoff with the top 2 teams getting byes and then home-field advantage in the semifinal games in order to maintain the importance of the regular season. To me there would be something stupid about a 12-0 #1 seed getting no advantage over some 8-4 #16 seed. That would unquestionably hurt the greatness of the college football regular season.
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