At first blush, I love the new 12-team playoff format. Some points:
(1) The fact that the same 4 teams made the playoffs every year was great if you were an Alabama, Georgia, or OSU fan but sucked for everyone else. We all know that one of those three teams is going to win the national title every year, but now dozens of other teams have "playoff appearance" as a tangible goal they can work towards and that their fans can celebrate for a few weeks. It will keep fans of less-elite programs engaged for longer.
(2) More things will get decided by players playing it out on the field now, fewer things by secret committees. Obviously rankings will still be done by secret committees but now teams like that undefeated UCF team coached by Scott Frost will probably get into the playoffs and we won't have endless arguments about what would have happened or not happened.
(3) Less of an incentive for elite teams to play a cupcake schedule. Now a random loss won't totally derail your season.
(4) More of an incentive for Notre Dame to join a conference, as otherwise they will at best be a #5 seed. The year that Notre Dame was in the ACC was totally awesome. Yes they can still play Navy and USC as out-of-conference games.
(5) Home playoff games, maybe. The top-seeded teams in the first round will get to either play home playoff games or designate a neutral site. Maybe they will all pick the nearest NFL stadium to max out revenue, but home playoff games would be lit.
(6) The regular season still matters because there are way more than 12 teams in college football - it especially matters for the non-conference champs. It makes conference championships and thus conference games more meaningful, in fact, as before a bad team winning its conference in a cinderalla game was sent to a crappy bowl game, now they will get sent to the playoffs.
