with unregulated NIL and free portal, the limit of scholarship doesn't matter anymore

I disagree. College sports are at their best with layers of success that give both historically good and bad teams a preseason target and postseason accomplishment. I hope that a 12-team playoff will restore some of layers destroyed by the 4 team playoff and the unrestricted addition of bowl games. Before the 4-team playoff, bowl games felt like accomplishments. For lower tier teams, making any bowl game could represent a successful season. For higher tier teams, your goal shifted from making any bowl to getting an invite to one of the New Year's Six bowls.

The explosion of mid- and bottom-tier bowls made bowl invites too easy to scoop up. And the 4-team playoff destroyed the cache associated with the most prestigious bowl games. The combined effect leaves too many teams with too little to play for. The 2022 season has more than 40 bowl games. That means at least 80 of 141 FBS schools can go to a bowl. On the other end of the spectrum, only four teams can make the playoff. Before, 12 teams could play in New Year's Six bowls. Because nothing distinguishes the New Year's Six bowls from the other bowls, the playoffs became the top tier of success. But college football's systemic imbalances leave very few teams with realistic access to that tier. In my opinion, the oversaturation of bowl games and inaccessibility of the playoff created college football's current malaise. Almost no one misses a bowl. Almost no one can tell the difference between the bowls. Almost no one can go to the playoff. If you are a Michigan (or Wisconsin, or Auburn) fan, what is the difference between going 7-5 with an invite to the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, FL and 10-2 with an invite to the Orange Bowl in Miami, FL?

My hope and expectation is that expanding the playoff to 12 teams will fix the top end success problems. Because more teams will have realistic access to the playoffs, more teams will have something to look forward to and play for over the course of a season. In addition, the benefits of seeding and byes will still give the juggernauts a reason to care about the regular season. In other words, a 12-team playoff re-establishes multiple accessible tiers of success:

1. Make the playoff;
2. Get a higher seed;
3. Win a first round game and make the round of eight;
4. Get a bye;
5. Win a second round game and make the round of four;
6. Make the semifinals;
7. Make the finals; and
8. Win it all.

Of course, the 12-team playoff does not fix the other postseason problems. That would require some system to reestablish a bowl game hierarchy or a substantial reduction in the number of bowl games.

The part that gets me is that college teams are gonna be playing up to 16 games.  This isn't like baseball where you can play into your 40s if you're smart about it.  The thought of a young running back taking 16 games' worth of beatings with only NIL and a scholarship as compensation. . . am I the only one bothered by this?

While I agree with most of the sentiment, I disagree with the solution.

I loved the old bowl seasons, but they were poor reflections on who the best team in the country was.

The genie is out of the bottle.  Bowl games outside the playoff are valuable for practice time and development, but relatively meaningless.  

To me, six is the right number for the playoff.  However, the 12-team system with home games is pretty sweet.  But adding four games to the calendar?  Feels like a bit much.  Not sure how that gets reconciled with conference championships and player safety.  Or even when those games start...

You guys are forgetting what it's really all about. 

That's a pretty interesting idea.  I think you'd have to discount losses in championship games, but then I think it works.

This would be a boon for bottom tier programs as top teams will be lining up to schedule them.  Would absolutely kill any interest in scheduling tough games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lqjteqkGas

I'm sorry but this doesn't convince me. How many "fast break" events do you see in a soccer game now? Feels like most games it's under 5. I'm willing to get rid of offsides and see what happens. If they play back more that means there's more space in the middle to get the ball into a more interesting area. The game is already extremely slow around the box so I don't think it could get that much worse.

So why not add a “blue line” equivalent to soccer? 

I think the other issue with offsides now is that with technology it’s now enforced much more strictly than I think is the “spirit” of the rule. Sort of like how video review leads to some basketball OOB calls that hinge on whose fingernail rolled off the ball a nanosecond later, instead of judging based on who really “touched” it last. 

Your friend is correct in some technical sense, but I don't think he understands why.  The offsides rule was soccer's answer to the "kick-through" position.  It wasn't defenses that first parked near their goal; the lack of offsides allowed teams to leave an attacker near their opponent's goal to receive long passes.  Defenses would pack the goal area in response.  The basketball comp wouldn't be a fast break, but rather, an alley-oop.  The rule first came about in the 1860s (!!) so there's no footage, of course, but I envision the game in the 1850s was in fact quite fast, but one-dimensional -- there was little to no midfield play.  The ball would just get booted back and forth between two mosh pits.  In some sense, the entire game was fast breaks.

Thing is, while the offsides rule fixed that problem, I feel it created a bigger one.  There's nothing "fast" about defenses pushing back attacks with the offsides trap.  Hockey built their offside rule around a static line.

I am not a knowledgable soccer fan, but I would like to see the offside rule changed, but not eliminated. Right now if a fingertip is past the defender, it is offside. I would change it to be the entire body needs to be beyond (or at least the feet need to be beyond). It would eliminate the cherry-picking, but I would much rather see a goal allowed because his toe was behind the defender rather than the nonsense we see in this world cup with goals disallowed because an elbow was offside.  

Coached soccer for 10 years, including at the college level, and played through college.

This take is spiritually incorrect.

If you choose to keep a defender--even one--in a "safety" position, you are sacrificing a potential attacker AND opening up more space for the opponent to advance the ball into a goal-scoring position.

People that don't know soccer don't understand just how big the field of play is.  It's 80x120 yards.  Imagine a football game on a field that's 50% larger and every player can pass the football forward at any time.  Now take away a defender.  The football analogy is like having a very deep safety EVERY play.  Think about how that changes the options for the offense and still fails to eliminate the deep pass (because the field is too big for one player to cover its entire width).  Then multiply those challenges with added space.

Choosing to keep defenders deep would make advancing the ball into a scoring position much easier.  Of course, with no offsides, teams would have to sit back a bit more or risk being exposed to easy breakaways, but eliminating the rule would open up the game and more runs behind a defense.

There would be some adverse effects.  For one, soccer is likely the most physically demanding sport from a stamina standpoint, and eliminating offsides would require even more running from both teams and all players.  Two, it would completely change the tactics, not just allow more free runs.  While that could be entertaining, it would have a much bigger impact on how the sport looks and feels than I think most people realize.

But it would absolutely open up the game more, increase goal-scoring, and create more attacker vs. goalkeeper situations, even if they didn't look like long breakaways.

I'm actually very curious what the game would look like without offsides.  I think a fun test would be dropping the rule in overtime.

Yea, that's never burned UM before! 

For that matter, a win/loss in regulation should be worth more than a win or loss in overtime.