Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser take shots at ESPN over CFP format, SEC bias

As expected, despite expanding from four teams to 12 this season, the College Football Playoff has certainly not pleased everyone.

From fans to media, the format and the bracket have generated more conversation than the actual games — including on the first episode of Pardon the Interruption coming off the quarterfinals as both Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser took shots at their employer over its participation in the expanded postseason tournament.

Neither Wilbon nor Kornheiser took issue with the final four of Texas, Penn State, Notre Dame and Ohio State. They believed the new format of the CFP largely dictated the outcomes of the games. Oregon and Georgia waiting on byes affected them, while the lack of a home-field advantage may have hurt Texas or Boise State.

“If you have eight (teams), you don’t have byes. You don’t need byes. The teams that had byes got beat, and they were rusty,” Wilbon argued. “You seed them one through eight … and you put those eight teams out there, and you say, ‘Let’s go.'”

But worse than that, according to Wilbon, was the protracted schedule of the CFP resulting from ESPN’s desire to milk its cash cow and play the most possible games — even if they are blowouts.

Wilbon would shrink the CFP back to eight teams and eliminate automatic bids if it were up to him.

He said that’s not going to happen, largely because of his bosses at ESPN.

“They’re not going to go from 12 to 8 (teams) because this is a greed play,” Wilbon added. “It’s a money play for everybody involved, including this network.”

For good measure, Kornheiser got a jab in against the network as well. Rather than pointing a finger at the suits in Bristol, Kornheiser came for the other talking heads at ESPN who are biased toward the SEC.

While Kornheiser didn’t name him, he likely was thinking of Kirk Herbstreit. The College GameDay panelist and ESPN’s lead college football announcer went to war with college football fans and his coworkers throughout December over the inclusion of SMU over Alabama.

Then, Alabama lost to Michigan in the Cotton Bowl. In the CFP, Georgia fell to Notre Dame while Ohio State pummeled Tennessee.

Kornheiser pleaded with everyone at the network to cut the crap about the SEC.

“One of the things that we saw is it belies the fact that the SEC is by far the best conference. That’s not true,” he said. “I don’t want to hear any more about how they got hosed by the committee.”

You can always count on the PTI cohosts to get their coworkers in line and speak from on high.

[Pardon the Interruption on ESPN2]