No, you don't. You want to put the genie back in the bottle and pretend it was the 1980s still. Others want a national champion that was somehow agreed to be the national champion in College Football, I mean other than OSU and Alabama fans who think their teams should be crowned champion like a football emperor... you know... because. No other sport in college is run like football. It is an absolute farce of a "amateur" sport. All other sports have an actual champion where there really isn't a debate. But in college football, which is more like a Fortune 500 company than an amateur sport, is run like a business trying to please shareholders instead of having a collegiate sports product.
A playoff is, in part, trying to kind of fix that, in a way... that still allows the cartels full control on the system and continue to run as a finely oiled Fortune 500 company.
I mean it'd be crazy, but maybe put the playoff games in November/December, instead of dragging it into the spring. Or better yet, end this stupid conference cartel set up. Georgia v OSU, Michigan v TCU? Those were great games. Imagine if we had more than one or two of them during the season per team. Instead of watching OSU play Indiana because Indiana is a cartel school, OSU plays the SEC two or three times. Maybe Big 12 (or whatever is left) one time, the PAC-1X a couple times. Imagine, every game against a top 30 or 40 team. It'd be nuts, but you want ratings... in a 21st century entertainment world?! I'd watch that!
But until then, an 8 team playoff should start close to the end of the season instead of letting a glacial epoch pass through between the last game and the playoff. But again, Cartels have their reasons, as do the "non-profit" bowl games.