Last Saturday, the college football world got it’s first look at the expanded 12-team playoff.

The College Football Playoff ads were plastered all over television, YouTube channels and social media since the start of the football season. It was marketed as a chance to see more teams with the national title on the line.

So, jump forward a few months later and how did it go?

Well, that depends.

For casual fans and members of the ESPN staff — oh, lord, the television media complaining — you would have thought this was the worst thing to happen to American sports since Major League Baseball instituted the pitch clock. But for fans and members of the SMU, Indiana and Clemson football programs, it worked exactly as planned.

Under the four-team playoff, which was used for the last decade, teams like SMU and Indiana wouldn’t have had a chance at making it to the playoffs. Teams like Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama and Georgia were almost guaranteed spots, and they needed to seriously screw up in the regular season to get pulled completely from the discussion.

Yes, the first round didn’t have a competitive game, but the home field advantage that was added for the first round did have an effect, with the home team winning all four games.

However, the results had the collective sports world rethinking the structure of the playoffs.

Should strength of schedule be taken more seriously? What about “good wins” against “bad losses?” Should the top-four conference winners really get a first-round bye or should the four “best” teams get the top spots?

The quotation marks around some of those words and phrases probably gave away my smart-aleck tone regarding the subject. But there isn’t any need to make major changes to the CFP.

First, strength of schedule is taken into consideration, whether the television executives and talking heads believe it or not. Only one Group of 5 school made it: Boise State. And the Broncos were required to get in under the new system as the top Group of 5 team.

Second, there’s no definitive way of finding the “best” college football team.

Is it the team with the most talent, wins over ranked teams or the eye test? All of these are subjective, and as a result, there will be teams almost every year that will get exposed, much like Tennessee in Columbus on Saturday night.

There were also a lot of underachievers this season.

The Big 12 and ACC really didn’t have teams to throw their hats in the ring during national championship discussions. They had several good teams, but they weren’t the conferences’ best programs. If Miami or Clemson in the ACC or Oklahoma State in the Big 12 had better years, they would have gotten comparable love from the national media.

Instead, it was Arizona State in the Big 12 and Clemson snuck in as the No. 12 seed after beating SMU, so either way there was going to be a flawed team coming out of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Couple that with the depth of this year’s field, and it starts to make more sense.

Normally there’s only a coulpe contenders every year. Ohio State and Texas were in that conversation since the start of the year, but they stubbed their toes. Normally, they would’ve sat on the couch in the first round.

But there is one more reason to not blow things up: It wouldn’t matter.

The College Football Playoff will expand, whether the fans or media like it or not, meaning more teams will be playing that aren’t “good” enough.

The CFP Committee doesn’t answer to the NCAA or any other group. So if they feel the playoff should jump to 14 or 16 teams in the next few years, it will.

All fans can do is sit back, watch some football and hope the business side of it doesn’t force the top-eight SEC and Big Ten teams qualify in future seasons for money reasons.

DAN HINER is the sports editor at The Vindicator and Tribune Chronicle. You can reach him by emailing dhiner@tribtoday.com