Six! Eight! Ten! Sixty-four! A pre-Playoff playoff!

There’s nothing more college football than arguing about the postseason. That doesn’t just mean squabbling over the real national champion or getting angry about two teams from the same league playing in the title game, as happens Monday, when Alabama and Georgia meet in Atlanta.

It can also mean fighting about the structure of the postseason itself. The BCS was widely reviled by coaches, administrators, and fans alike. People didn’t like a computer system spitting out two teams to play in a national championship game.

The introduction of the College Football Playoff in the 2014 season was mostly met with happiness, but in college football, you’re never supposed to be too happy. Many of the people who care about this sport have wanted it to expand ever since (and even before it started; ACC commissioner John Swofford predicted before the first Playoff’s kickoff that the field would grow).

Here’s a brief rundown of expand-the-Playoff calls and arguments, since the event started.

The most commonly discussed expansion number is eight teams.

The best argument you’ll read anywhere for that number, in my opinion, is by SB Nation’s Bill Connelly, in his campaign platform to be college football commissioner. Bill’s vision:

The field would be the five power conference champions, the best Group of 5 team, and two at-large bids, all ranked by committee. (I will also force-feed the committee quality advanced stats.)

If the promotion-and-relegation structure I am also recommending were to take shape, that would eliminate the need for a mid-major auto-bid; that would mean five champions and three at-large teams.

Regardless, access to a national title should be requisite to FBS membership. (The other levels already have relatively fair tournaments.)

Quarterfinals around December 17, semifinals on New Year’s Eve/Day, and finals around January 15. If you want to get bowls involved, fine, but giving early home-field advantage to the top four seeds would make regular-season games as meaningful as possible.

Here’s an example, using the 2016 season.

-8 Western Michigan (G5 rep) at 1 Alabama (SEC champ)

-5 Penn State (Big Ten champ) at 4 Washington (Pac-12 champ)

-6 Michigan (at-large) at 3 Ohio State (at-large)*

-7 Oklahoma (Big 12 champ) at 2 Clemson (ACC champ)

* When possible, teams would be adjusted by one (and no more than one) seed to avoid regular season rematches. This produces a Michigan-Ohio State rematch, stemming from the fact that Ohio State has also played the No. 5 and 7 teams, but if we simulate two more years, you see that is a rare rematch.

All of that’s contingent on the NCAA letting players profit off their likenesses and the establishment of a student-athlete bill of rights designed to prevent the athletes from getting run into the ground. Growing the Playoff without doing more for the players would be hard to defend, as any Playoff expansion would put the college game nearly on par in length with the NFL.

Former Wisconsin offensive tackle Joe Thomas called for an eight-team field in December 2017, after UW lost to Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship. But Thomas’ idea is reasoned and has a lot in common with the one advanced above:

How do we incentivize teams to schedule games against tough non-conference opponents in the interest of finding a true national champion? Expand the playoff to eight teams—five automatic bids for the Power 5 conferences and three at-large teams. In this system, a team that loses a tough non-conference game still has a chance to lock up a guaranteed spot in the playoffs by winning the conference. The teams that don’t win the conference titles can make a strong case for one of the three at-large spots based on stronger non-conference games.

There have been calls for six teams and 10 teams:

From a New York Times article right as the new Playoff was being announced:

Not surprisingly, most observers assume expansion is foreordained. “We all know it’s coming,” [Gary] Danielson, of CBS, said.

Danielson said he favored a system with six teams, two with a bye, but also expressed concern that too much expansion could hurt the game.

Mack Brown, the former Texas coach, said he would prefer 10 teams, two with a bye. “You’d like to see a team that gets upset early have a chance,” he said.

Even Wisconsin AD and former Playoff committee member, Barry Alvarez now says he’s open to six teams.

“I would now be open to six,” Alvarez told CBS Sports. “Two byes [for the top two teams]. … Maybe give one spot to the … [Group of Five champion].”

“There are probably six teams that can win,” Alvarez said. “Some of those schools -- that have years like that -- should have a chance. They could fit it in.”

”I’m thinking more open-minded to six, personally,” he added. “I never thought we’d want to.”

There have been calls for 64 teams.

Often from one man. Washington State coach Mike Leach has been calling for a 64-team field for 11 years, a la the NCAA basketball tournaments.

Leach notes that high school system playoffs can have dozens of teams in them.

“The thing that is indisputable is that at the end of the gauntlet, this team came out No. 1, and there’s no debate whatsoever who’s state champion,” he says.

Leach filters that argument upward, noting that Division III, Division II, and FCS (which he still calls “I-AA,” because he doesn’t want to be “politically correct”) all use larger playoff systems, too. “They play it and they figure it out,” Leach says. Even the NFL has a 12-team playoff, leaving the FBS college ranks’ as the smallest one out there.

It’s a fair point! The FBS Playoff is the smallest championship postseason at any major level of football, dwarfed by the field sizes in the FCS, Division II, Division III, and pretty much all high school systems. Even the NFL puts in 12 teams. In that context, it’s wild that major college didn’t have more than a two-team playoff until 2014.

Oh, and one coach called for a pre-Playoff playoff.

Air Force’s Troy Calhoun favors an eight-team field, with one spot set aside for the best Group of 5 champion. A common idea! Where Calhoun varies is that he thinks the Group of 5 rep should be settled upon in a separate Group of 5 playoff.

Depending on how many teams are involved, a pre-Playoff playoff might be an impossible stretch of the calendar. As long as the sport doesn’t want to push the season deep into January and run up against February’s National Signing Day, a separate playoff would require the season to start in July. Or it would have to cut into the regular season or conference championships, which doesn’t feel likely.

Expect non-power inclusion to become even more of an issue, now that UCF’s set a precedent of declaring itself the national champ despite not making the field.

Some even advocate for a G5-only Playoff.

When Playoff expansion happens, competitive balance might have something to do with it. But money definitely will.

ESPN pays a reported $470 million per year to broadcast three Playoff games. Adding more games — and more ratings, and more ticket sales, and more merchandise — would be fine with the conferences and schools that ultimately receive that money.

But it likely won’t happen for several more years.

The Playoff’s original contract with ESPN runs through 2025, so expect this debate to only increase until then.