College football is broken and shows no signs of being fixed

College football is broken.

Unless you’re a fan of LSU, the team that just won the national championship.

Or Clemson, the team that just lost the national championship, but won it the season before.

Or Ohio State, the team that made the College Football Playoff for the third time in six years and won the CFP title in 2015.

[ Michigan football reportedly hiring Bob Shoop, former SEC defensive coordinator ]

Or Alabama, the team that missed the playoff this season … for the first time ever. Also, the team that won five titles in 10 years. That wins the recruiting battle almost every year. The team that replaces one future NFL prospect with another.

Or even Oklahoma, bless its heart. All that program has done is make the CFP four times. Sure, the Sooners have lost big in three of the four games, but they keep getting there, giving their fans hope.

Something few other fan bases have.

Except for Georgia, another program that has been to the playoff and hoards high-level recruits. And possibly Oregon and Notre Dame, each of which has made a run to the playoff and attracted a handful of promising recruits.

But for argument’s sake, let’s stop at Georgia and call the top programs in college football the Big Six. Those are the schools that have a legitimate shot at winning a title.

That’s it.

Six.

That could change. But not likely. Not anytime soon. Not as long as those six schools keep amassing the best recruiting classes every year.

And while recruiting rankings are imperfect — and plenty of lower-ranked recruits play above their rankings every season — they matter, and generally align with who ends up in the College Football Playoff.

What’s worse is that the best players are increasingly picking a smaller number of schools, meaning the rich continue to get richer. Add the recent boom of transfers, and the fact that the best among them are also choosing the most talent-rich schools, and you get the sort of playoff we just witnessed:

LSU. Clemson. Ohio State. Oklahoma.

It’s not a coincidence that three of those four teams were led by transfer quarterbacks, or that all three were already at a school in the Big Six.

Joe Burrow (LSU), Justin Fields (Ohio State) and Jalen Hurts (Oklahoma) all wanted a chance to play. But what happens when lower-tier programs produce stellar quarterbacks who decide they simply want a chance to star?

Well, it’s already happening. Wake Forest just lost quarterback Jamie Newman to Georgia — he is a graduate transfer. So is D’Eriq King, who played at Houston, and is now looking for a bigger stage. Maybe someone from the Big Six won’t land him.

Even if King chooses a school like Miami or Arkansas, you can bet that more quarterbacks will follow Newman’s path and head to a program that has a chance to play in January. Again, the best rosters in the game keep getting better.

If you are not a fan of a particular team, or your team plays in, say, Mount Pleasant, as Central Michigan does, and you’ve never dreamed of national titles, then watching the College Football Playoff — or at least the title game — can be mesmerizing.

For good reason. The talent on display is breathtaking. In a vacuum, if you simply want to see the highest-level football possible, then you’re set.

But if you’re a fan of any number of teams in the Power 5 conferences like, say, Wisconsin or Tennessee, then you have to make peace with the fact that you will never compete for a national title.

Maybe that’s fine with you. Maybe you’ve accepted that college football is the least democratic sport we have. That bowl games are their own reward. That in the six years since the CFP began, 17 of the semifinal spots have gone to four teams:

Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Ohio State.

Overall, 11 teams have made the playoff, including Michigan State. Compare that to college basketball’s Final Four, where 19 teams have made the semifinals the past six seasons.

That’s a considerable difference. And although five teams have made the Final Four twice in the past six seasons — North Carolina, Villanova, Kentucky, Michigan State and Wisconsin — so many more programs have a chance.

Remember Loyola-Chicago? Sure you do. Michigan knocked off the Ramblers in the 2018 Final Four. How about South Carolina? Or Wichita State? Or Auburn? Or Texas Tech, the team that made the final last spring?

None of these schools are anyone’s idea of a powerhouse. And not one of them competes for the best talent in the country the way that Duke or Kansas or Kentucky does.

True, basketball’s best players leave for the NBA after a year or two, and teams that stay together for three or four years can overcome a talent gap with experience. Witness MSU beating Duke in a regional final last season.

Or Auburn beating Kentucky.

It's the kind of win that rarely happens in college football, a sport that’s become almost a foregone conclusion, where it can be fun to watch at the top, but not so much fun for everyone else.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.