Did it hurt the sport's regular season? Do rivalries still matter? Here's what Nicole Auerbach took away from the first year of the expanded CFP.

The 12-team College Football Playoff format saved Ohio State and Notre Dame. Good for them. Good for us, too, that the boredom of the four-team playoff became relegated to the past, and the expanded playoff afforded these teams a path to the grand stage.

More than 22 million people tuned in to watch Ohio State beat Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff national championship game on Monday night. While that is down year-over-year, it was still the most-watched non-NFL sporting event over the past year.