re: Players sitting out for bowl games will force playoff expansion to 8, 12 or even 16 teams.

There is no talk of playoff expansion outside of a couple of shitty articles that have been written. I think the current contract runs through 2025 so that's the earliest you might would see a change but I doubt you see more than 4 ever. Hell you barely had 3 maybe 4 teams that deserverd to be in this year. Attendance all over college football is already down so it's hard to believe fans would travel to another tier of games.