It’s the timeless sports debate when it comes to time off in the postseason: Rest or rust? In the College Football Playoff, rust seems to be winning by a landslide.

As college sports leaders ponder major changes to the Playoff format, another potential issue to be addressed has emerged.

The teams that received first-round byes went 1-3 in last week’s CFP quarterfinals, dropping top-four seeds to 1-7 through two seasons of the 12-team Playoff. The byes were intended to be a reward for the best teams in the tournament.

“Not with a four-week layoff they aren’t,” a Power 4 athletic director who has served on the CFP selection committee said. “If it was like the NFL where you had a bye week while others played and were off just a week, then yes. Teams playing every two weeks have the advantage.”

A simple tweak to the format was made last year after the first 12-team CFP to change the seeding, opening up the top-four seeds to at-large selections, not just conference champions. Yet, still, two healthy favorites (Ohio State and Georgia) lost in the quarters. What’s the point of striving to be one of the top seeds if the supposed benefit is likely to backfire?

“This format doesn’t reward the top four seeds,” another Power 4 athletic director told The Athletic.

The bye quandary won’t be so easily resolved with larger questions still unanswered.

The 10 conference commissioners who make up the CFP management committee, along with Notre Dame’s athletic director, are facing a Jan. 23 deadline to inform television partner ESPN of the Playoff format for next season.

Expansion could be on the way, with 16 teams the most likely outcome — if consensus can be reached, mostly between the Big Ten and SEC.

The Big Ten is interested in a 24-team Playoff, which would take another year or two to install, and is apprehensive about approving expansion to 16 if that means locking in a format for the next six years.

Sans compromise, the CFP would remain at 12 teams for at least next season. If that were to be the case, there might not be much, if anything, that can be done to shorten the long layoffs that some theorize have contributed to the demise of all but Indiana among top four seeds the past two years.

Coach Curt Cignetti’s top-ranked Hoosiers shrugged off the rust and buried ninth-seeded Alabama 38-3 at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.

“It’s definitely a huge struggle,” Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza said after the Rose Bowl. “And I think Coach Cignetti did a fantastic job of a trickle-down effect of really making sure there was no complacency. Because you know you have, I think it was 26 days off, that’s very, very tough.

“And especially in the first drive as an offense, myself included, I think we got off to a slow start. And then other than that once we got our feet wet, we got the ball rolling and we got back to playing Indiana brand of football.”