My feeling is that if there ever was 8-team playoff, much like there is at College World Series, and we made it in, I'd feel fine about us making it in. I would not feel like it's charity towards us. But, that's me.
Solution to football playoff?
- Thread starter ghostofpepsicock
- Start date
First of all conference championships are here to stay. Conferences won’t just take a reduction of money from the game, tv, ticket sales, etc……
But instead of adding the conference champion, why not just take the top 16. Treat it like the NCAA tournament with a bracket reveal.
This year a top 16 tournament would have included champions from the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, AAC , an Independent or two, PAC 12 and maybe even the Sun Belt.
If your conference champ can’t make the top 16 they don’t need to be in anyway. 8 teams would play the same number of games. 8 teams would play one more game (maybe less assuming Georgia or Alabama were part of that 8). 4 teams play 2 more games. 2 teams would have 3 additional games. If games played is a concern, trim one cream puff off the regular season for everyone.
This would reduce the number of opt outs as well. Could be incorporated into the current bowl system with bowl games hosting playoff rounds. It’s a win win for everyone.
But instead of adding the conference champion, why not just take the top 16. Treat it like the NCAA tournament with a bracket reveal.
This year a top 16 tournament would have included champions from the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, AAC , an Independent or two, PAC 12 and maybe even the Sun Belt.
If your conference champ can’t make the top 16 they don’t need to be in anyway. 8 teams would play the same number of games. 8 teams would play one more game (maybe less assuming Georgia or Alabama were part of that 8). 4 teams play 2 more games. 2 teams would have 3 additional games. If games played is a concern, trim one cream puff off the regular season for everyone.
This would reduce the number of opt outs as well. Could be incorporated into the current bowl system with bowl games hosting playoff rounds. It’s a win win for everyone.
I guess it's always going to be that way as long as people (instead of just tuning in when they're interested) feel obligated they must sit through a possible low seed/high seed game they dont find very interesting before seeing the one they want.
I can tell uknow how to reign in big gvt😂
There's no fix for something that doesn't need fixing. This system is delivering the output it was designed to bring forth. It's perfect right now.
Amen!
As it stands, college football is unique among sports in that its goal is to crown the best team as the champion. The CFP has a 100% success rate in this regard. I don’t understand the desire to undo that, aside from folks getting tired of Bama being too good.
Furtber, then
Further, when 4-team CFP was implemented, it was a hailed as the great cure for the game. How long has that lasted? If it expands to 8, how long will people be happy? If it eventually expands to 12, how long will people be happy?
The NCAAT admits 64 teams and you still have teams every single year who are furious over being excluded. You can never fix that.
There are actually folks in this forum who believe 3 and 4 loss teams DESERVE a path to the title. I simply can’t wrap my mind around that.
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It's not complicated. Have you ever taken a Statistics and/or Econometrics class? Understand network effects?
People enjoy watching the NCAA basketball tournament even though only 3-4 teams usually have a legitimate shot.
Same could work for football. I know our fanbase would be excited if winning the division got us in the CFP.
Same could work for football. I know our fanbase would be excited if winning the division got us in the CFP.
Not complicated? Econometrics was brutal. By far my toughest class in grad.
But agree w/ point. Network effect is a big factor w/ 4 teams. It's funny to hear Saban talk about expansion. He and Dabo both know how good they've had it....and that's on top of being very good in the first place.
That's about the stupidest thing I've heard of on this forum.
You are correct that it is not complicated. Allowing increasingly inferior teams into the playoffs will not improve the quality of the playoffs. Bingo.
Football and basketball are entirely different products.
The NCAAT is not the least bit concerned with whether the best team wins the title. Quite frequently, the team that is believed to be the best does not end up winning it. And that's fine. I enjoy the NCAAT for what it is, but I don't expect college football to emulate that.
College football has had a different goal.
Guess I'm an old geezer, but I just can't wrap my mind around wanting to completely strip the meritocracy away from the sport. I'll never comprehend the "everyone gets a trophy" generation. When I was coming up, there were winners and losers and nobody felt bad about it. When we lost, my dad didn't tell me that it wasn't fair and that we really deserved to win. He just said "well, you did your best and I'm proud of you. Learn from it and get better next time." Nobody wants to get better anymore. They just want the bar lowered.
If you're out in left field, I want to be out there with you. This quest for inclusion is the enemy or excellence.
I have not kept up with this subject matter. Thus, I have to ask: Are there whispers that expansion is being looked at? If so, what do the smoke signals say?
Yes they have actually been meeting about it but the vote has to be unanimous until the contract runs out in 2025. Right now last I saw a 8 or 12 team is the discussion. Limiting the number each conference will have to a certain number will be the hold up.
And all of that works against judging teams based on season-long performance factoring in strength of schedule and other pertinent factors. Any "formula" that assigns automatic equality to conferences is incorrect right out of the gate. Any "formula" that pre-imposes limitations on conference participants is likewise incorrect.
4-team playoff creates a feedback loop in recruiting just for starters. WSJ covets capitalism, but also is fully aware there are imbalances created at the top via NE phenomenon.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-four-teams-dominate-the-college-football-playoff-11609296213
If you like what's happening with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Google, then you'll also enjoy Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma and the one-offs.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-four-teams-dominate-the-college-football-playoff-11609296213
If you like what's happening with Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Google, then you'll also enjoy Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma and the one-offs.
I'd prefer they just drop the term "playoff". This is no playoff. They guess who the top four teams are. They are debatable. The only thing these teams have earned is favorable opinions. They didnt earn their way to a shot, they are given a shot. As I said in another thread, it's an invitational. You can't call an invitational a playoff. Ive been posting all this time while in playoff mode. That's where I've been wrong. Im pretty familiar with championships, tournaments and playoffs. I have never in my life ever heard the term 'invitational playoff'.
I totally agree with you. To me, what you're saying is common sense, right and fair. BUT, I suspect the power brokers won't agree with us on that.☹️☹️
They already struggle picking 4, why more, luckily they tend to get 2 or 3 right.
& if you want upper class men in your bowl game, hire a coach who fosters a team first culture or….let the bowl itself package some incentives paid post game to draft eligible players & I guarantee you opt outs will decrease significantly.
There's still one game to play and I'm already missing college football.
All they have to do is to get the top two right. I'd say they have unerringly done better than that. Nothing's wrong.
I'm for whatever system spreads around the talent in college. Maybe the NIL system will do some of that. The current CFP has created a system where the by far the majority of the best talent in the country goes to 4 or 5 schools. Why? because those are the only schools that have a chance to get in the playoffs.
The reason we don't have a wider playoff in FBS is has nothing to do with finding the best team. It's about the $ from the bowl sponsors.
If that's the kind of championship you want, that's cool. But let's stop pretending it's actually about finding the best team. The reason you have playoffs is to find the best team in that sport that year. FBS is the only "conference" in at any level of the sport where a "playoff" system is limited to 4 teams.
The reason we don't have a wider playoff in FBS is has nothing to do with finding the best team. It's about the $ from the bowl sponsors.
If that's the kind of championship you want, that's cool. But let's stop pretending it's actually about finding the best team. The reason you have playoffs is to find the best team in that sport that year. FBS is the only "conference" in at any level of the sport where a "playoff" system is limited to 4 teams.
It's not a win for me.
And they can still call it the Cotton Bowl, or Peach Bowl, or Sugar Bowl, but when it's a CFP game, it's really not a bowl. They are obviously free to call it what they want, but it's not the same.
Having people vote on a champion instead of at least letting 2 teams battle for it on the field is literally one of the stupidest things in the history sports.
The BCS would take care of that. It was one of the few changes needed in college football. The stupidest thing in the history of sports was allowing short-sighted, mental derelicts to rurn the greatest sport of all time.
All that y'all are suggesting here is a worse solution to the fool's errand that gave us the CFP. "Oh, we have the greatest thing ever conceptualized by the human brain. Let's hand it over to a cadre of careless, busybody idiots. What's the worst that could happen?"
I agree that the BCS attempted to address that. But it didn't always succeed. (See: So Cal vs Oklahoma instead of a better Auburn team, and Miami vs a wildly overmatched Nebraska team over Oregon, to name a couple.)
But you were advocating for a return to the days of voting for national championship -- which is the stupidest idea in history of sports.
Obviously I disagree but the topic has become tiresome. Never has something so basically simple been more ruminated upon or engendered more overreaction.
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You just proved that it is in fact the stupidest post ever, as you can not defend it nor contribute anything meaningful to the discussion other than juvenile name calling.
100%. The 4-team playoff is just another form of social dissolution. The top recruits are now hyperfocused on the same 4-to-6 teams that the talking heads never stop talking about all year.
So not only do these elite schools have built-in advantages like location, history and donors - they now 24-hour news yapping about the playoffs and those schools incessantly. The big fish to small pond recruit is now almost obselete. Follow the leaders is seen as their best path to the NFL whether they ride the bench or not.
Expansion helps level the playing field and provides intrigue.
Nailed it. Phrases like "participation trophy" were promulgated by those in the catbird seat trying to protect their inherent advantages.
Good coaching matters but it's only a fraction of the equation.
"That's about the stupidest thing I've heard of on this forum."
Up until the above post, that was your insightful contribution to this thread. I'm not at all surprised that an empty headed CFP goon is a hypocrite or unaware of the meaning of irony.
Anyway, you shouldn't get mad at me. You people have gotten your way and have made college football NFL Jr. Y'all wanted impersonal 14 team...16 team...and how long until 20 team conferences? Y'all wanted to end the Backyard Brawl. Y'all wanted to destroy the Big East football AND basketball conference. Y'all wanted Oklahoma and Nebraska and Texas and Texas A&M to not play every season. You college football locusts keep getting your way, so you'll have to allow me a small space to complain about your crimes against humanity.
I wasn't advocating for that. I was just saying that his post was the smartest in the thread. Although, I would still prefer the old pre-BCS voting style to what we have now. That is true.
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