Good read, Andy. I was just discussing this with someone of Facebook last night (he's a Baylor alum, so he's irked at the current situation). I told him much of what you ended up with here - the playoff is the right idea with wrong execution.
I am for the 8-team playoff. I think that's the way to go.
I would be OK with 5 champions + 3 at-large, but part of me still dislikes how subjective that gets when it comes to the at-large. Why not just re-tool the BCS formula and compute who should be in? My brain craves a quantitative comparison. I just find it hard to believe that in the era of such advanced statistical analysis, sabremetrics in baseball and the like, we can't figure out a way to quantify what defines "best." I guess that's what makes sports so interesting though, the perceived "best" team doesn't always win, even when all the numbers say they should...
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My thought is that in EVERY other sport if you win your conference, you are in the "playoff" being the NCAA Tournament. Should be the same for football too which is why I propose a 12 team playoff. All 10 conference champions + 2 at large. Guarantees that the top 2 teams will get a shot and everyone from the big guys to the little guys have their shot. Every game counts. All 12 get seeded, top 4 get a bye, bottom 8 have a 1 game play-in round, 5v12, 6v11, and so on. Then an 8 team tournament for the title.
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i'm not opposed to this, but i think we need baby steps. December scheduling has historically been a tough thing for universities. it's mostly excuses, not real reasons, so we can get past it, but it won't happen overnight. i think 8 is then ext step, and 12 would be the ideal, but would require more games/weeks in December.
honestly, by the time we get 8 sorted out, there might not be 10 conferences in the top division of football, so this could be moot...maybe we get down to 7 leagues and 1 at-large. time will tell...
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I'd want 16 if we go this route. I think we'd need more than two wildcard spots in this scenario because I think it's fair to say the loser of a P5 championship game being excluded for the Sun Belt champion is questionable. Plus I don't know if I support the idea of a bye week for the top four seeds. Then you get into the argument of the 5 seed getting really screwed over when the top seeding will be so subjective.
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Is the 5 seed really getting screwed over? So they have to play another game and that game is against the MWC/MAC/Sun Belt champion. Big deal. You should win. If you don't, that's the beauty of the game and better luck next time.
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I see your point, but even when playing a team with less talent, it's still four quarters of football and the risk of injury is high. Chances are there won't be a world of difference between the 4 and 5 seed. Making the 5 seed play an extra game makes their road to the championship significantly more perilous even if it's a gimmie on paper.
Also if you are playing the first two rounds at the higher seeded team's location, a bye week takes hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the top four teams' local economies and dumping it into the economies of teams 5 thru 8.
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College presidents and ADs will object to a 12-team playoff because that's too many games to fit within the academic calendar. I still want an actual metric for anyone who's not a conference champion, at least. Rank all the non-champions by some metric - BCS, whatever - but whenever there's a human element, there will be complaint (I know, of course, humans design the formula, but still).
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The problem is that there is no perfect metric by which to measure teams. Humans define the metrics so you still have a human element in determining it, even if it follows a formula.
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Humans define the metrics so you still have a human element in determining it, even if it follows a formula.
But if there's a preplanned formula, at least everyone knows the formula, and the formula is the same for every team. Right now everything is arbitrary.
Can we please just let Phil Steele figure this out?
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I'm in the same category as you considering advanced statistical analysis as the most objective determinant of worthiness, but statistical analysis and their results are often times counter-intuitive and don't play to the wave of emotional biases displayed by fervent college football fans, unfortunately. One of the biggest complaints fans and ESPN-style analysts had with the BCS were it's seemingly off the wall conclusions drawn from hard data, which why I think by in large, the college football world lauded reinforcement of the human element by the committee; it largely emulates their thought process when judging the merits of a team.
TL;DR CFB fans think math is hard.
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From a statistical analysis perspective, you don't get anything close to a full "experimental design", so advanced stats are prone to error. I'd like to see conference challenges like the B1G-ACC basketball challenge, for OOC. The group of 5 can be included. Rotate the Conf pairings each year. This way you can get a better read on doing strength and the advanced stats will be more accurate.
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I never understood what was wrong with the BCS setup to determine the teams. If we must have a committee, drop the coaches' poll component and use this committee.
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I'm not sure I'd buy in to that. imagine a team that drops a conference game early in the year, thus disqualifying it from even making the conference championship game, but then runs the table and is clearly one of the top 8 teams in the country by the end of the regular season. I wouldn't support passing them over for a slightly better than average G5 team.
Maybe some sort of metric to guide the selection of the last 3. Like, strength of schedule mixed with strength of wins. then prohibit the panel from selecting teams that are outside of a certain range of that criterion to fill spots 6-8. This would allow a good G5 team to play its way into consideration and prevent a worse P5 team with good PR (coughNDcough) from getting selected.
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i think the biggest benefit of this: more games among top teams. when you look at the current top 10 and see their records against top 25 schools, it's a joke. 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 1-1, etc. over 12 games, the best teams in the country are playing each other 17% of the time at best. we need to get to a format where we can see the best teams play each other more, and the 8 team format is the right way to get there.
my question posed to Andy on twitter is a logistical one. home sites or neutral sites? home sites seems ideal on the surface, especially for students, season ticket holders and most fans, but planning a game on a college campus on less than one week's notice seems like a stretch to me. i mean, schools could distribute tickets in advance as they do for many pro-sports now, but that only solves part of the planning nightmare.
if you go neutral sites, it has to be the opposite of bowl planning. you have to plan the games in population centers filled with the right fan bases for your plan. you want to minimize the need for tourists/travel by fans. i'm not sure you have 4 sites that would be safe bets 100% of the time, but i'm thinking Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and maybe Las Vegas.
i know Pittsburgh seems like the odd ball, but they have the stadium and are central to the norther ACC schools and the Eastern B1G schools which covers 2 potential division winners who could win their respective conferences.
i believe the Pac12 decided planning a championship on a week's notice was not ideal as much as they liked the atmosphere of the home crowd, so there is something to be said for having neutral sites that can prepare for weeks and months in advance.
what say you?
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Some sort of regional pairing makes sense, although you'll see SEC people arguing that it's unfair to them because they are likely to be paired with another sec team. Just like FSU & DA ewe had to be in different divisions because they were going to play each other in the ACC champ game every year (so no geographic alignment of divisions).
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I think at this point it's inevitable, it's just a question of when. With that accepted as a given, a couple of things:
1) Having the quarters at the higher ranked team's stadium is a great idea, but could be problematic for teams like Miami and Pitt that play in a municipal stadium. An extra game on short notice night not be feasible. So there'd have to be something in there for if the higher ranked team is incapable of hosting the game.
2) If we expand to an 8 team bracket, there will probably need to be done codified metric that grants a non-P5 team a berth. Right now there a nudge nudge, wink wink agreement that the mid-majors have access to the playoffs because the selection committee is theoretically free to invite one of those teams. If you explicitly guarantee the P5 conference champions a playoff berth, you have to give access to the midmajors as well so long as they meet some threshold.
Other than that, I say bring on the 8. I said when this arrangement was first made, this is a four team tournament, not a true playoff. Playoffs grant access to divisional or conference champions to determine a league champion on the field. Without at least the P5 conference champs getting an automatic bid, we remain short of a true college football playoff.
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We haven't even finished determining the four participants of the first playoff, and already the demand is to expand it. Just as was predicted when discussion of this occurred during the BCS era. Can we just save time and go ahead and expand it to 16 teams, so as to save pointless arguments over why the 9th & 10th CFP ranked teams got excluded?
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None of those bowls have implications for playoff or championships, so no, that's not the same. The teams involved in basketball play-in could conceivably win the championship. No one winning the TaxSlayer Bowl has that possibility. Bowls have always been about making money, so that's certainly true, but anything outside of the "big bowls" is a consolation prize for a decent season (in most cases, an average season).
I also disagree that a 16-team playoff is a foregone conclusion. As I said above, college presidents (especially) will push hard against this, as will the NCAA, as long as they continue their "students first, athletes second" stance. Now, if there is a dramatic shift in governance and player status (which is possible), then we might get there, but at that point we're just talking NFL D-league.
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"they" being the power 5 conferences. they wanted to get more bubble teams in. if it were up to them, the play in round would be all 16 v 17 games, but the compromise with the smaller leagues was to have 2 "bubble" games, too.
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Then when an SEC team goes 11-1 and is excluded a couple of years in a row, it will go to 16 tea,ms. It's going there eventually. It's just a matter of time. Two years after it goes to 8 teams, there will be complaints about why it needs to be 12-16 teams. We allknow that will happen.
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I wouldn't say "pointless" but I strongly agree that 16 teams and four rounds is too many. I can barely stomach eight teams and three rounds. But I do think eight is better than four. It's too easy for the #5 team to legitimately think they have a shot at the championship. A #9 team is far less likely to believe they're the best team in the country.
But it's not my battle to fight. Personally, and I know I'm in a very small minority here, I don't care who is the national champion. The whole point of college football is expressed in Rivalry Week and Champions Week, in that order. That's the difference between college and the NFL.
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College presidents and athletic directors will talk about the sanctity of exams, so the second week of December can't be messed with.
This reminds me of a few years ago when all of the excuses were coming out as to why there couldn't be playoffs.
I present FCS as an example. I'm willing to bet that many FCS schools have more of an academic focus than FBS schools, and not just for their athletes. Yet they have a 24 team playoff that goes on all through December.
Basically, any "academic" excuse sounds like a bunch of bull to me, when there are so many other examples presenting the contrary in the NCAA.
I agree, but I'm trying to deal with what the actual roadblocks are. And these ADs and presidents will triumph their academics, even if it's largely BS. So a full-December tournament is a non-starter.
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Is there anything keeping the schedule from getting pushed into January? Seems like there would be more wiggle room in there with most schools not having classes for at least the first two weeks.
Or do the NFL playoffs get in the way?
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Andy always has some great logic. Bitter for NCAA president!
2 thoughts:
-Scheduling the quarterfinal games this year the week after conference championship games would put it in the middle of exams, at least at Virginia Tech.
-I'd like to see one of the 3 at-large spots go to a ranked G5 champion. Always fun to have the underdog story.
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That's why I said the conference championship games have to be moved up a week. The quarterfinals have to be in the slot where the league title games are if they're going to even pretend to care about academics.
Just start the season earlier. It already starts in August. I don't think that's a big deal.
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Caught me reading too quickly, missed that suggestion. If the season started one week earlier Virginia Tech would either have to adjust the academic calendar or never open the season at home. That's move in weekend in Blacksburg, and I can't imagine the logistics of trying to have a football game at the same time.
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You lose even more of the student body/atmosphere by starting the season deeper into August. Nobody at the schools will want to do that, even the donors prefer the students being there for the games.
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There were two bye weeks this year anyway. Get rid of one and you're fine.
And other schools make it happen anyway. I know places like Minnesota that are on the quarter system don't start until well after Labor Day (or at least that's how they used to do it). It's not impossible to work around that.
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Or end the conference championship games. I know it would be a monetary hit but that would be made up for by the increased TV payout from expanding from 4 to 8.
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My hypothesis is that the playoff TV rights would increase as there would be 4 additional games to bid on. Thus, compensating the loss and increasing the overall monies.
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Thus the reason they will eventually go to 16 team playoffs. More money. As soon as the playoffs expand to 8 teams, there will begin the call to go to possibly 12, but eventually 16 teams.
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I think 8 could still work within constraints of timeframe they want to have (nothing in mid-December, no games beyond first week of January). I don't know if 16 does. At least until they give up this notion of "student-athletes."
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I guess I'll be the person that disagrees with this.
The purpose of the college football playoffs is to determine who the BEST team during that years entire regular season, unlike the other sports which place almost no value in the regular season. Expanding the playoffs and adding more games goes away from that goal. Teams like the 07 Giants win championships through this, and while hats off to them for the upset, the Patriots were clearly a better team for the season. By adding more teams it becomes increasingly likely that the best team does not win. Upsets happen. There is reasonable doubt between who is the best between the top 4 teams, but no one will claim that the number 8 team is better than the number 1 team. I'm sure you're thinking "then the number 1 team should just beat the number 8 team in the first round". While true, its devaluing the purpose of the most exciting and important regular season in sports, which, to me, is a lot more exciting than another crapshoot playoff.
I know all of this is tricky with the supposed conference biases and the committee doing a poor job of gaining the public's trust. But I'm hesitant to want a system that can reward a team for a little three game winning streak when their whole body of work does not look like a champions
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No, the purpose of any playoff is to determine a champion, which is a significantly different thing than a mythical "best" team.
The BCS was a turd on a stick because it was built on the asinine assertion that it could somehow determine the two "best" teams on paper and pair them for a championship game.
Bullshit.
There is no way to objectively determine a "best" team, because a team that's 12-0 could be given fits by a team with five losses, if said team presents a unique situational nightmare. If every team in the FBS played used the same offensive scheme and played the same base defense then we could have a pretty good argument who is the best team. But there's just too many variables in today's college game to be able to do that definitively.
Give up on determining the best team and just go with crowning a champion.
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I guess we'll have to disagree. I don't think people will ever agree on who should be in or out regardless of how many, but every step toward adding more teams simultaneously dilutes the quality of the playoffs and devalues the regular season
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I think 8 is reasonable. I just don't want to see cfb hit an nfl point where Pats-Packers type games are neat to watch, but have no possibility to make or break a season
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Eight team playoff doesnt dilute the reg season any more than four. It removes the arbitrary commission of an 11-1 power 5 conference champ (talk about making the regular season unimportant).
I also agree with the comments regarding "best team". Villanova & NCSU both won NCAA tournaments, as barely above .500 teams (both earned bids as Conf tourney champs), but no one would argue that they were the best team in college basketball those years.
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The "best" team is the team hat uses the personnel they have to defeat the opponent by any legal means necessary. I believe conference champion, the record of the opponents, strength of schedule of the opponents (weighted for power 5 victories) and maybe to a lesser degree coaches/ap poll should all be factors to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible. The BCS system in the lady 5 years didn't do a bad job at ranking teams it was just that only the #2 team had a chance to be number 1 at the end. Top 8 would be good.
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you want a "best team" with no playoff? scrap the whole system and start over. take 63 teams, put them into 7 divisions of 9 teams each based on geography and rivalries. play 8 games in "session 1" to get 7 division champs. take those 7 champs and place them into the champions league. play another 6 game schedule for "session2", 1st place is your champion. no playoff, no championship game.
14 games and you have "OneTrueChampion". as for the other 56 teams, place them into divisions for session 2 based on their standings. so you would have "Champions League", "League 2" for 2nd place teams, "League 3", etc.
then, even the teams who finished in 9th place could play 6 more games for the League 9 championship. it's as relevant as a low tier bowl game! You would have to have 1 bye week for each team in each session, but odd divisions and odd teams works out better for home/away scheduling balance. While it would suck for the 9 teams who are on bye, the other 56 teams can all play on NYD as the season finale. schedule the teams with the best shot of winning their divisions later in the day for trophy presentations, etc.
while all that seems well thought out, i'm kidding. i want the 8 team playoff.
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I read Andy's article and I also disagree with him, but I want to give myself a little more time to construct (what will surely end up being) a very long post to point out why.
I think valid points were made, but I think some are bunk. I'll get to this in a day or so. For some reason, I feel like I have a lot riding on that response.
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I just heard from the supreme chancellor of college football. He is waiting on your post and has promised to enact any suggestions in it. So make sure you get it right :-P
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The type of play in college football is different in every conference. This is why I want all p5 champs represented in an 8 team playoff. Fill the other slots similar to old bcs, go with highest ranked outliers or non-p5 champ if ranked in the top 12. Seed playoff with bcs formula.
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playoffs diminishing the value of the regular season? pssssh! What takes away from the regular season is when Baylor beats TCU in the regular season and then the committee puts TCU in over Baylor in the playoff! WHAT REGULAR SEASON?!?!?!
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I said it before and I'll say it again. 16 team playoff, set up very much like the way the NHL has it.
First of all, split the Power 5 conferences away from the Group of 5, which I believe will happen within the next 3-4 years anyway.
Secondly, consolidate down to 4 super conferences (dissolve the Big 12) with each conference having 2 divisions of 8-9 teams. Everyone within each division plays the rest of the division as their regular season, with division records being what determines the order of standings. At the end of the year, the top 2 teams of each division play each other at the home of the top seed in Round 1 of the college football playoff. Round 2 would be at a neutral spot pitting the champions of the division title games for each respective Conference Championship. Each Conference Champion gets a spot in the Final 4, and the matchups between conferences are assigned through a predetermined 3 year rotation. (and for good measure, the current power-bowls, being the Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, Peach, Fiesta, and one additional would be the host sites of the Conference Championship games through to the National Championship).
This turns every regular season into the default first round of the playoff. Every conference game becomes absolutely huge, but would also deemphasize the out of division slate, so it would actually encourage big teams to play each other over the course of the year.
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I think you run into a few problems with an 8 team playoff, despite how much I would like to see it expand.
I don't like the idea of guaranteeing a spot for anyone. I am fine with weighting conference championships to the point that Mizzou, Wisconsin and GT would get in with wins this weekend. I just don't want to see a 4 loss team in the playoffs.
With 8 teams, Alabama and Oregon would likely still make the playoffs after a loss in their CCGs? Do we really want to potentially see Arizona and Oregon play for a 3rd time this year?
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Comments
I concur.
Good read, Andy. I was just discussing this with someone of Facebook last night (he's a Baylor alum, so he's irked at the current situation). I told him much of what you ended up with here - the playoff is the right idea with wrong execution.
I am for the 8-team playoff. I think that's the way to go.
I would be OK with 5 champions + 3 at-large, but part of me still dislikes how subjective that gets when it comes to the at-large. Why not just re-tool the BCS formula and compute who should be in? My brain craves a quantitative comparison. I just find it hard to believe that in the era of such advanced statistical analysis, sabremetrics in baseball and the like, we can't figure out a way to quantify what defines "best." I guess that's what makes sports so interesting though, the perceived "best" team doesn't always win, even when all the numbers say they should...
My thought is that in EVERY other sport if you win your conference, you are in the "playoff" being the NCAA Tournament. Should be the same for football too which is why I propose a 12 team playoff. All 10 conference champions + 2 at large. Guarantees that the top 2 teams will get a shot and everyone from the big guys to the little guys have their shot. Every game counts. All 12 get seeded, top 4 get a bye, bottom 8 have a 1 game play-in round, 5v12, 6v11, and so on. Then an 8 team tournament for the title.
i'm not opposed to this, but i think we need baby steps. December scheduling has historically been a tough thing for universities. it's mostly excuses, not real reasons, so we can get past it, but it won't happen overnight. i think 8 is then ext step, and 12 would be the ideal, but would require more games/weeks in December.
honestly, by the time we get 8 sorted out, there might not be 10 conferences in the top division of football, so this could be moot...maybe we get down to 7 leagues and 1 at-large. time will tell...
I'd want 16 if we go this route. I think we'd need more than two wildcard spots in this scenario because I think it's fair to say the loser of a P5 championship game being excluded for the Sun Belt champion is questionable. Plus I don't know if I support the idea of a bye week for the top four seeds. Then you get into the argument of the 5 seed getting really screwed over when the top seeding will be so subjective.
Is the 5 seed really getting screwed over? So they have to play another game and that game is against the MWC/MAC/Sun Belt champion. Big deal. You should win. If you don't, that's the beauty of the game and better luck next time.
I see your point, but even when playing a team with less talent, it's still four quarters of football and the risk of injury is high. Chances are there won't be a world of difference between the 4 and 5 seed. Making the 5 seed play an extra game makes their road to the championship significantly more perilous even if it's a gimmie on paper.
Also if you are playing the first two rounds at the higher seeded team's location, a bye week takes hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the top four teams' local economies and dumping it into the economies of teams 5 thru 8.
College presidents and ADs will object to a 12-team playoff because that's too many games to fit within the academic calendar. I still want an actual metric for anyone who's not a conference champion, at least. Rank all the non-champions by some metric - BCS, whatever - but whenever there's a human element, there will be complaint (I know, of course, humans design the formula, but still).
The problem is that there is no perfect metric by which to measure teams. Humans define the metrics so you still have a human element in determining it, even if it follows a formula.
But if there's a preplanned formula, at least everyone knows the formula, and the formula is the same for every team. Right now everything is arbitrary.
Can we please just let Phil Steele figure this out?
And that argument is ridiculous to begin with
FCS doesn't have a problem with a 24 team playoff
That's how I felt about the BCS. Rankings were almost always accurate by season's end, however the application was wrong.
I'm in the same category as you considering advanced statistical analysis as the most objective determinant of worthiness, but statistical analysis and their results are often times counter-intuitive and don't play to the wave of emotional biases displayed by fervent college football fans, unfortunately. One of the biggest complaints fans and ESPN-style analysts had with the BCS were it's seemingly off the wall conclusions drawn from hard data, which why I think by in large, the college football world lauded reinforcement of the human element by the committee; it largely emulates their thought process when judging the merits of a team.
TL;DR CFB fans think math is hard.
From a statistical analysis perspective, you don't get anything close to a full "experimental design", so advanced stats are prone to error. I'd like to see conference challenges like the B1G-ACC basketball challenge, for OOC. The group of 5 can be included. Rotate the Conf pairings each year. This way you can get a better read on doing strength and the advanced stats will be more accurate.
Andy Bitter for NCAA Chairsperson!
I never understood what was wrong with the BCS setup to determine the teams. If we must have a committee, drop the coaches' poll component and use this committee.
I would almost be willing to let the G5 have one of the three 'open' slots. That way they can do their own playoff and see which one gets that slot.
I'm not sure I'd buy in to that. imagine a team that drops a conference game early in the year, thus disqualifying it from even making the conference championship game, but then runs the table and is clearly one of the top 8 teams in the country by the end of the regular season. I wouldn't support passing them over for a slightly better than average G5 team.
Maybe some sort of metric to guide the selection of the last 3. Like, strength of schedule mixed with strength of wins. then prohibit the panel from selecting teams that are outside of a certain range of that criterion to fill spots 6-8. This would allow a good G5 team to play its way into consideration and prevent a worse P5 team with good PR (coughNDcough) from getting selected.
But only if a G5 team is ranked in the top 12 (or 15 if you prefer).
i think the biggest benefit of this: more games among top teams. when you look at the current top 10 and see their records against top 25 schools, it's a joke. 0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 1-1, etc. over 12 games, the best teams in the country are playing each other 17% of the time at best. we need to get to a format where we can see the best teams play each other more, and the 8 team format is the right way to get there.
my question posed to Andy on twitter is a logistical one. home sites or neutral sites? home sites seems ideal on the surface, especially for students, season ticket holders and most fans, but planning a game on a college campus on less than one week's notice seems like a stretch to me. i mean, schools could distribute tickets in advance as they do for many pro-sports now, but that only solves part of the planning nightmare.
if you go neutral sites, it has to be the opposite of bowl planning. you have to plan the games in population centers filled with the right fan bases for your plan. you want to minimize the need for tourists/travel by fans. i'm not sure you have 4 sites that would be safe bets 100% of the time, but i'm thinking Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and maybe Las Vegas.
i know Pittsburgh seems like the odd ball, but they have the stadium and are central to the norther ACC schools and the Eastern B1G schools which covers 2 potential division winners who could win their respective conferences.
i believe the Pac12 decided planning a championship on a week's notice was not ideal as much as they liked the atmosphere of the home crowd, so there is something to be said for having neutral sites that can prepare for weeks and months in advance.
what say you?
Some sort of regional pairing makes sense, although you'll see SEC people arguing that it's unfair to them because they are likely to be paired with another sec team. Just like FSU & DA ewe had to be in different divisions because they were going to play each other in the ACC champ game every year (so no geographic alignment of divisions).
I think at this point it's inevitable, it's just a question of when. With that accepted as a given, a couple of things:
1) Having the quarters at the higher ranked team's stadium is a great idea, but could be problematic for teams like Miami and Pitt that play in a municipal stadium. An extra game on short notice night not be feasible. So there'd have to be something in there for if the higher ranked team is incapable of hosting the game.
2) If we expand to an 8 team bracket, there will probably need to be done codified metric that grants a non-P5 team a berth. Right now there a nudge nudge, wink wink agreement that the mid-majors have access to the playoffs because the selection committee is theoretically free to invite one of those teams. If you explicitly guarantee the P5 conference champions a playoff berth, you have to give access to the midmajors as well so long as they meet some threshold.
Other than that, I say bring on the 8. I said when this arrangement was first made, this is a four team tournament, not a true playoff. Playoffs grant access to divisional or conference champions to determine a league champion on the field. Without at least the P5 conference champs getting an automatic bid, we remain short of a true college football playoff.
We haven't even finished determining the four participants of the first playoff, and already the demand is to expand it. Just as was predicted when discussion of this occurred during the BCS era. Can we just save time and go ahead and expand it to 16 teams, so as to save pointless arguments over why the 9th & 10th CFP ranked teams got excluded?
8 is enough for all the P5 champions to be included. That's all I ask for.
I think 16 is too much. Pointless even.
Yeah, and 68 instead of 64 is pointless in basketball. So they'd never do that, right?
March Madness is a huge money-maker for the NCAA. They're not including 4 more teams for any competitive reason, they're doing it to make more money.
And college football doesn't do the same thing? With a longer history & more examples of doing so?
TaxSlayer Bowl
Military Bowl
Pinstripes Bowl
I could go on, but surely the point is made. We all know it will end up at 16 teams. It's just a matter of time. Why waste the time?
None of those bowls have implications for playoff or championships, so no, that's not the same. The teams involved in basketball play-in could conceivably win the championship. No one winning the TaxSlayer Bowl has that possibility. Bowls have always been about making money, so that's certainly true, but anything outside of the "big bowls" is a consolation prize for a decent season (in most cases, an average season).
I also disagree that a 16-team playoff is a foregone conclusion. As I said above, college presidents (especially) will push hard against this, as will the NCAA, as long as they continue their "students first, athletes second" stance. Now, if there is a dramatic shift in governance and player status (which is possible), then we might get there, but at that point we're just talking NFL D-league.
"they" being the power 5 conferences. they wanted to get more bubble teams in. if it were up to them, the play in round would be all 16 v 17 games, but the compromise with the smaller leagues was to have 2 "bubble" games, too.
I just think 8 is the sweet spot. Big enough to include all the champions but small enough to still be somewhat exclusive.
The bottom line is five power conference champions cannot fit into four spots, no matter how you do it.
exactly so the weak ACC will not have a spot and it will be given to the SEC/ sarcastica.
Then when an SEC team goes 11-1 and is excluded a couple of years in a row, it will go to 16 tea,ms. It's going there eventually. It's just a matter of time. Two years after it goes to 8 teams, there will be complaints about why it needs to be 12-16 teams. We allknow that will happen.
The way that people vote, I can't actually conceive an SEC team being left out with that record. Unless there are four such teams.
maybe a giant wooden badger...
I wouldn't say "pointless" but I strongly agree that 16 teams and four rounds is too many. I can barely stomach eight teams and three rounds. But I do think eight is better than four. It's too easy for the #5 team to legitimately think they have a shot at the championship. A #9 team is far less likely to believe they're the best team in the country.
But it's not my battle to fight. Personally, and I know I'm in a very small minority here, I don't care who is the national champion. The whole point of college football is expressed in Rivalry Week and Champions Week, in that order. That's the difference between college and the NFL.
This reminds me of a few years ago when all of the excuses were coming out as to why there couldn't be playoffs.
I present FCS as an example. I'm willing to bet that many FCS schools have more of an academic focus than FBS schools, and not just for their athletes. Yet they have a 24 team playoff that goes on all through December.
Basically, any "academic" excuse sounds like a bunch of bull to me, when there are so many other examples presenting the contrary in the NCAA.
http://cfarena.blogspot.com/2011/11/five-anti-playoff-excuses-that-just....
I agree, but I'm trying to deal with what the actual roadblocks are. And these ADs and presidents will triumph their academics, even if it's largely BS. So a full-December tournament is a non-starter.
Is there anything keeping the schedule from getting pushed into January? Seems like there would be more wiggle room in there with most schools not having classes for at least the first two weeks.
Or do the NFL playoffs get in the way?
School presidents don't want season extending into the second semester.
Andy always has some great logic. Bitter for NCAA president!
2 thoughts:
-Scheduling the quarterfinal games this year the week after conference championship games would put it in the middle of exams, at least at Virginia Tech.
-I'd like to see one of the 3 at-large spots go to a ranked G5 champion. Always fun to have the underdog story.
That's why I said the conference championship games have to be moved up a week. The quarterfinals have to be in the slot where the league title games are if they're going to even pretend to care about academics.
Just start the season earlier. It already starts in August. I don't think that's a big deal.
Caught me reading too quickly, missed that suggestion. If the season started one week earlier Virginia Tech would either have to adjust the academic calendar or never open the season at home. That's move in weekend in Blacksburg, and I can't imagine the logistics of trying to have a football game at the same time.
You lose even more of the student body/atmosphere by starting the season deeper into August. Nobody at the schools will want to do that, even the donors prefer the students being there for the games.
There were two bye weeks this year anyway. Get rid of one and you're fine.
And other schools make it happen anyway. I know places like Minnesota that are on the quarter system don't start until well after Labor Day (or at least that's how they used to do it). It's not impossible to work around that.
Same with Oregon. They don't start until late September. I think there are a few more west coast teams like that.
Ohio state was the same until a few years ago. RIP quarters
Or end the conference championship games. I know it would be a monetary hit but that would be made up for by the increased TV payout from expanding from 4 to 8.
Can't imagine the leagues giving up that cash cow.
My hypothesis is that the playoff TV rights would increase as there would be 4 additional games to bid on. Thus, compensating the loss and increasing the overall monies.
If the schools could do that AND the conference title games, they will, though. Can't get enough $$$ these days.
Thus the reason they will eventually go to 16 team playoffs. More money. As soon as the playoffs expand to 8 teams, there will begin the call to go to possibly 12, but eventually 16 teams.
I think 8 could still work within constraints of timeframe they want to have (nothing in mid-December, no games beyond first week of January). I don't know if 16 does. At least until they give up this notion of "student-athletes."
I guess I'll be the person that disagrees with this.
The purpose of the college football playoffs is to determine who the BEST team during that years entire regular season, unlike the other sports which place almost no value in the regular season. Expanding the playoffs and adding more games goes away from that goal. Teams like the 07 Giants win championships through this, and while hats off to them for the upset, the Patriots were clearly a better team for the season. By adding more teams it becomes increasingly likely that the best team does not win. Upsets happen. There is reasonable doubt between who is the best between the top 4 teams, but no one will claim that the number 8 team is better than the number 1 team. I'm sure you're thinking "then the number 1 team should just beat the number 8 team in the first round". While true, its devaluing the purpose of the most exciting and important regular season in sports, which, to me, is a lot more exciting than another crapshoot playoff.
I know all of this is tricky with the supposed conference biases and the committee doing a poor job of gaining the public's trust. But I'm hesitant to want a system that can reward a team for a little three game winning streak when their whole body of work does not look like a champions
No, the purpose of any playoff is to determine a champion, which is a significantly different thing than a mythical "best" team.
The BCS was a turd on a stick because it was built on the asinine assertion that it could somehow determine the two "best" teams on paper and pair them for a championship game.
Bullshit.
There is no way to objectively determine a "best" team, because a team that's 12-0 could be given fits by a team with five losses, if said team presents a unique situational nightmare. If every team in the FBS played used the same offensive scheme and played the same base defense then we could have a pretty good argument who is the best team. But there's just too many variables in today's college game to be able to do that definitively.
Give up on determining the best team and just go with crowning a champion.
I guess we'll have to disagree. I don't think people will ever agree on who should be in or out regardless of how many, but every step toward adding more teams simultaneously dilutes the quality of the playoffs and devalues the regular season
I just think if you're gonna have something you call a playoff, you should model it after literally every other playoff in all of organized sports.
I think 8 is reasonable. I just don't want to see cfb hit an nfl point where Pats-Packers type games are neat to watch, but have no possibility to make or break a season
Eight team playoff doesnt dilute the reg season any more than four. It removes the arbitrary commission of an 11-1 power 5 conference champ (talk about making the regular season unimportant).
I also agree with the comments regarding "best team". Villanova & NCSU both won NCAA tournaments, as barely above .500 teams (both earned bids as Conf tourney champs), but no one would argue that they were the best team in college basketball those years.
The "best" team is the team hat uses the personnel they have to defeat the opponent by any legal means necessary. I believe conference champion, the record of the opponents, strength of schedule of the opponents (weighted for power 5 victories) and maybe to a lesser degree coaches/ap poll should all be factors to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible. The BCS system in the lady 5 years didn't do a bad job at ranking teams it was just that only the #2 team had a chance to be number 1 at the end. Top 8 would be good.
you want a "best team" with no playoff? scrap the whole system and start over. take 63 teams, put them into 7 divisions of 9 teams each based on geography and rivalries. play 8 games in "session 1" to get 7 division champs. take those 7 champs and place them into the champions league. play another 6 game schedule for "session2", 1st place is your champion. no playoff, no championship game.
14 games and you have "OneTrueChampion". as for the other 56 teams, place them into divisions for session 2 based on their standings. so you would have "Champions League", "League 2" for 2nd place teams, "League 3", etc.
then, even the teams who finished in 9th place could play 6 more games for the League 9 championship. it's as relevant as a low tier bowl game! You would have to have 1 bye week for each team in each session, but odd divisions and odd teams works out better for home/away scheduling balance. While it would suck for the 9 teams who are on bye, the other 56 teams can all play on NYD as the season finale. schedule the teams with the best shot of winning their divisions later in the day for trophy presentations, etc.
while all that seems well thought out, i'm kidding. i want the 8 team playoff.
Odd numbers. Eww.
I read Andy's article and I also disagree with him, but I want to give myself a little more time to construct (what will surely end up being) a very long post to point out why.
I think valid points were made, but I think some are bunk. I'll get to this in a day or so. For some reason, I feel like I have a lot riding on that response.
I just heard from the supreme chancellor of college football. He is waiting on your post and has promised to enact any suggestions in it. So make sure you get it right :-P
The type of play in college football is different in every conference. This is why I want all p5 champs represented in an 8 team playoff. Fill the other slots similar to old bcs, go with highest ranked outliers or non-p5 champ if ranked in the top 12. Seed playoff with bcs formula.
How about a 128 team playoff?
Everyone plays 8 regular season games (4 home and 4 away) and then the fun begins.
If you lose a playoff game, you can continue to play consolation games against the other losers.
If anyone can figure out the scheduling aspect of this scenario, you are bound to become a millionaire.
EDIT: . . . and everyone gets trophies!
you clearly missed my champions league proposal above...
The difference is that there are at most 32 pro sport teams in a league. Not 100+. No point in following a pro sport model.
Edit: Oops wrong reply
2 teams was fine, IMO. No amount of tinkering or adding of teams will make it any more definitive or less subjective.
Quick...who was in the 2011 Final Four? Who won it? Very few people really know or care 3 years later.
Duke, Butler, VCU, and somebody. Duke won.
If I am correct, then on my honor as a Virginia Tech alumnus, I certify that I had no help in completing this test.
If I am wrong, then my memory is bad.
playoffs diminishing the value of the regular season? pssssh! What takes away from the regular season is when Baylor beats TCU in the regular season and then the committee puts TCU in over Baylor in the playoff! WHAT REGULAR SEASON?!?!?!
I said it before and I'll say it again. 16 team playoff, set up very much like the way the NHL has it.
First of all, split the Power 5 conferences away from the Group of 5, which I believe will happen within the next 3-4 years anyway.
Secondly, consolidate down to 4 super conferences (dissolve the Big 12) with each conference having 2 divisions of 8-9 teams. Everyone within each division plays the rest of the division as their regular season, with division records being what determines the order of standings. At the end of the year, the top 2 teams of each division play each other at the home of the top seed in Round 1 of the college football playoff. Round 2 would be at a neutral spot pitting the champions of the division title games for each respective Conference Championship. Each Conference Champion gets a spot in the Final 4, and the matchups between conferences are assigned through a predetermined 3 year rotation. (and for good measure, the current power-bowls, being the Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange, Peach, Fiesta, and one additional would be the host sites of the Conference Championship games through to the National Championship).
This turns every regular season into the default first round of the playoff. Every conference game becomes absolutely huge, but would also deemphasize the out of division slate, so it would actually encourage big teams to play each other over the course of the year.
I think you run into a few problems with an 8 team playoff, despite how much I would like to see it expand.
I don't like the idea of guaranteeing a spot for anyone. I am fine with weighting conference championships to the point that Mizzou, Wisconsin and GT would get in with wins this weekend. I just don't want to see a 4 loss team in the playoffs.
With 8 teams, Alabama and Oregon would likely still make the playoffs after a loss in their CCGs? Do we really want to potentially see Arizona and Oregon play for a 3rd time this year?
We all know the correct number is 16 - all 14 from the SEC and two at large teams........