Was listening to the radio the other week, and the guys in Raleigh had John Feinstein on talking about the future of college football, and they made reference to something that I hadn't heard before. Apparently, there may have already been talks about the possibility of expanding the playoff, but in order to not play too many games, it would mean eliminating Conference Championship Games across the board. (He also made reference to the fact that conference championship auto-bids will never happen in college football, and any playoff will still be decided by committee.)
So I ask you. If it meant eliminating the ACC Championship Game, and eliminating all Championship Games across the board, would you be in favor of an 8 team playoff?
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If it eliminates conference divisions so that we play teams like Clemson and Florida State more often sure, why not. Only problem arises when you get two teams with perfect conference records that didn't play each other who have to be separated by points scored on common opponents or some wacky shit like that. Either we have to be okay with that possibility ahead of time or conferences will have to shrink back down to 10 members.
Only if the first TWO rounds are at home. IMO, only the championship game should be played on a neutral site. The weird, regional quirks that are unique to each team are the things that make college football so cool; I'm not sure why the playoff committee wouldn't embrace this. Eliminating neutral site playoff games would also make seeding super important. If you're going to give at large bids to conference champions, you have to do something to make sure teams take out of conference games seriously.
The reason they won't have the games at the higher seed is money. The NCAA can make far more money from neutral site games. I'm sure conferences will also lose a significant amount of money by losing the conference championship game.
We all know the NCAA only cares about one thing, and it's not student athletes or institutions of higher education.
Why is this? Couldn't NCAA just write up a contract saying "if you want to be elgible to host a home playoff game, you have to accept this sponsor, decorate your stadium this way, and use this sponsor's name X times in your radio broadcast?" I don't understand why a nuetral site game make significantly more money for the NCAA? The only difference I can think is ticket sales, but ticket sales are peanuts compared to TV revenue. What am I missing?
At a neutral site, the NCAA controls the ticket sales. And has more leverage with parking, concessions, sales inside. And typically there are more seats available at a higher rate.
Why would VT turn over a huge percentage of ticket sales to the NCAA when they could go to Charlotte, that holds nearly 10k more, and they have control over the tickets.
I would say no personally. I think the conference championships are important, especially to schools in conferences where they're the best in their respective conference but aren't a top-8 team. If this got extended somehow to a 16-team playoff then I think it'd be a better system though I know logistically this would be a tremendous challenge.
16 teams will likely never happen. They'd have to eliminate conference championship games AND cut back the regular season to 11 games.
Why though? Every time someone brings up playoff expansion, the biggest reason people can come up with against it is that teams will be playing too many games, but I've always wondered why 15 games was some magical number that should never be crossed. The FCS has a 24-team playoff after an 11-game season. The top 8 teams get a 1st-round bye, and the championship-game participants will play either 15 or 16 games, depending on whether they got the bye. As recently as 2016, Youngstown State reached the championship game after playing in the first round, and despite the fact that they lost to JMU I never heard anyone complain about their 16-game schedule when it happened.
This. I've wondered the same thing.
I think it could work if you do what vtcivengr said (thought it was regarding a different point) about just eliminating all of the out-of-conference "tune-up" games and getting straight into conference play. That would eliminate 2-3 games right off the bat. Then you take away 1 game for a conference championship and maybe a cross-divisional game and it's all of the sudden not that many extra games.
Not that many extra games....for those that win.
Hard to commit to the idea of maybe only playing 9 games when we're in the 12-14 range now, with conf champ game and bowl.
You're right, some sort of sacrifice would have to be made. Every team would either have to play less total games and if they don't win / make it to the playoff, they'd have less total games than the current system or keep the number of games the same and the playoff teams would have to play a lot more. It's not outlandish though; the NFL does it every year. If you want to take home the grand prize, you're going to be playing a lot more games.
Those OOC games that would be eliminated, while often not that exciting, are important sources of income for a lot of athletic departments (both for the team hosting and for the teams getting the payday to travel). Case in point, Tech would lose several million dollars of revenue by cutting those games and not get anything in return other than a 1/14th share of revenue from a playoff game. It would be hard to get everyone on board to drop games when we're only talking about a handful of teams that would be playing extra post-season games.
Case in point the ECU discussion about how much money we lost this year, including the revenue for the town and surrounding areas. Also look at the insurance policies for the ECU game and the Marshall-USCe game. $500k vs $1.1m. That's the power of the larger conferences, and what they bring to the table. Removing the lower tier OOC games would just bring a greater gap between the haves and have-nots.
That, and it's nice to "tune-up" and work out kinks prior to getting into the full depth of the conference schedule. It's not like basketball where a loss to a top ranked team early in the season doesn't hurt as much as it teaches. In football, losses count so much larger.
Right now the limit isn't 15...it's possible for a team to play 16 with the current setup:
12 games with a game at Hawaii
1 extra because of Hawaii clause
1 conference championship
2 playoff games
In a 16 team playoff scenario without reducing the regular season (and dropping conf championships), the possible number is 17. I don't know if 15, 16 or 17 is a hard line, but everything I've read about a 16 team playoff adds that it would be an 11 game regular season.
And even then, most teams that are eligible for a 13th game elect to take a second bye week instead. But yes, it is possible for a team to play 16 games, if they travel to Hawaii (which no self-respecting top team would), and if they elected to play a 13th game, and then went on to win their division and make the CFP.
In any case, if a school is concerned with their student-athletes playing additional games, they could always schedule fewer games. I'm pretty sure nothing in the NCAA bylaws states that you must schedule 12 games, but everyone does so anyway because that is what is best for every program.
Edit: I see you edited yours as I wrote my response, lol
No. Conference play has to remain important. Drop a non-conference game, eliminate fcs opponents except for a spring game exhibition.
No, and I think most conference member schools would agree. To unequivocally be able to say you were the best team in your conference that year would be more important than a slightly larger chance to make the playoffs, I would think. Plus, if you win your championship, you already stand a good chance to get in with the 4-team configuration.
I honestly don't see why they need to displace a week of football for everyone just to pull in 4 more teams. In the end, you're only making 4 teams play an extra week of football (the 4 that lose round 1 would be the same as playing some bowl game). Is it that harmful to the program and student-athletes?
I see your point, but I would argue that the B1G doesn't feel like their conference champions stand a "good chance" of getting in anymore... at least not if we base that solely on the fact that they're conference champions.
If Pitt had somehow had some lucky breaks and pulled off a sloppy upset vs Clemson, do you think the narrative would be they are the best team in the ACC or they pulled off a huge upset against the true best team in the ACC? I think championship games are overrated. Go back to smaller conferences and round-robin scheduling. Yeah there's the possibility you could always have a two or three way tie in the standings, but I think playing every team in the league and overall best record over an 8- or 9-game schedule would be a better indicator for the best team in a conference.
Who gives a crap what the narrative is when there are clear and direct paths to the title? Eliminate the subjectivity and it eliminates the impact "the narrative" has.
Sometimes it feels like we're spending more time trying to protect the talking points around the sport more than we're trying to protect the sport itself.
Oh I agree with you, if a conference championship game win guaranteed you an auto bid to the playoff (like a conference tourney win does in basketball) I would be all over that idea. In just saying that a conference championship game winner always presents the "best" team in the league, I would disagree since flukey things can happen, but best is always subjective.
If we're not doing auto bids but would expand to 8 by scrapping the championship games, I think I would take that trade off. I think conferences have become too big and would like to see smaller leagues with round robin scheduling to name a champion. My biggest gripe with the divisional championship format is how little we play teams from the Atlantic and would like to see that change.
Nobody is saying that.
The best things about sports is that the best teams don't always win. The introduction of chaos causing cascading impact to an entire season is awesome, and one of the most memorable aspects of sports as a whole. Preventing an auto bid from happening prevents chaos from impacting a season, so that the 'best' teams get to move on regardless of results, just so long as enough people think they are the best. It just goes against the basic fundamental nature of sports to its core, and something that has always bugged me about football. The sooner we can break away from that, in my opinion, the better.
Even if you had a fluke game - say Pitt had beaten Clemson - the 8-team playoffs would give you 5 P5 conference winners, the best G5, and you still have two at-large. So, even after Clemson had lost to Pitt, they would have been in as an at-large bid. Not buying the fluke loss argument
9-game conference schedule would have taken care of that to an extent, but then Swofford et al. happened.
Not adding Pitt and Syracuse would have helped too.
Not adding Pitt and Syracuse or getting two more full-time members and switching to pods. Doing away with permanent cross-division rivalries would help some, too, but you won't get FSU, Miami, NC State, Wake and probably Georgia Tech and Clemson to go for it. The first four alone might be enough to shut down any play to remove the permanent rivalries but without them and an 8-game slate, you can at least play every team in the other division every 4 years and twice in a 7-year span:
e.g
Year 1: @FSU, vs. Wake
Year 2: @NC State, Syracuse
Year 3: @Louisville, Clemson
Year 4: @BC, FSU
Year 5: @Wake, NCSU
Year 6: @Syracuse, Louisville
Year 7: @Clemson, BC
I'm personally against 9-game conference schedules because it does slightly advantage teams that get five home conference games each year. That and 5-4 then 4-5 home/away will have some impact on revenue from home games. Especially since most teams, during a 5-4 year, might only have one chance to bring in a marquee home non-conference game. And if a team gets stuck playing at Notre Dame in a year they have five road conference games? Ugh.
More likely... 14-16 team conferences made up of 2 divisions of 7 or 8. P5 makes a scheduling agreement to ban FCS and G5 opponents. Everyone moves to a 10 game conference slate (6 or 7 divisional games with 3-4 cross divisional add ons) and 2 OOC matchups, one home, one away determined in advance by a neutral committee to ensure everyone has opponents to play, kind of like how the ACC/Big Ten Challenge is determined every year.
Still think the pod idea is a better path without going to 9-10 conference games, so teams can still have 3-4 (depending on number of regular season games) non-conference games.
Also, I think your ban on FCS/Go5 teams runs into two problems:
1. these schools rely on the money playing higher tier teams brings their athletic department to keep their other departments operational. I'd might be for it if schools were permitted scrimmages or exhibitions as long as the lower tier schools were still getting paid the same amount for them.
2. it only compounds the "well, you didn't play anybody" argument against Go5 teams except now they're locked out from ever playing anybody to enhance their resumes.
The next step, which is being discussed and would probably happen in the next 10 years or so, is that the P5 does this scheduling agreement and effectively breaks away from the G5, creating 2 FBS divisions. There's a lot of money flowing from the P5 to the G5 and FCS that the P5 commissioners are looking to retain down the line.
I think this move is inevitable for several reasons, but capturing that lost revenue you mention is probably most important. How happy do you think Whit would be if he never had to pay ODU, ECU, Liberty, Bill&Mary, etc... for a home game again? ... To say nothing of that Michigan series that never happened or the Wisconsin series that probably never will.
I don't really dig the gatekeeper argument, because I've seen it used against us.
Honestly no because outside of a few Blue Bloods I don't see many teams that can actually compete for a National Championships while there are many that can compete for a conference Championship. Maybe the minority will win out but I see the majority pulling through in this one...
This would just a be a way to get 4 SEC teams in the playoff every year
[MEANING MORE INTENSIFIES]
In a word: no.
I would say no, but I would say no for a different reason.
What really stuck out to me was this notion that its already accepted that auto-bids are a non-starter. I think that's foolish, and I'm not willing to sacrifice championship weekend for an expanded playoff that just creates more of a beauty contest than there already is.
Expand to 8. Keep the Championship Games, introduce auto-bids for all P5.
This effectively makes a 13 team playoff, with the possibility of double elimination for the top 2 or 3 teams in the country. Effectively, Championship Week becomes the first round of the playoff where division winners face off. Championship winners move on to the 8 team playoff, and the top non-champs also get invited. You want to know how to make the regular season mean more? Make divisional play a round robin fight where all division champs have a legit path to the National Championship.
But no, we'll be stupid, and scrap any chance of making that happen for the chance of a committee to add in more SEC teams because its just means more, paaaaawwwwwl.
Auto-bids don't make the regular season mean more.
See: every American professional sport.
Auto-bids make more sense for pro sports because a franchise has one, and only one goal: to make money by playing THAT sport.
This is not true for every college football team, even the ones in Power5. There are plenty of P5 schools that would cut their football program entirely if they had to choose between it and basketball with a gun to their head. This issue becomes even more obvious in the gross variance in spending, fan commitment, stadium size, facilities, and recruiting from school to school.
Functionally, auto-bids would just make it easier for bad teams from weaker conferences to make the playoff. It doesn't make the playoff better. 10-3 Washington lost to 7-5 Auburn. Do we really want to see them play Clemson or Alabama? Ohio State lost to Purdue by 29 and got boatraced by Iowa last year. Those regular season losses (see: regular season means more in college football) cost (rightfully, in my opinion) them a chance to play for a national title.
College football has 130 teams in its highest division, with about half of those teams put into the Power 5 conferences, unevenly distributed across the U.S. where college football is not followed and watched evenly throughout the country. I don't understand this obsession with trying to make it like every professional sport we already have, nor why we pretend that it isn't inherently different from every professional sports league, which it most certainly is. College football has always been different, and that hasn't stopped any of us from loving and watching the sport.
No, college football is not a professional sport. But it is a college sport. And guess what happens in FCS, D2, and D3 football, as well as literally every division of every other sport in the NCAA:
Conference champions are guaranteed a berth in whatever NCAA-sanctioned postseason event determines a national championship.
FBS football may be "special", but adding auto-bids isn't meant to bring it in line with professional sports, but rather to make it more similar to literally every other college sport (including other divisions of football).
None of those sports are watched or cared about on a national scale to the level of college football with the exception of basketball, which still uses an extremely subjective way of choosing the majority of the teams for their gigantic playoff.
Additionally, football does not have the room for parity that most sports do. That is an entirely different conversation, but it is relevant. There are just too many moving parts and not enough big/fast guys to spread across that many teams for there to ever be a chance of it having reasonable parity in college football.
It has been this way forever, and we have quite literally over a hundred years of history to see that this is true.
Are you really trying to say that most college football sports have parity? Lol. It took over 100 tries for a 16-seed to topple a 1-seed, and that's taking the champion from a bad conference and putting them up against a top team. Most of the time, those games end up in 40-point blowouts.
Yes, there is a large gap between the top teams and bottom teams in FBS football. No, that gap is not any bigger than in most other NCAA sports.
It is absolutely much bigger. It's much more difficult to score in football on a great team than in basketball, for example. There is not nearly as much impeded movement allowed, and the 3 pointer is a the great equalizer. It's why we have huge upsets. Even though we've only have one example of a 1 seed losing to a 16 seed (LOLUVa) the tournament is known for its frequency of first and second round upsets.
It's a huge deal when a G5 team upsets a major P5 team, and an ENORMOUS deal when a JMU/VT or App state/Michigan happens. They are much less common in college football.
It's a huge deal when an unranked G5 team upsets a ranked P5 team. But on that same token, it's a huge deal when an unranked P5 team upsets a ranked P5 team. There's a reason it's called an upset, and I believe the reason we think we see more in basketball is because there are both many more opportunities for it and the stakes are generally much higher in said opportunities. Nobody really cares that much if a G5 team beats a P5 team early in the season, and there's only a handful of chances in the postseason. And oh by the way, in the 4 years of the NY6, where a G5 team is guaranteed to play a top-tier team in a bowl game, the G5 representative has gone 3-1, with each game being played against a much higher-rated team (#20 vs #10, #18 vs #9, #15 vs #8, #12 vs #7). This year will be the first time a G5 team has been higher-ranked than their opponent, as #7 UCF plays #11 LSU.
It's a shame we don't have a system where we could test the theory, but I feel like the Sun Belt champion has a better shot at beating the #1 team in college football than the average 16-seed has of beating a 1-seed (ie, at least 1%), and that is exactly the analogous matchup that we're discussing here.
Alabama hasn't lost to an unranked team since 2007. I'll take them to win 1000/1000 games against the Sun Belt champion.
Ok, so that's an 80-game winning streak against unranked foes, compared to a 135-game streak of 1-seeds beating 16-seeds. Impressive, but not exactly equitable.
Also, how many of those 80 unranked teams they beat were better than the Sun Belt champion? For reference, Appalachian State is 6th in the AP Poll's "Others Receiving Votes" list, putting them at about 31st. Also, the S&P+ rankings, which are the "advanced statistics" that many people use for projecting future results, has Appalachian State at #13. Possibly inflated for a few reasons, sure, but they aren't exactly a pushover, and they are the champion of this year's worst conference.
Also, by the way, UMBC, the team that upset UVA to end the 1-seed-over-16-seed dominance, was apparently only the 63rd seed in the 68-team tournament. So they weren't even the worst team in the big dance, as they were better than 5 other conference champions. Also also, the method of selecting the conference champions in basketball is inherently more open to fluke runs, meaning that the best teams in the bad conferences are frequently left out in favor of someone who made a strong run in the conference tournament, therefore weakening the bottom of the tournament bracket even further than the equivalent college football bracket would be.
I'd say the closer the odds are of winning your division vs being in the playoff lessens the problem of rendering a regular season meaningless.
Look at hockey. 31 teams and 16 make the playoff. In the Metro Division alone, you have a 1 in 8 chance of coming on top, but greater than a 1 in 2 chance of making the overall playoff. At that point, the regular season becomes all the good teams care about playoff seeding, not divisional titles.
In baseball, you either have to win your division, or win a 50/50 1 game gamble to make the playoff. In a league of 30 teams, where each division is 5 or 6 teams large, you have a greater chance of winning your division than making the playoff as a whole, so the goal of the year is to come out on top of the division, and then worry about the title after the fact. Even then, its still close, because its really 1 in 5 to win the division and 4 in 15 to make the playoff. Its probably the closest that we have to what college football would have, but because there are soooooo many games that one single loss doesn't have the devastating impact that you would in a 12 game season. A single loss in football would be >10x more impactful to your title chances than a single loss would be in baseball.
In college basketball, its a little different, because the auto-bids apply to conference tournament champions. When you consider that now with every conference having a tournament with the IVY introducing one, at the end of the regular season, every team in Division 1 basketball has a legitimate path to the NCAA Tournament. The regular season is rendered meaningless because any team can make it by going on a run.
College football would be different, much different. If you go based purely on Auto-Bids, the only way to make it in would be to win your division, meaning the odds of making the playoff and winning your division would equalize. The only difference is baking in a little leeway for the absolute top teams to have some margin for error on Championship Weekend to appease the eye test factor. Making winning your division an entry point to the playoff makes the regular season important, because it turns the regular season into a legitimate year long playoff where everyone starts out the year with a chance to the title, and teams are knocked out when they lose. Moreso than pretty much any other sport can really provide nowadays.
What does too many games even mean? Under the current system (2) teams play (2) extra games; the conference championship & national championship under expected circumstances. If the CFP is expanded to (8), then those same (2) teams would play (1) additional game for a total of (3) additional games. The (2) teams eliminated in the semifinal would have only played (1) additional game which we're already doing for the NC.
Conf Championship - 1 game extra
CFP Round of 8 - Same as a Bowl Game, no extra
CFP Seminal - 1 extra game
NC - 1 extra game
No but I would sacrifice an OOC game and move to an 11 game (8 conference game) regular season to get both if something has to go.
Good answer.
Definitely not with the current format of the ACC. If you do away with conference championship than you have to do away with conference divisions.
And that creates is own nightmare - trying to break ties. Or worse...
What if a hypothetical Clemson goes 8-0 in the ACC, loses to a 10-2 Notre Dame because of our scheduling agreement as well as an 8-4 South Carolina to finish 10-2, but Miami gets in at 7-1 in the ACC with a loss to Clemson, but finished 11-1 because they played FIU, Furman, a 6-6 UCLA and 3-9 Illinois?
Only if they play the first round games at the sites of the conference championship games. The ACC title game brings over $30million to Charlotte. Taking that away from them is devastating. If one of the first round games is played there, that money doesn't just go away. And if they do that, I'd be fine with not having a conference title game for an 8 team playoff scenario.
Ehh....just to be devil's advocate, who says Charlotte is always going to be the site of the ACC conference championship game? Is there a 25 or 50 year contract in place?
They don't, but if other conferences do...they need to be respected. There should be regional games (like basketball) and no home-field games if it's 8 teams in the playoff. That sucks for travel on short notice, but bowls and championship game cities rely on these sort of events.
I would happily sacrifice it. If they got rid of Conference Championship games then there's no reason for divisions. There is also a better chance for the G5 to always have a qualifier (or 2). The Hokies would have benefited from an 8 team playoff a few times.
No I wouldn't but then again I'm in favor of a 16 team playoff with autobids for the ten conference champions and six at large teams.
Alabama
Clemson
Oklahoma
Ohio State
Washington
UCF
UAB
App St.
N Illinois
Fresno State
——
Norte Dame
Georgia
Don't worry guys, I fixed it.
I know this is not everyone's ideal playoff, but it is certainly mine.
Honestly, I'd much rather see a 16-team playoff with a double-bye setup, similar to all the large basketball conference tournaments (ACC, B1G, etc).
That's probably asking for a bit too much, though.
Serious question....
Do you want a bye? Having to play a team that just won a game the previous week? I understand the injuries aspect, but weeks off kill momentum in college football (don't get me started on the ECU week off this year.)
If I'm a top team, I don't know what I would think about a double bye. You see it all the time in the NFL where teams coming off a BYE can be rusty, and a double BYE could end up creating more chaos than it does to actually benefit the top teams.
Put it this way. One the field of play, I would like Bama over anyone. But Bama vs the likes of Penn St, UCF, or Oklahoma while trying to shake off 2 additional weeks of rust vs a team with a week or two of tried and tested playoff mode? I dunno, could end up being the great equalizer. As a fan, I'd love it.
No, Championships should matter. As much as that person said Auto-bids are a non-starter, they should be. Yes, occasionally you will get a 8-4 conference champion who upsets a 11-1 team in the championship. But then that 11-2 team might get a shot an at large bid. But the team that won the championship should get the auto-bid. They will be the lowest seeded team in the playoff, but they earned the right to be there.
It turns the entire season into a playoff. You have to get to your conference championship and win it.
This ^. For some reason the mentality seems to draw people into the mindset that the Power5 champions would be ranked 1-5. Lol if Pitt had won we'd be seeing them as the lowest seed to be destroyed by Bama. With Clemson getting an at large at problems 4th or 5th seed. I'm down for dropping an extra OOC game to keep the championship tho; as long as we destroy divisions or at least make something more flexible like the Pods to protect rivalries and have the top 2 teams go to the championship. [BUT THERE WILL BE SHITTY YEARS WHERE WE HAVE TO GO TO A 4TH TIEBREAKER]. Yeah and I'll tell you the same thing I tell athletes who get mad when I call them out on close calls at first in adult kickball. "If you were a better athlete, I wouldn't have to make close calls 🤷🏼♀️". I mean you don't think we'd be jumping for joy if we started as a 10 seed in the ACC bracket and won the tournament for a fairly earned bid. Teaches teams to go 1-0 every week, that .500 team may send your 11-1 ass home if you get high and mighty.
Yes, conference championship games are usually overrated and anticlimactic. It was a model that worked for the SEC and others tried to follow suit but never quite matched up. I think we should go back to smaller conferences, round robin schedules, and scrap championship weekend for a bigger playoff.
Hell no. 8-team payoff is totally unnecessary.
5 conference champs.
4 slots.
Lowest rated champ is left out.
That's all you need to determine the national champion.
If you don't win your conference then you lost your chance to be in the playoffs.
Bammer from last year would like a word.
Bammer from last year can go pound sand.
You want to talk about what makes a regular season meaningless? Alabama getting into the playoff last year and Ohio State getting in the year before. Played an entire season, couldn't even win their own division, yet enough people deemed them worthy to make the playoff over the teams that beat them on the field of play and came out on top of the one thing Alabama and Ohio State could control.
Don't disagree...just pointing out.
I don't give a flying frog fap about bammer.... they couldn't even win their division. They didn't deserve to be there and were gifted a berth by a knob-slobbering media machine in love with the smell of it's own farts.
This made me ROFL. Your wording here is the epitome of poetic realism.
I'm really torn on this because the whole current system's goal is to get the 4 best teams into the playoff. Yes, Bama didn't win their conference championship and lost at about the worst time in the season you could lose a game. However, they were still the best team in the country as proved by beating the hell out of Clemson and the taking down Georgia (who did win the SEC) in the National Championship. I don't think anyone doubted that even with their one loss to Auburn they weren't still a top-4 team. That same year, Clemson lost to Syracuse but had a little more time to recover to prove to the committee they were worthy. I honestly see great points to both sides which is why we don't have a perfect system in the first place.
So here's my thing... I see the goal of the playoffs as determining the national champion, not the four best teams. That's what the regular season is for and conference championships do that nicely as far as I'm concerned.
I respectfully disagree, but I see some of your points.
I see the goal of the playoffs also as determining the national champion, but I think you need the four best teams in that mix to do so regardless of a one-off late season loss or other factor potentially keeping one of the four best teams in the country out. I don't think the current system is perfect, but I think that 95% of the time since we've gone to the CFP it's gotten the four best in.
I see the goal of the playoffs also as determining the national champion
I see the goal of the playoffs as entertainment. More good football = more entertainment.
So silly that somehow Clemson totally deserved to be in for whipping up on a shitty ACC with a MUCH WORSE loss to Syracuse than Bama losing a road game to Auburn on rivalry week. Both teams lost one game, Bama lost to a much better team.
Then they came out and kicked Clemson's ass and beat Georgia with a true freshman QB coming in the second half in an incredibly fun game to watch. Yet you're complaining because the 4 team playoff actually followed through of their stated goal of putting the best four teams in? Which Alabama proved on the field clearly.
If they're so great why doesn't the SEC just split off and go play with itself? Then all the fanboys can grease up and get their fill of SEC on SEC action all through the holidays.
I'll be just fine watching an ACC/PAC/B1G/BIX playoff.
Keep crying about bias and fanboys when all the advanced analytics agree with the SEC teams being ranked and lauded. You can live in some kind of denial, but I'll be here in reality whenever you want to talk about how the S&P, FPI, FEI, Massey Composite, etc feels about these teams. Or when you want to discuss which teams have the most talent and dominate recruiting every year.
It's so ridiculous how the people who hate the SEC have become so much worse and annoying than the SEC fans chanting S-E-C after bowl games or whatever people were so upset about, ever were.
< fart noise >
Yikes.
Allow me to clarify:
I would have downvoted this if it didn't make me laugh. For the record though, I side with Chris and dont understand the SEC hatred.
I don't hate the SEC. Some of my best friends and colleagues are UGA and LSU people and there's nothing wrong with that. And I genuinely mean no disrespect to Chris. I just find the SEC hype to be tiresome and boorish. I'll give you that the ACC is pretty bad at football most years. But at least I have a dog in that fight with VT.
The only thing you were missing with this Feinbaum Caller quality SECgasm was the 'PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWL' at the end.
I'm talking advanced analytics and recruiting rankings and this is the response. Shocking.
edit: Also, I'm catching downvotes on all of my comments while these meaningless, trolling comments are getting upvoted...
PAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWL
Though I respect you, I am not downvoting you.
I have upped yak's comments, because I laughed at their grouchiness.
Advanced analytics are great for predictions and comparisons. They describe sport really well. They don't constitute competition.
(And are you really bragging about bringing recruiting rankings into a discussion about championships? If so; I found the troll).
The committee has absolutely nailed all four selections to their invitational. Every year. That doesn't mean it's a tournament fit for a sport.
A four team invitational (what we have now) is infinitely better than a vote (pre-BCS).
What you'd really rather see on TV (skip the 126 shitty teams and show me my all-star invitational) is not remotely a playoff tournament (the thing the sports do to determine their champion).
I brought recruiting rankings and advanced analytics to defend that the SEC is actually really good and it's not just media bias and human poll bias which always gets thrown out in this discussion. When you compare the CFP rankings to all the advanced analytics and computer rankings, they actually align really well, suggesting that it's quite possible these teams are consistently very good. And why wouldn't they be? We always talk about how important recruiting is and how we can't take a step forward until we start recruiting better, and the SEC dominates recruiting every year, and it's not just Alabama and Georgia. I broke down all the recruiting classes the SEC had in the top 20 and top 10 for each year from 2010 through the current class on reddit (I have to admit I don't know how to format a table on this site, but I do on the reddit format).
It just blows my mind that we all agree that recruiting is important and tied to team success, yet we assume that the only reason all these SEC teams are ranked is that it's all media bias. Even though our first belief about recruiting rankings aligns really well with how successful the SEC has been as a conference year to year. It's not some magic or something in the water in the south, it's just that these teams are really talented. Then when we look at the Massey composite or S&P+, for example, and they have all these teams ranked the picture starts to make a lot of sense.
Comment from discussion Recruiting in the SEC this year is insane.
As it stands right now for the 2019 recruiting class, the SEC has all four of the top spots, and 10 teams in the top 20.
Perhaps all of that was unclear, but I was not using it to describe championships in any way. That said, I agree the playoff invitational has been better than the BCS, and I also agree with you that they have gotten the selections largely right.
SEC rankings are a self fulfilling prophecy.
You make compelling arguments for your conclusions. I was trying to rib you a bit for the inclusion of "recruiting rankings" in a thread specific to a championship. I presume that I have failed.
I am not in disagreement in very much of the smorgasbord of opinions of which you've elaborated. For one, I am in complete agreement that the SEC is the top conference with a lions share of top teams.
It remains, however, one conference with one champion (no matter how many at-large wild cards they are eligible, and likely to produce).
In the current championship format, the SEC remains not only the richest conference. They are the principal beneficiary (with the exception of 2014 OSU) of the charity of invites.
In a proposed championship tournament, 2014 OSU and 2016 Alabama would have been granted the invitation of at-large participation. They would still have every chance they "earned" to become champions; even without securing their own auto-bids.
The 4-team invite is a temporary solution (from a much worse starting point) on the journey to an actual tournament for a sport.
Until conference champions are assured their auto-bid to the playoff, this sport's post season remains ineffective.
A super-exciting exhibition, to be sure. But a broken post-season.
A satisfactory endpoint is either: split the P5 and the G5, and form 8 team tournaments. Or maintain a 10 conference league and continue towards a 16-team tournament.
An argument which compels a true conference champion (the G5 champs don't deserve what they've earned, because they just suck) to perpetually sacrifice their spot at the table for a stop-gap solution (the rich must have their handouts, no matter how few of those we can afford to give) must focus on irrelevant minutiae. That argument is inherently misleading.
Apparently as fans, we will continue to argue about this until it resembles an actual sports tournament.
College football is much more interesting if teams outside of the SEC are involved, and have a chance at the national championship.
Which is why I don't so much mind if the national championship gives teams outside the SEC an equal shot at getting into the playoffs. If I want professional football, I can tune in on Sunday.
This is a great point. I now fully support jettisoning the SEC to become the dumb-ass farm league for the NFL it so desperately wants to be.
SEC-ede Paawwwwllllllll!!!!!
I'll Co-sign this take. It is mind bottling how much real estate the SEC and some media members own in people's brains.
Other than the UCF (or similar G5) problem, I don't have an issue with the 4 team playoff we have. It has worked. 8,12, or 16 team playoffs won't make it less likely for Bama to win (probably more likely). But, I would like to see a system where every team at least has a path to the playoff.
Except there are 10 conferences.
Only 5 that matter.
Yeah, as an ACC football fan, I am leery of any football conversation that goes down the path of "the ones that matter"
I'm not. I don't think VT is in any danger of being left behind should the P5 be reduced to the P4... or if any other major development should happen. Short of reducing elite college football to 20 teams or less, VT will be involved. And if that happens, I'll happily find another activity to waste away my time with.
Besides, we've probably already reached peak football culturally speaking. Enjoy it while you can because it won't be around for ever in its current form.
Then why do the other 5 conferences even exist?
Until 25 years ago, VT was a school that "didn't matter", because we didn't have any sort of pedigree and weren't in a conference. Even when we were invited to the Big East, we were brought in to be a cellar dweller with Rutgers and Temple, so the top teams all got 3 easy wins. Then we suddenly became relevant and won 4 conference titles in the first decade.
Every time I hear someone spouting off elitist bullshit like this on this site, I wonder how little VT history they are familiar with. Frank Beamer pulled us out of the cheating scandal that it took for us to finally notch our first bowl victory into a team that was relevant on the national scene by our own merit, and some of y'all are way too quick to deny other teams the same opportunity.
Second bowl victory. We won the Peach Bowl.
Yes, the Peach Bowl was our first bowl victory. And shortly afterwards, our coach resigned as numerous infractions began to surface, infractions that probably contributed some to the quality of the team on the field.
Lol... I was born in Blacksburg and grew up with the institution. I just find it's current reality more interesting than what I grew up with.
VT is an elite institution now (relatively speaking). And I don't have a problem with it.
If you like the idea of including G5 schools fine. But I like the idea of separation and P5 v. P5.
The other five conferences exist to market their respective programs, not for anything nobler.
If your ideal situation is to separate the P5 from the G5, then the G5 should have a national championship of their own to play for.
Until that happens, I will continue to stump for their inclusion in the FBS playoffs, since that group of 60 teams are the only teams out of over 10 thousand that belong to a conference and yet do not have a clear path to a national championship. An unlikely path for most, sure, but a clear path for all of them, except for the 60 G5 teams in FBS football.
I fully support a G5 playoff.
I would also fully support the G5 champ trolling the P5 champion and vice versa.
I repeat,
I'd rather focus on where we agree than where we don't.
Why not both?
6 teams.... Top 2 - Get a bye
Week 1: #3 vs. #6 and #4 vs. #5
Then play out as normal.
How do the people who feel college athletes should be paid, advocate for those same athletes to play more games for free? Especially given that the teams included in an expanded playoff are talent rich and have a much higher makeup of potential nfl players who have to bare the risk of injury in these added games?(unlike fcs teams and their playoffs) This question is for those who do believe they should be paid. I don't want to derail the thread with the pay or not pay debate.
Eliminating non conference games against fcs opponents will likely force several of those schools to forfeit a large part of the athletic department because the only this that keeps them operational is the million dollar paycheck from said game.
Reducing games on the schedules also have a major impact on local businesses in university towns, especially ones like Blacksburg. In talking to one business owner, they estimated a loss of several hundred thousand in revenue from the ECU game being canceled.
Consider that the answer to what playoff format is best is not so simple. It is in fact an extremely complex system and changes have a significant ripple effect with several iterations of unintended consequences. I am happy with 4. I don't think any of the national champions that have arisen from the current system were underserving. To those who think UCF deserves a shot, replace Notre Dames schedule with UCF's schedule. Would you advocate for ND to be in the playoff if they went undefeated with that schedule?
No. I'd rather eliminate 1 nonconference game on the front end of the regular season AND have an 8 team playoff, rather than ditch CCGs.
16 team playoff, 11 conference champions and 5 at large teams. Nothing else is an acceptable option. If you win your conference, you play for a title, just like every other sport (including football.) And before you start with the "nobody will watch in on TV" nonsense, 1) this isn't supposed to be about TV-it is about competition and B) I guarantee the ratings would be higher than the Tier 1 Bowl (like the Music City Bowl) it would replace.
I think there are only 10 football conferences now. WAC doesn't sponsor football anymore.
So, 10 and 6?
I thought there were 11. Oh well. 10 and 6 then. Win, you are in. Period. Not people in a back room "deciding who deserves it" outside of the at larges. It also makes conference championships mean something again.
If we ditch the championship games, then we might as well just ditch conferences, and have either 65 or 130 independent teams (depending on how you feel about the P5/G5 split).
Or, the conferences could condense down into a Power 4, and then the conference championship games would be the first round of an 8-team playoff.
No.
But I know I'm an outlier. I don't want a four team playoff; I don't even care about a two-team playoff. I like the weirdness of college football and the bowl system, and I don't care about who claims "the team I like was #1 six years ago!" Determining the "best" team is the lynchpin of the playoff argument, and I just don't care about it.
Absolutely not. Requiring a conference championship win as criteria for getting into the playoff is essential to the spirit of the playoff itself. Eliminating conference championships in order for a committee to select more teams based on arbitrary metrics gets us farther and farther away from the system fans desired near the end of the BCS era to begin with. This would be a ridiculous reaction and would only disrupt the system even more. You'll end up with two or three teams from the wealthiest leagues. An 8 team playoff, selected by committee, could potentially be Bama, Clemson, Georgia, Florida, OSU, Oklahoma, Michigan and Texas. In a year like that one wonders what the fucking point is.
I'm sure they'd still have conference champions, they'd just be determined on regular season records. Same thing, right? [ducks]
If we eliminate divisions within conferences, the two best teams would always be in the conference championship and we could get rid of some of the at large debate because the conference championship would be more like a play in round 1 of the playoff. 10 champs advance to playoff with top 6 receiving a first round bye.
I'm not convinced I would like this but it is a thought I had that would be interesting.
What if VT, Miami, and Clemson all get to the end of the regular season with one loss each, but none of them played each other? Which two teams are the best?
Miami and Clemson... because of their names.
Alabama and Ohio State
Kind of a side bar but it will be interesting to see if first day draft picks start bowing out of the playoffs to prep for the combine. If they do it could have a noticeable impact on the playoffs.
Agree with the idea that conference championships should never ever be an automatic berth in the CFP.
Also, no, I won't give up conference championship weekend for an 8 team playoff.