CFB Playoffs - Are we done?

[DragonFire]

If you got to 16 teams, you can allow every conference champ in, no fuss, no muss. That undercuts one of the largest criticisms of the current process, the access of teams outside the P5. Even within the P5. Then you do the at large teams, and seed the entire field. The worst conference champs can be 16 seeds, it still accomplished the same stuff. People might complain about non P5 seeding but it is still preferable to no shot at all. And by allowing more teams with a realistic shot, you hopefully stop what is happening now, where all the recruits pool in the exact, same, teams because they know they don’t have a great shot at winning going other places. 

[GrantNKY]

 Very accurate tweet here from Joel Klatt who is my favorite cfb analyst. 

[MBWC41]

47 minutes ago, GrantNKY said:

 Very accurate tweet here from Joel Klatt who is my favorite cfb analyst. 

Teams that compete for National Championships bring in top recruiting classes...shocking...

[TheDeuce]

21 minutes ago, MBWC41 said:

Teams that compete for National Championships bring in top recruiting classes...shocking...

Right. I’d guarantee that list looked very similar prior to the CFP.

[Bluegrasscard]

Three of the six years of CFP ended with 1 vs 2.  One 1 vs 3, one 2 vs 4, one 3 vs 4.  The 4th seeds that won were Ohio State and Alabama. 

The BCS seemed to get halfway there.  Four teams seems to be right. 

Its hard to see that going to 8 teams helps anything.  This year there is more of a case due to the lack of games and issues with the logistics.  But looking at the previous six years it hard to see anywhere where a 5 to 8 seed would have any real chance.  

I think eight teams is tough sell.  Sixteen teams is an impossible sell. 

[GrantNKY]

7 hours ago, Bluegrasscard said:

 

I think eight teams is tough sell.  Sixteen teams is an impossible sell. 

I think this all depends on who you’re selling to. I think a lot of schools and fans would greatly buy a 16 team playoff. We all know that it’s extremely unlikely that a team outside of the top 4 could win a championship in any year. But the most valuable currency in college football is hope. Hope sells and despite it being shallow hope, an 8 or 16 team playoff would be bought by a ton of schools around the country. 

[Voice of Reason]

For me, the whole thing is very stale. This year's playoff doesn't interest me. I am looking for something to change that.

[GrantNKY]

As a fan of one of the teams in the playoff obviously it’s hard for me to not be excited about the playoffs. Is it simply, in your eyes, these same teams that make it difficult to get excited or is it something else? 

[TheDeuce]

27 minutes ago, Voice of Reason said:

For me, the whole thing is very stale. This year's playoff doesn't interest me. I am looking for something to change that.

Yeah, I’m getting there too, and College Football is my favorite sport by a lot. I will watch the games more than likely, but if something else grabs my attention, I’m likely to turn it off. It’s not appointment TV for me anymore. 

[CincySportsFan]

If you go back and look through some old threads, you'll find I've been against the current system for quite awhile...and I'm an Ohio State fan, who it benefits!

The current system is fundamentally flawed in several areas, in my opinion.  The first is, that every game matters.  No it doesn't.  Not unless you're one of the teams some committee (hereby referred to as "the suits") has decided it should matter.  Even right now, you could potentially have 5 undefeated conference champions from the Power 5, and somebody will still get left out (hello Pac 12).  So right away we're taking the decision making off the field and putting it into the hands of the suits.  The playoff field is no longer decided on the field, but in a conference room.  This is wrong.

Next, we rely too much on the suits trying to determine which conference is better than another.  This was painfully obvious this year, when there was no out-of-conference games.  Example 1a...a 3-loss team being ranked ahead of other undefeated teams.  I don't know that you can completely eliminate the need for the suits, but you have to be able to minimize their preconceptions and biasedness.

The other major fault of the current set-up is that you can't control what other teams do.  Start first with the scheduling...everybody says if the little guys want to be considered, they need to play the big boys.  But, what incentive is it for the big boys to play the little guys?  It's a lose-lose situation for them.  If you beat them, you were supposed to.  And heaven forbid if you lose to them.  So, a lot G5 schools never get that opportunity to build their resume.  Is that their fault?  No.

The other thing with not being able to control what other teams do, is that we've come to rely on "strength of schedule" so much.  But, your strength of schedule relies on what your opponents have done and who they've scheduled.  Ohio State plays Penn State and Michigan every year.  Normally you'd say those are both likely top 25 opponents.  Not this year, though.  Again, is that OSU's fault?  No.  So they shouldn't be penalized for it.

So, my proposal has been...play who can play, and beat them.  You decide your fate on the field.  Eliminate all biasedness by taking all 10 conference champions.  That means that at the beginning of the year, all 130 FBS schools have the same goal in mind...win your conference.  Win and you're in (the playoffs).  

Now, there will likely be situations where certain schools were undefeated until the conference championship, or had just one regular season loss that kept them out of the conference championship game (due to a tiebreaker).  There's a case that these schools shouldn't be punished simply because they played another equally good team within their conference.  So, I'd allow 6 wild-card teams.  So a Notre Dame would still be able to get in this year, but not at the cost of another conference champion.  Here's where you can look at who's played who, and how they've faired.  The suits meet one and only one time...after the conference championships have happened.  No reason to start forming any biasedness earlier than that.

The other job the suits will do, once the 16 teams have been decided, is to seed the field.  Conference championships guarantee you a spot at the table, but not where you are seated.  So, it is very likely you could have a wild-card team host a conference champion for one reason or another.  These first round games would be played at the home field of the higher seed.  This eliminates travel for half of your teams, as it is a home game.

Second round games, could be played on campus as well, but I'd probably take them to neutral sites.  Likewise, the semifinals and finals would be at a neutral site.  And the obvious ones, are where the bowls are played.  For the top 3 games, I'd have a site in each of the east, central, and western regions that'd rotate.  Out west, the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl...the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl in the central...and the Orange Bowl and the Peach Bowl in the east.  The 3 bowls that didn't host a semi or the final, would get one of the quarterfinals in the 2nd round.  The other 3 bowl sites that you'd need, you could rotate.  (Gator, Citrus, Sun, etc.)

College football also needs to do what the NFL does with regards to TV networks.  Get everybody in.  Have games on ABC, CBS, Fox and ESPN.  Make them cross-promote.  Rotate who gets the high profile games so nobody feels they're a second-tier.  There is money to be made out there.

Another caveat that I'd impose is that to be considered for the national playoffs, you cannot schedule an FCS opponent.  Yes, I know they'd like to get a big payday by being somebody's whipping boy...but, no.  You don't get to substitute a minor league team, for lack of a better word, and still be considered.  There's 129 other teams out there that you can schedule...find one of them.

In closing, I guess I just want to see the dang thing decided on the field, not in some conference room by the suits.  Everybody keeps saying that they've always got the right teams in it, even when the #4 team has won it.  But do you really know that?  I mean, in the year that Ohio State won as a #4, there were Baylor and TCU who had legitimate reasons for being in, but didn't.  Can we definitively say that neither one of them wouldn't have done the same thing too?

It would've been nice to see Steve Young's BYU team compete for a championship, or Ben Roethlisberger's Miami team, or Alex Smith at Utah, or Marshall's Chad Pennington-Randy Moss squad.  Would they have had the horses to win the entire thing?  Maybe not.  But, who really knows...so, maybe?  But, at least it would've been decided on the field.

  

 

[ChiefSmoke]

7 hours ago, TheDeuce said:

Yeah, I’m getting there too, and College Football is my favorite sport by a lot. I will watch the games more than likely, but if something else grabs my attention, I’m likely to turn it off. It’s not appointment TV for me anymore. 

In the old bowl system.... I sure never felt like this.  

Sugar Bowl on New Year's Eve.... Cotton Bowl New Year's early afternoon, followed by late afternoon Rose Bowl... Orange Bowl that night. Even if we had school the next day, begging my Dad to let me watch every single minute of every single game. 

The good news..... the young guys will never know what they missed. 

 

 

 

[ChiefSmoke]

8 hours ago, Voice of Reason said:

For me, the whole thing is very stale. This year's playoff doesn't interest me. I am looking for something to change that.

I agree. Yes, it is. 

[Bluegrasscard]

15 hours ago, GrantNKY said:

I think this all depends on who you’re selling to. I think a lot of schools and fans would greatly buy a 16 team playoff. We all know that it’s extremely unlikely that a team outside of the top 4 could win a championship in any year. But the most valuable currency in college football is hope. Hope sells and despite it being shallow hope, an 8 or 16 team playoff would be bought by a ton of schools around the country. 

One of the effects of the CFP was that increased the number of games for schools. 

Regular seasons already were increased 20% going from 10 to 12 games (not really relted to CFP). 

But then came the requirement of a conference championship game (13 games for 2 teams out of each P5).  Then two rounds of playoffs for two teams (with one round still mapping to a traditional bowl game).  Thus, teams playing up to 15 games a season.  A 4 round playoff system adds two more games to that.  Now your at 17 games.  This is a professional level NFL schedule. 

I just think on that factor the Presidents of the Universities would take a stand that its too many games and too long a time for a season for "students".  

Would people accept a compromise and go back to a 10 game schedule overall to offset this expansion of the post season and keep the overall time frames similar? 

 

 

 

 

 

[DragonFire]

2 hours ago, Bluegrasscard said:

One of the effects of the CFP was that increased the number of games for schools. 

Regular seasons already were increased 20% going from 10 to 12 games (not really relted to CFP). 

But then came the requirement of a conference championship game (13 games for 2 teams out of each P5).  Then two rounds of playoffs for two teams (with one round still mapping to a traditional bowl game).  Thus, teams playing up to 15 games a season.  A 4 round playoff system adds two more games to that.  Now your at 17 games.  This is a professional level NFL schedule. 

I just think on that factor the Presidents of the Universities would take a stand that its too many games and too long a time for a season for "students".  

Would people accept a compromise and go back to a 10 game schedule overall to offset this expansion of the post season and keep the overall time frames similar? 

 

 

 

 

 

It’d be quite easy to drop back down in the amount of scheduled games. They did it for years upon years upon years. And what’s more, they used to use that argument as to why they couldn’t expand into a 16 team playoff - just too many games. And yet, here we are, playing that many already. 

[TheDeuce]

2 hours ago, Bluegrasscard said:

One of the effects of the CFP was that increased the number of games for schools. 

Regular seasons already were increased 20% going from 10 to 12 games (not really relted to CFP). 

But then came the requirement of a conference championship game (13 games for 2 teams out of each P5).  Then two rounds of playoffs for two teams (with one round still mapping to a traditional bowl game).  Thus, teams playing up to 15 games a season.  A 4 round playoff system adds two more games to that.  Now your at 17 games.  This is a professional level NFL schedule. 

I just think on that factor the Presidents of the Universities would take a stand that its too many games and too long a time for a season for "students".  

Would people accept a compromise and go back to a 10 game schedule overall to offset this expansion of the post season and keep the overall time frames similar? 

 

 

 

 

 

It doesn’t have to be 17 games.
 

12 regular season games

Conference championship game

Round of 8

Round of 4

National Championship

That’s 16 games and the season doesn’t haven’t to extend any longer than it already is. You could even give the top two seeds a bye in the Round of 8.