College Football Is Broken: How To Fix It

[Tomcats1990]

Sounds like the Top 4 would get byes and the remaining 8 would play each other on the higher seeds home field. I like it, Ky could conceivably  have a small chance to make it. Undefeated Teams in non power 5 conferences should get their chance at the Big Boys just like College Basketball.

[Jumper_Dad]

I think 12 is a great number of teams. I love the first round being played on college campuses. 

This will all be great until a team ranked 8th or 9th gets passed over for a guaranteed mid-major slot to get in, then everyone will lose their minds...lol!

[Walter]

12 hours ago, TheDeuce said:

I like it. 

 

12 hours ago, theguru said:

Me too, 12 teams would be great.

I do still prefer 16 but again 12 would be great.

I originally wasn't a fan of more than 8 teams, but a 12 team playoff seems to make the most sense and would create a lot of excitement around college football. 

 

[CincySportsFan]

It looks like progress, but it's still a lot of smoke and mirrors, in my opinion.  Because here's what will happen...people will be foaming at the mouth arguing how a 2 or 3 loss SEC team (who didn't even play for the conference championship) is more deserving to get in, than an undefeated or just a one-loss team from the American, Mountain West or Sun Belt conference. 

Heck, even just this past year, you had 2-loss teams Iowa State, Florida and Georgia all ranked ahead of undefeated Cincinnati, Coastal Carolina and San Jose teams.  And two years ago, you had 3-loss Wisconsin, Auburn, Michigan and Iowa all ranked ahead of 1-loss Boise State and Appalachian State.  How exactly does this new setup address that?  The truth?  It doesn't.  Oh, they'll take the highest ranked team from the Group of 5?  How generous.  Please.  😒

This is just another example of a bait-and-switch.  They'll say it'll allow for the smaller schools to get in, but in reality, it'll just be used to get in 3 or 4 teams from the big boy conferences.  

I've said it before, and I'll say it again (and again, and again)...I want to see things settled on the football field, not in some hotel's conference room.  Give every conference an automatic bid.  Put every conference, every team and every player, in the same dang situation at the beginning of the year...the opportunity to play for a national championship.  Create excitement across the board, not just for a half dozen fan bases.  Conference championship games would become electric, with a berth on the line.

As a side note, I'd give you 4 other "at-large" bids, where you can "right any wrongs" by someone obvious who happened to miss out on the automatic bids.  Then, after you seed it, this allows for the top 2 teams to get a first round bye.

What we have now is an invitational tournament.  It's already great for the big schools.  And for the most part, the proposed plan doesn't really change that.

 

[GrantNKY]

I think eventually I will like it. As of right now the only thing I like about it is the first round games being played at home. I do still think that it devalues the regular season on a week to week basis, but eventually I think I’ll like it. College football is without a doubt the best sport in the world. Nothing else compares to it so changing something that I already think is perfect, does give me pause. 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

 

[Walter]

 

[futurecoach]

On 6/9/2021 at 9:27 AM, GrantNKY said:

I think eventually I will like it. As of right now the only thing I like about it is the first round games being played at home. I do still think that it devalues the regular season on a week to week basis, but eventually I think I’ll like it. College football is without a doubt the best sport in the world. Nothing else compares to it so changing something that I already think is perfect, does give me pause. 

For me it wasn’t perfect, because a team should be able to go into a season and know exactly what they would have to do to be able to have a chance to compete for a title. Players put in so much time and effort, they should be able to truly know what they have to do to have a chance to compete for a title. College football has always been basically the only sport, where a team literally could do everything it is supposed to do and still not get a chance to compete for a title. 

The four team playoff was better than the old BCS. However, it still left it to where teams still would not know before the season if they would get a chance to compete for a title. Now with 12 teams, a team can go into it and know they control their own fate in regards to having a chance to win the title. If you are a P5 school win your conference and you know you are in, you don’t have to worry about hoping human opinion thinking you are better than another team.  Then even non P5 teams at least know they will have one guaranteed spot and still a small outside chance for an at large. 
 

College football is still going to be great, because people love football. Just like how the NFL is the most popular Pro sport, and is popular year round. Adding 12 teams is not going to take away from the season. In fact it may give us even more big time non conference games. Teams won’t have to be afraid of scheduling top non conference games and possibly losing a game. Since they would know they would still control their fate by winning their conference. IMO it will give us even more top non conference matchups. Which to me makes it more exciting. 
 

So for me this makes college football even better, but that’s just my opinion. 

[TheDeuce]

6 minutes ago, futurecoach said:

The four team playoff was better than the old BCS.

Was it really though? BCS used computer numbers as ranking didn't it?

[futurecoach]

2 hours ago, TheDeuce said:

Was it really though? BCS used computer numbers as ranking didn't it?

I actually should have clarified that I liked the BCS computer rankings better, but I liked how the current playoffs had four teams, which was better than just two. 
 

I have said for years on here, that I always hated that basically college football is the only sport where a team doesn’t know for sure what they have to do in order to get a chance to compete for a title. So expanding that to 4 helped that some, and now going to 12 really helps that. Now a team can go into the season knowing that hey if we win our conference, we will get a chance to compete for the title. 
 

Which honestly for the 6 at large in the 12 team format, I would like it if they did use the old BCS system to rank them. 

[Walter]

What are everyone's thoughts on the following from Dan Wetzel?

I think I would be in favor of having all playoff games except the Semi finals and Finals on campus. 

From Dan Wetzel:

The most onerous part of the entire proposal that was released Thursday is that once again on-campus stadiums and college towns are getting shafted so the sport can maintain its commitment to cronyism by staging as many as three rounds at antiseptic, far-off NFL stadiums dubbed “bowl games” by corporate sponsors.

First-round games, featuring teams seeded 5-12, will be played on the campus of the higher-seeded team. Awesome. After that though, it’s neutral-site bowl games — increasing the bowl involvement from its current three games to seven. If you finish 1-4, you don’t get to host.

It’s senseless.

Why play games as far from fans as possible? Why make families travel week after week? Why take tourism dollars from college communities to prop up far-off locales?

Why cut out the best part of the sport?

Revamped 12 team format has one big problem

[TheDeuce]

I think playing every game up to the semis on campus is exactly what should happen. 

The SEC would NEVER go for that.

[Jumper_Dad]

14 hours ago, TheDeuce said:

I think playing every game up to the semis on campus is exactly what should happen. 

The SEC would NEVER go for that.

The SEC would probably love to be able to host a couple of games each season. Why would they hate it? I know everyone is going to say, because they don't want to take a chance on playing up north in the cold. But how many teams really want to roll into Tuscaloosa or Athens and face that atmosphere either.

That said, I don't see the semis ever being on campus. It's probably fairest to the teams to be at a neutral site.

Imagine if college basketball playoffs was played on campus and you had to play the first round of the final four at Cameron, Rupp or Allen Fieldhouse...everyone would be screaming about how unfair that it was.

[GrantNKY]

On 6/11/2021 at 7:09 PM, TheDeuce said:

I think playing every game up to the semis on campus is exactly what should happen. 

The SEC would NEVER go for that.

Yep. The SEC is not going to go to Columbus, Madison, South Bend, etc. in January.