So, you would also favor a 2-team system for NCAA basketball? I mean, since it’s not a perfect system and there will always be teams that will be slighted. In basketball, only the first and second ranked teams get to play for the championship. That’s fair.
What, you don’t think that’s fair? Then, how can you accept the basketball system and then submit the above argument?
2-team playoff. Nice euphemism.
Completely agree with this.
For practical reasons it’s either 4 or 8 but even with 4 that eliminates 75% of the bitching from the last 10 years or so. I don’t think you need to go beyond 8.
Amen to this, and full stop. For a Bears fan, you’re pretty perceptive. 
There is no true, perfect way to figure out who’s the ‘best.’ Every system has its own quirks, and is valid in its own way. Using the old AP/UPI poll determines a champion in its way, just as the BCS does. Even a playoff - say magic strikes and Michigan happens to upset Alabama in the first round of some fictitious playoff. Will anyone honestly believe Michigan is a better overall team than the Crimson Tide? Upsets can and do happen; ask Oklahoma State.
While that might be fun and exciting, it really doesn’t help if you’re trying to find out who is the best. So, why remake the wheel? Sixteen teams? Twenty four teams? That isn’t going to prove anything more than what we have. Who would say with a straight face that any team in the Top 25 has an honest shot at the national championship?
I like the plus-one. Seed your top four in two New Years bowls, 1v4 and 2v3. The winners play the next week in the championship game. Simple, easy, doesn’t affect the current schedule at all, and most years you really don’t have five or more teams with a legitimate claim to the championship. That’s all I got.
It is awesome. 32 teams and they all know the deal up front. The height of the wall they have to climb is precisely measured and defined, and when all is said and done they qualify, play, and win their title. What’s the criteria for winning a national championship in the BCS? Going undefeated doesn’t even lock you in for a chance. Playing creampuffs 3-4 times a year does, though, as long as your school has the right pedigree and is from the right conference.
I agree with this.
The system itself is based on an obsession with two mutually exclusive scenarios: a system of conferences and local rivalries, on the one hand, and a national championship, on the other. If you want the former, you’ll never arrive at a good way of achieving the latter, and if you want a viable version of the latter, you need to abandon the former.
And that’s what i’m going to do.
I’m assuming that what we want is a true national championship match, and i don’t give a flying fuck whether or not Texas gets to play Oklahoma, or Miami gets to play Florida, or Cal gets to play Stanford. And this is not just about playoffs; it’s about a completely different system, one that involves the top teams playing one another on a regular basis.
The best way to do it, i think, would be to change the whole Division 1 system into a set of divisions, each with about 16-20 teams. The best 16-20 teams would play in the top division, then the next 16-20 in the next division, and so on. During any given season, you only play teams within your division, and none outside. You play every other team exactly once, and the winner of each division is decided by a four-team playoff: 1 v 4, 2 v 3, then the winners play each other for the championship.
Deciding who goes in each division would be a bit of a crapshoot in the first season, but after that the system would use a soccer-style relegation/promotion system, whereby the bottom three teams (maybe four or five?) would drop down to the next division, and the top three teams would go up to the next level.
Something like this will, of course, happen at just about the same time that hell freezes over or the Browns win a Superbowl, because just about no-one in college football is willing to acknowledge that the obsession with local rivalries is inherently incompatible with the obsession with a national championship.
To figure out a playoff, I’d first look at what I would have done in the past.
2011: 4 teams: LSU, Oklahoma State, Alabama, Stanford
2010: 2 teams: Auburn, Oregon
2009: 4 teams: Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, either Boise State or TCU
2008: 4 teams: Florida, USC, Utah, Oklahoma
2007: 8 teams: Ohio State, USC, LSU, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Georgia, Missouri
2006: 2 teams: Ohio State, Florida
2005: 2 teams: USC, Texas
2004: 4 teams: USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah
2003: 4 teams: LSU, USC, Oklahoma, Michigan
2002: 2 teams: Ohio State, Miami
2001: 4 teams: Miami, Oregon, Nebraska, Florida
2000: 4 teams: Oklahoma, Florida State, Miami, Washington
1999: 2 teams: Florida State, Virginia Tech
1998: 4 teams: Tennessee, Florida State, Ohio State, UCLA
Out of 14 years, 5 worked with 2 teams, 8 would have been best with 4 teams, and 1 was so messed up it needed 8 teams.
Here is where we hit a snag though. If the 4 team playoff is chosen by computers and coaches polls, we would have gotten some awful choices.
2008 is a particularly egregious example. USC and Utah should have been in the playoff, but the actual top 4 was Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, giving us 2 pairs of teams that had already played. Note that Utah absolutely massacred Alabama that year.
I think a selection committee might have chosen correctly, so I would love to give a 4 team playoff with a committee a shot. If we stick with computers and polls, I’d rather have 8 teams because computers and polls are downright horrible.
IMO, that is not the issue.
IMO, The issue is why #16 gets a chance and #17 does not get a chance. a team is going to get slighted.
There is also some issues that is worth mentioning (or mentioning again)
Lets go with the assumption that these kids are not getting paid for playing football. And most of them are not. (in case of 16 team playoff), the winners have got to practice and prepare for 4 more games. More chance of injury.
You going to force these kids (not getting paid) to play in Madison, WS or East Lansing Mi. In December, in January. You going to have people pay $200 or more ticket to sit in sub freezing temperatures (most likely at night). Possible blizzard conditions?
All warm weather or domes sites? Supporters got to travel to see their team play. for 4 straight weeks? Even the NCAA B-Ball is only for three weeks.
I like the two team playoff (and it is a playoff despite what anyone wants to say). I don’t think teams like Oklahoma, Va Tech and Michigan deserved a chance at the championship.
4 teams, it’s only 1 extra game. If you’re not one of the top 4 teams in the country, you’re just shit out of luck.
The “someone gets slighted” argument works only so far down the line; there has to be a cutoff point somewhere, and it needs to be as close to the top as reasonably possible. If it’s a close call between #s 4-6, well, tough shit. In the current system those teams are out of it long before any debate is even started. 4 teams still allows for the very best, closest matched teams to decide it on the field.
You have stated in almost the exact words I would have chosen the exact system I want to advocate.
To that end I want to develop those divisions you mention based on some long-term strength ranking of the 120 teams. I’ve started a thread for that purpose at Help find (or figure out) meaningful long-term FBS strength rating(s) and all input and criticism is welcomed!
I’ve heard some favor a six team playoff similar to the NFL where 1 & 2 get a bye and 3/6 & 4/5 play. But with 5 weeks off already, do those teams really need a bye?
Rather than retype and relink to some additional ideas, let me just point to this post.
The problem is that mid-majors are held to different rules than the big schools and even among the big schools the criteria changes. Let’s look at Boise St., OSU and Alabama.
A lot of people justify Alabama being ahead of OSU on the basis that losing by a field goal to a #1 undefeated team beats out losing to a woeful Iowa St. AND that the loss outweighs OSU’s tougher SOS.
Boise State loses on a field goal that literally missed by inches. And that was against a TCU team that has been pretty good the last couple of years and finished #18 in the nation. The OSU kicker shanks a kick. It wasn’t even close and again, OSU lost to ISU. Now if we use the same criteria that is used to justify Alabama being ranked higher than OSU, then why is Boise St ranked below OSU.
That’s why I think that the +1 needs to be expanded to an 8 team playoff. Because I guaranty the top 4 teams will always be a part of the old boys network in college football.
Piggy-backing on this point, it’s one thing to get 2k, 3k, or even 10k fans for the most rabid fan base (Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, etc.) to fill an arena that holds 15k-25k, depending on the round (more for the Final 4). It’s quite another to get 2 questionable fan bases (does Oregon travel well? How about North Carolina for football in a hypothetical situation? My team, Miami, isn’t known for bringing huge crowds) to fill a stadium of 70k-100k. Also keep in mind that fans traveling for March Madness are guaranteed seats for a session of games, not just 1 game. Are they going to sell Superdome tickets with games on back-to-back days, and fans will pay a discounted price for 2 games? Surely they won’t be playing a game 30 minutes after the first. And if this is the case, is a place like Lincoln, NE or Salt Lake City the place to be holding a doubleheader in December?
It was an extreme example. If you read the thread, you would see that I’m in favor of a “plus-one,” or 4 team playoff. This would eliminate a lot of the problems you have presented in your post.
The reason #5 would get slighted and #4 would have a chance is that #4 met the criteria the conferences agreed upon when they adopted the system. It’s the same reason Alabama made the NCG this year and OK St did not. However, I maintain that the legitimacy of the eliminated team’s gripe is reduced as the number of teams included increases. This year, Oregon would have been the first team out. Sorry, but you lost 2 games whereas the top 4 lost 0 or 1.
I think this is pretty much correct.
And I think that those who value the latter over the former simply do not understand college football.
QFT, and the reason for that is that the media is pushing it because it’s an easy to digest and promote concept. People that consume everything ESPN shits out and have no personal connection to college sports in a traditional sense simply cannot tell the difference and in that we’re probably doomed.
But you can have an in between system that kind of gets both, but does a better job than today.
4 team playoff would be much better than today and an 8 team playoff would be even better.
I don’t think you need to go beyond 8.
The problem is, by nature, most people want to know who the best of everything is.
Case in point: in 1965, the Emmy Awards changed when Television Academy president Rod Serling decided that the awards should change from a system of “the best in each category wins” to “either you deserve an Emmy, or you don’t - maybe more than one actor deserves one; maybe none of them do”. So many people were confused after the 1965 Emmys, primarily because they couldn’t figure out “who won,” that they went back to the system being used now the following year.
It has even gotten to the point where there is a “national championship” in high school basketball (however, few schools are allowed to compete in it, as every state’s high school athletic federation says that a school that competes in this sort of thing might as well forget about competing in any future state championships in any sports).
admittedly, this year there was a clean break between #4 and #5. It doesn’t always work out that way. But that ignores Boise who lost one game. And Houston who lost one game
It is conceivable that there could easily be 5 or more undefeated teams. or 5 teams from AQ with one loss.
My main point is that is almost every year, in every scenario, teams are going to get slighted.
I like that the game between Texas/Oklahoma game means something. and the Michigan/Ohio State game. and the Miami/FSU game. The 1st game between Bama/LSU should have been elimination game but OkSt spit the bit by losing to a clearly inferior team that finished with a losing record.
College Football is the one sport where (nearly) every game counts. yes, Bama got a mulligan, but only because other teams could not seal the deal. Stanford could not beat Oregon. Okie State did not beat Iowa St.
of the one loss teams, Bama had the best “loss”. Their only loss was to a team that did not lose.
16-team playoff. I’d be cool, I suspect with about any reasonable method to pick these 16 as long as any unbeatens got an automatic bid to the tournament.