This already happens in Division I, Division II and Division III (though I doubt people are paying $200 or more for a ticket).
Those playoffs begin earlier in the year than the FBS playoff would begin. And what attendance do they get? 20K max?
Actually, the OSU kick at the end of regulation to win passed over the upright, which isn’t good in CFB. Not shanked at all.
An 8-team playoff is 7 games. The last regular season games are played the last week in November and the first week in December. Drop the 1AA cupcake and scale back to an 11 game schedule. The first round of the playoffs will be locally hosted during what is now the last week of the regular season. The semi-finals and championship will be hosted by what are now BCS bowls (Sugar, Fiesta, Orange, and Rose). Fans have to travel to see their teams play in those bowls anyway, and pay money. Teams won’t play games in cold weather beyond what is now the regular season and, presumably, the teams that qualify for an 8-team playoff would be playing in the BCS bowls without a playoff. Nothing changes.
[QUOTE=notfrommensa]
I like the two team playoff (and it is a playoff despite what anyone wants to say).
[/QUOTE]
Insignificant semantics. Call the championship whateverthefuck, the central argument is that too few teams participate.
A problem with going back to an 11 game schedule and dropping the FCS schools is that many of those schools have now become quite dependent on the money that brings “auto” loss brings. I read a few weeks back that pretty much every team that goes to the quarters and beyond in the FCS loses money by being in the playoffs. Take away that $500k payday a team like Montana State picks up for playing Nebraska, and MSU has just lost a huge portion of its revenue.
If you’re saying this in the “what I’d do if I was king of the world” mode, fine. But there is zero point zero percent chance of that happening.
There’s ~90 programs that have only minimal chance of getting into the BCS bowls, but that do make a nice chunk of change on that extra home game. Mississippi State, Northwestern, Rutgers, etc. are not going to give up the half-million dollars they can make on an an extra home game so that Texas and USC get a bigger payday. Even if every penny of BCS revenue was shared (which Texas and USC wouldn’t allow), the payout to the average school would be much less than a home game.
I’m not crazy about the 12th game, but it’s not going away.
Sure, but you miss the point.
Forced to choose, which we probably are, most passionate college football fans – not people who watch a couple games a year, but the people who tailgate, who travel to the bowl games, who really care – would rather keep their rivalries and traditions intact instead of having some big tournament that gives some supposedly definitive answer.
Forced to choose, I’d bet most Alabama fans would prefer a thrashing of Auburn and an SEC title to a national championship; ditto for all the major rivalries. Army fans would regard an 1-11 season with a win over Navy as at least an even proposition. Hell, my team’s (UCF) “rivalry” barely pings the meter, but I’d rather have a win over USF than a bowl win or a conference championship or a top-20 ranking.
The people who are most in favor of a national championship are the media and casual fans not closely attached to any one team or even the sport in general. Most serious college football fans aren’t necessarily opposed to an improved NC system, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the things that make the sport great and unique, e.g. the local rivalries and the bowl games. A 8 or 16 team playoff does that.
[QUOTE=furt]
If you’re saying this in the “what I’d do if I was king of the world” mode, fine. But there is zero point zero percent chance of that happening.
There’s ~90 programs that have only minimal chance of getting into the BCS bowls, but that do make a nice chunk of change on that extra home game. Mississippi State, Northwestern, Rutgers, etc. are not going to give up the half-million dollars they can make on an an extra home game so that Texas and USC get a bigger payday. Even if every penny of BCS revenue was shared (which Texas and USC wouldn’t allow), the payout to the average school would be much less than a home game.
I’m not crazy about the 12th game, but it’s not going away.
[/QUOTE]
Right, it’s not going to happen for those reasons, but I was responding to notfrommensa’s “It’s not going to happen because of too many games and cold weather” argument.
Even if you keep the 12th game, the first round of an 8-team playoff would be the second week in December, only a week later than they’re playing games in cold weather now. That’s not stretching the cold weather risk too much. And the last two rounds (semi-final and championship) can be played in the current BCS bowls, as mentioned above.
Yes, this is right. Also, enough of this meme about Iowa State being ‘woeful.’ Mediocre, sure, but it’s not like Okie State lost to Southeast Kentucky Community College or something. The Cyclones beat Iowa and Connecticut (who went to a BCS bowl the season before), went on the road to blow out a 5-2 Texas Tech team that had just upset Oklahoma, and played Kansas State and Oklahoma pretty darn close, again on the road. Yes, sure, mediocre - but the idea that OSU lost this unforgivable game to a bunch of incompetents was cooked up mostly by SEC homers to pump up Alabama’s position.
Which is funny when you see how many fans Iowa State made in Tuscaloosa that Friday night in November. 
Lots of good stuff in this thread. I agree with the comments about tradition, rivalries, and conference matchups meaning more to hardcore fans of individual schools, with this playoff/national championship issue being a bigger deal to ESPN/overall college football fans. A plus-one would work plenty good, in my opinion.
- The bows aren’t going away, so any system that simply eliminates them is a fantasy
- The conferences aren’t going away… (see above)
- The problem with our current system is that there is often a team getting shafted (ie. an undefeated Auburn in 2004 (IIRC))
- There are rarely 5 teams that can legitimately say “We believe that we are the best team in college football, and we think we have proved it on the field, and we deserve a shot at the NC”
- The bigger the playoff field, the less that the regular season means.
- Therefore, the proper size (ie power of 2) of the playoff system is 4. (I could be talked into 8, but any more is completely unnecessary)
The first 3 are undisputed facts. The next 2 are my opinion, and the last is the logical conclusion.
I think that the best system that has a chance of happening is that we go back to the original bowl system with all of the games ending by Jan 1, then have another vote and the top 2 teams play the NCG at the site of one of the 4 (or 3 or 5) major bowl games on a rotating basis.
I think that there should be some guidelines, but these would take some ironing out. For example, the #1 BCS team in the end-of-regular-season poll should play a team ranked in the top 4, but not the #2 team. The #2 team should play a team in the top 6. The #3 should play a team in the top 8, and #4 should play a team in the top 10. I’ll give a 2-slot extension for “traditional matchups”, so if Ohio State is #1, then the top PAC-12 team better be at 6 or higher, or the Pac-12 isn’t going to be in the Rose Bowl.
This is to give room to make the traditional matchups while still making a system that clears a lot of things up.
This year, the Sugar Bowl would have had LSU playing OkSt or Stanford, while Alabama most likely would have played the other in the Fiesta Bowl.
With my system, Utah would have played in the NCG after they beat Alabama.
I think I disagree with you here (though I may be misunderstanding). We already have the BCS. I think it is very possible to come up with a new system that is better in both areas.
This year provided an obvious example. LSU vs Alabama in the regular season didn’t mean as much because people were already talking about the possibility of a rematch. The SEC championship hardly meant anything, because LSU would have been in the NC regardless and just didn’t want any injuries. Going back a little, you had Texas beat Oklahoma in the regular season, Texas and Oklahoma being the top 2 teams in the Big 12 by the rankings, but Oklahoma going to the NC instead of Texas.
My point is, you are a little late to worry about this kind of thing. It’s already here. A new system could be designed to not only vastly improve the postseason, but to improve the regular season as well.
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No one said to get rid of the bowls but we need to stop pretending that the Peach Bowl or Poulan Weedeater Bowl mean anything other than to the two teams that made it in.
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Who was talking about getting rid of conferences?
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Right so how to fix it?
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Correct except that he four team that earn a shot may be ranked 1, 2, 3 and 6.
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So the NCAA Basketball Tournament (aka March Madness), NFL playoffs, etc. are all meaningless? I am so tired of this argument because it invalidates any playoff in any sport, it completely dismisses the problem that undefeated teams don’t win championships and this year alone shows how meaningless the regular season is when the Championship game is a rematch and the only justification for Alabama being in is they were the (questionably) best of the also-rans.
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8 definately as long as we’re going by a ranking system. Most years I’m sure we could find team ranked 5-8 that for one reason or another deserve a shot at the NC. It could be a star player that was out for a game or two or a team that missed being undefeated by a foot or a bad call.
First I would realign the conferences as follows
Big East
BC
UConn
Syracuse
Rutgers
Pitt
Penn St
Villanova
Georgetown
Temple
Army
Navy
Buffalo
ACC
Maryland
West Virginia
Marshall
UVa
Va Tech
UNC
Duke
Wake
NC St
ECU
WCU
SEC
South Caolina
Clemson
Georgia
Georgia Tech
Florida
FSU
Miami-FL
UCF
USF
Alabama
Auburn
Ole Miss
Miss St
LSU
Tulane
Arkansas
Tennesssee
Memphis
Louisville
Kentucky
Sun Belt
WKU
EKU
MTSU
Troy
FIU
FAU
Ark St
ULL
ULM
MAC
Akron
CMU
EMU
WMU
Northern IL
Ball St
Ohio
Miami-OH
Kent St
BGSU
Big 10
Michigan
Michigan St
Ohio St
Cincinnati
Indiana
Purdue
Notre Dame
Illinois
Northwestern
Iowa
Iowa St
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Missouri
Big 12
Texas
Teas A&m
Texas Tech
SMU
TCU
SMU
Rice
Baylor
UTEP
Oklahoma
Oklahoma St
Kansas
Kansas St
Tulsa
MWC
Colorado
Colorado St
Utah
Utah St
BYU
Air Force
Wyoming
Arizona
Arizona St
New Mexico
New Mexico St
Pac-10
Washington
Washington St
Oregon
Oregon St
Idaho
Boise St
UNLV
Nevada
Cal
USC
UCLA
Stanford
Freson St
San Jose St
San Diego St
Hawaii
I’d have the 9 Conference champs play a single elimination tourney (8 would play 9 st) on home-fields or conference title sites.
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Someone upthread posited this as part of their fantasy. (On preview, I see that someone has illustrated this for me.) My point is that unrealistic fantasies aren’t worth discussing.
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By the plan that I outlined.
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Yeah. In my plan, it could actually happen that #1 plays #5, #2 plays #6, #3 plays #7, and #4 plays #8. While this would leave the pollsters with a lot to think about, it would give the #8 team a chance to make it to the NCG.
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I’m not saying that they are meaningless, but that the larger these tournaments are, the less important the regular season becomes. EG: The NY Giants are this years Superbowl champions; they won the championship fair and square according to the rules of the NFL. I just don’t think that it should ever happen that the college NFC should be a team with 7 losses. If you can win the NCG with a slightly-better-than-even record, then what’s the point of the regular season?
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It’s late and I’m responding to stuff that I wrote several weeks ago, so for now I’m just going to challenge you to name some teams that were ranked 5-8 in the last few years that deserved a shot at the NCG. (I already pointed out that 2008 Utah would have played for the NC under my system).
I skipped this one. I wasn’t actually thinking about these minor bowls, I was really thinking about the Rose Bowl. The Pac-12, The Big Ten, and The Rose Bowl (AKA “the evil triumverate”) wield a lot of power. Any playoff system that these 3 are opposed to is not likely to pass. If I were supreme commander of this world I would say “FU” to those 3; but I’m not. They have to be convinced to come along with any system that is proposed. (Recent reports indicate that their hand may have been forced, and that they are now open to a “plus-one” system that involves playoff games in their own (arctic) turfs.)
ETA: etv78 has a lovely plan. And we can look forward to this being implemented just as soon as etv78 gets named Supreme Commander of the Universe. Until then…
fixed it
add Houston to the Big 12