I don’t see why the proposals for the expanded playoff always include automatic bids for Conference Champions.
There should be no automatic bids if there’s a chance a mediocre team like Northwestern, Pitt, or Utah could make it in on a fluke “any given Saturday” type situation.
No, sorry. For me, the whole what to do about a Small 5 team that is going undefeated can be dispelled if/when those teams step up their non-conference schedule and take on comparable opposition. There’s been too many examples in the past of teams like them who, on the biggest stage, laid an egg. It IS a shame their game against UNC was cancelled this year. And one can point to the victory against Pitt and compare the result favorably with the win by Clemson in Saturday’s ACC Championship. But they have wins over South Carolina St. and FAU on their resume, which isn’t exactly making heads turn.
I think Georgia is probably the 2nd or 3rd best team in the country, but part of being admitted to compete for the championship is rewarding teams for their achievements on the field, regardless of what we think they’re capable of. I don’t think Notre Dame or Oklahoma is more capable of beating Alabama than Georgia, but they achieved more on the field. If Georgia hadn’t been beaten to a pulp by a good but not great LSU team, they would have been only a 1-loss team and I would have argued for Georgia remaining number 4. As it is, I think OSU, and not OU, should be the number 4 team, but again, OU had the better performance on the field. Ohio State getting murdered by Purdue was too much for the committee to forgive.
Sorry, that’s the deal. If conference championships are supposed to mean anything, make them mean something. A 4-loss Northwestern upsets Ohio State to win the B1G? THEY WON THE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP, and everything that goes with it, including a playoff berth (if that’s how the playoff is set up). You don’t like that? Then you should have won the damn game.
What this does is it makes the conference championship games essentially a pre-first-round playoff game. You went undefeated or had one loss, won your division, got yourself a nice top-ten CFP ranking? Congratulations- but you gotta win that conference title game to move on (or hope for that at-large nod, of course).
Your point about the fluke “any given Saturday” applies to the actual playoff games too, you know. A playoff does not guarantee the “best” team is going to win. It just crowns a champion, just like conference championship games do, and that’s all we can hope for.
I’d like to see Power 5 conference champions, regardless of records, get automatic bids. Then have three at-large bids who could come from any conference, whether it’s an undefeated team from a less respected conference or even a 2-loss team from, say, the SEC or Big 10.
I think 16 teams is the only fair way. All FBS conference champions should get a berth, remaining slots to conference also-rans. Currently we have over 100 teams in FBS but half of them are shut out of the playoff before the first kick of the season. Let’s also eliminate play vs. FCS teams. If you want in the playoff, you need to schedule at least one OOC road game against a power 5 conference team and no games against FCS teams and no playing every single OOC game at home. Currently we reward teams for cupcake OOC schedules.
Chicago and St. Louis produce plenty of talent. Both are easily accessible to Univ of Illinois. Like I said, Illinois has no excuse to be as historically inept as they have been, especially considering examples like Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin that have had success with arguably less of a talent pool to draw from.
I don’t buy all of the love for Georgia.
Alabama played an uncharacteristically awful 1st Half. I don’t give Georgia much credit just for giving Alabama a scare, especially when Bama played so poorly.
That game was so obviously over as soon as Alabama made it 28-21. After Bama scored that TD, I said to my wife, “if UGA doesn’t score a TD on this drive, it’s over”. Sure enough…
Notre Dame and Oklahoma deserve to be in over UGA. Hell, I would have put Ohio State in over UGA.
if they do a 16 team playoff they would run into exams. (they have to give lip service to that)
They could cut back to 11 games but that won’t happen because they won’t give up money for the 12th game.
The FCS teams make a lot of cash playing the Power schools so they won’t be happy about giving up those games.
Bottom line is like most things, follow the money.
No, the committee got it right. Oklahoma’s loss was a close one (3 points) to a good Texas team, a loss they were able to avenge in their conference championship game. Ohio State’s loss was a drubbing to a mediocre Purdue team.
As a Notre Dame fan in Ohio, I get to hear all about how unfair it is that ND doesn’t play a conference championship game. As if the 2016 playoff berth never happened for OSU, who did not play a conference championship game that year. Can’t blame OSU fans for forgetting that dreadful playoff appearance.
39 bowl games, and there are still bowl-eligible teams not going to a bowl. That’s 78 teams playing out of 130 in the FBS (I think one team of those is in transition and not eligible). Add in the four teams that were bowl-eligible, but not invited, and that’s 82 out of 130.
One reason I’ve always been excited by the entire college football season is that the regular season games are so important. One loss can do you in. By expanding the playoff format, you get like the NBA or NHL where a loss or even two isn’t a problem because a host of people are getting into the playoff.
Also, consider the fact that conference title games are really an unofficial tier of the playoff system. Alabama vs. Georgia was a playoff game, with Georgia being eliminated. This allowed Oklahoma, the team that won their “playoff game” against a tough Texas team, to enter the playoff format.
The four best teams are there as far as I’m concerned.
If they expand the playoff format to even 8 teams, as the SEC commissioner, I would immediately eliminate the SEC title game because they would be eliminating themselves.
Oh, UCF? What bullshit! To those crying that UCF should be in the playoff, I emphatically say, “PLAY SOMEONE!” Their perfect record is against a bunch of very imperfect teams. Beat Georgia or LSU or Texas A&M or Ohio State or Michigan first, then talk.
UCF was supposed to play UNC this year but that likely would have been a blowout since UNC was terrible (3-9) and fired their coach.
The trouble with saying that “conference championships are part of the playoff system” is that it doesn’t always work out to be true. Explain to The Ohio State University what their first round “playoff” game against Northwestern got them? Or the “playoff” game between Washington and Utah? So that’s the trouble with the idea that a four team playoff is really some sort of eight team playoff with unofficial first round games.
Look, the bottom line to the whole argument is that EVERY other NCAA sport, and even all three other divisions of THIS sport, have a separate set of playoffs that crown a champion (some sports, it’s a tournament that does this, like golf). And those playoffs always invite more than four teams to the dance. The ONLY reason that the FBS isn’t doing that is because the NCAA schools figured out that they could milk the bowl season for far more money than a 16 team playoff bracket would get them. As long as that continues to be the motivating factor (save the bowls!), we will never have a true NCAA football champion for the top Div. I schools. But if they could figure out an 8 team playoff system utilizing the top 8 bowls for the first tier, they’d be a lot closer.
Liberty, with its 6-6 record, would have been eligible had there not been at least 78 other bowl-eligible teams.
I’m going to wade into this thread after two years against my better judgment, simply to point out to you (and anyone else who spouts this nonsense) that this isn’t how college football works.
You can’t just unilaterally add good teams to your schedule. First, schedules are made 5-10 years in advance. Second, they have to agree to play you. This year UCF was scheduled to play Pitt and UNC. When those games were signed five years ago, both were coming off ranked seasons and both had won their divisions in the preceding two seasons. Last year UCF was scheduled to play Maryland and Georgia Tech.
At the time of the Maryland game, they (MD) had just routed Texas. In the third quarter of the UCF game, their starting QB was injured, and the next week their backup was injured; they played the rest of the season with their third string QB and were predictably awful on offense. So that game turned from a win over a top-10 team into a fairly meaningless game.
The games against UNC and GATech were cancelled because of hurricanes. UCF’s games against the largest programs are routinely cancelled by the other team. And I’m just talking about the teams that will actually sign a contract with UCF. Outside the ACC, most Power 5 teams won’t even discuss a home-and-home series. Alabama demanded a 3-for-1 series starting in 2026 and then cancelled that because it interfered with their regular out-of-conference cupcakes.
In short, bleating about “PLAYING SOMEONE” makes it clear that you don’t understand the sport and should stop talking.
I’ll also add one more thing: undefeated is undefeated. If you want to argue that Alabama/Clemson/Notre Dame’s undefeated record is better than UCF’s, I heartily agree. But it makes no sense at all to put teams with a loss in before teams that beat everyone in front of them.
Seeing the college football and B-Ball athletes are (technically) exploited as much as a thoroughbred horses, I would like to see the Quarter finals played on Xmas Eve.
On paper, I can’t argue with the committee’s decision. But I maintain Ohio State is better than Oklahoma, and I think that they started to find their groove late in the season. Neither team has a lock-down defense, and I get that the Big 12 is a league full of pass-happy scoring machines, but Ohio State proved they can kinda, sorta play on both sides of the ball. I’m just not convinced that OU can, and when you play the best teams in the nation, it’s difficult to win with just offense alone. They had a scary offense last year - maybe one of the scariest offenses I’ve seen at the college level - and they didn’t make it past Georgia.
It’s not that it’s unfair; it’s just that some years, their wins aren’t that impressive. I concede that Notre Dame is a good team, and a very well-coached team. They consistently find ways to win games. But they’re about to face teams that are going to expose their weaknesses.
Quarters on Christmas Eve and the Championship on New Year’s Day. Perfect…which is why it’ll never happen.
Urban Meyer quits again…