A four team playoff is just too small. I say expand to 16, give 10 bids to each FBS conference champion and have 6 wild cards. Or if we persist in a 4 team system with special status for power 5 teams, make some playoff eligibility requirements. You want in the playoff? Then you must schedule a road out of conference game with a power 5 team. And you must not schedule an FCS team. And say 5 of your wins must come against teams with winning records. No more feasting on cupcakes and relying on the bias of the committee to have the skids greased for you every year.
Yes but then we’re basically admitting “student-athletes” are no such thing but professional athletes and due a piece of the money. It’s a part of the hypocrisy that we don’t admit that most of these kids aren’t getting the same education of the rest and are used as a source of cheap labor.
And complicating it further is the fact that many of them, especially at the serious schools, are actually getting a real education and benefiting from the system as intended. They’re the ‘beard’ covering up for the rest of a mostly corrupt system.
Trying to equate the NFL playoff structure to the NCAA playoff structure is just wrong. There is simply no comparison. This year, the NFL will have 14 teams, out of 32, in the playoffs. The NCAA had 4 teams in the playoffs, out of about 130 teams.
In my opinion, we just need some kind of clear qualification criteria for the playoffs, instead of this weird “eye test” human-committee selection process. I’m on board with making a conference championship a requirement - make it a Tournament of Champions. Should the Mountain West champ be on the field with Alabama? Not really, but at least you can say they earned their way in.
Those who complain you’re not getting the four/eight/twelve “best” teams in this way … well, how do you determine “best”? Winning your conference is, at least, a clearly defined goal. And again, in my opinion, how do you claim Georgia “deserves” to be in this type of final tournament when they failed to “prove” they’re even the best team in their own conference? This type of argument tries to dismiss upsets and the results of the regular season in favor of some kind of subjective “well, they’re obviously one of the top teams in the country, so we should give them another chance” reasoning.
I mean, the fact that Ohio State won the playoff in 2014 doesn’t justify the fact that the committee completely disregarded their loss to Virginia Tech to put them in the playoff over two 1-loss Big 12 teams. Teams can win “upsets” in a playoff, too … shouldn’t we just dismiss those like we dismiss regular-season upsets? If that’s the case, why play a season at all? Just look at everybody’s August roster and pick a champion.
We had a clear test with clear parameters - the BCS computers.
The problem was we (the humans) always wanted to make exceptions and “tweaked” the algorithms every year to fit them so they said what we wanted to say. And then blamed the computers anyway when they invariably said something we disagreed with.
So we cut out the middleman and picked the teams directly - confirming we prefer subjective decision making over anything remotely objective.
ETA: It’s all about incentives and disincentives. With a 2 team or 4 team playoff, the incentive was for conference expansion and consolidation. Switching to a format where every conference winner gets an automatic bid will lead to the reverse - small groups of teams splitting off to form ‘new’ conferences so they’re more likely to get an automatic bid. Going to 16 or 32 or whatever number of teams is just addressing the symptoms, not the disease.
That would arguably be better. 10 team conferences where every team plays each other will better indicate the best team in the conference.
Then, let’s just admit the college football playoffs aren’t about finding the best team in college football.
To be honest, by the end of the season, we have a shortlist of 5-6 teams that we know will contain the ‘best’. Did anybody really doubt an undefeated, conference champion Cincinnati was not better than a 1-loss not-conference champion Georgia?
The debates surrounding the playoffs are about access and money. We’re still trying to pretend there’s something like a level playing field for all these teams and that there’s some kind of objectivity to be served by having a couple extra games. There’s really not. It’s to satisfy people with a particular notion of ‘fairness’ and a debate on how to spread the college football wealth.
Playoffs very often don’t crown the best team. Look at the 2008 Super Bowl.
Agreed but that’s the pretense - that we are finding the best team, at least of the moment if not the season.
And why people argue against eternal playoff expansion - that it further dilutes the value of the regular season. We’re trying to have it both ways - saying we’re picking the best teams but admitting we want to include teams that aren’t.
I don’t see that as necessarily opposed. As conferences further limit Out of Conference opponents, it’s almost impossible to gauge how good a team really is vis-a-vis other conferences. A good way to allow for that is to have at least the big 5 conference winners involved.
Which is what we had back when there were just a handful of bowls - Cotton, Rose, Sugar? I think it was better when people could argue about which team was better rather than a playoff system that, given the realities of the game, can’t really deliver anything remotely close to the basketball tournament, unless you seed all the teams in October and started the playoffs then.
People HATED that system with a passion though. And it led to split national champions - I have friends who are Nebraska fans and other friends who are Michigan fans… one must tread very lightly when it comes to talking about 1997.
This. 100% this.
I tried to quote @Mighty_Mouse as well, but my phone wouldn’t let me. Basically, these arguments amount to adding an element of luck to the system. Sometimes the better team loses. It’s relatively rare in college football, but it happens. The 2007 New York Giants, for example, weren’t as good as the 2007 New England Patriots, despite the former winning the Super Bowl that year. Count me as someone who questions their legitimacy. By expanding the college playoffs, there will be the occasional odd year where a two loss team from a weaker conference will get lucky at just the right time and end up winning the championship. That doesn’t mean they were the better team, it just means they got lucky when it counted.
IMHO the beauty of Division I FBS college football is that it’s the only major American sport where the system is set up to determine which team is the best team rather than crowning a champion who may have just gotten lucky. I wouldn’t want that to change.
ETA. On the other hand, I do agree that they should get rid of the powder puff games. No more Alabama or Ohio State vs. Northeast Wyoming Tech.
One response is along the lines of “How can you claim to be choosing the true National Champion if you exclude the second-best team to make way for the fifth-best?”
Hey, you gotta admit, “The Fighting Devil’s Tower” is a hell of a mascot!
Alabama is playing a Non Conference game at Texas in 2022. do they count?
16 team playoff?
Look at Matt Corral, Ole Miss QB who got hurt in the Sugar Bowl this past weekend. I would hate to see a kid lose out on a lucrative NFL career dur to injury so couch potatoes want to see more teams in the Playoff.
That’s the major flaw why the current system is terrible. If we want to find the best team, use a ELO-type system and crown as Best whoever has the most points at the end of the season. Bowls could do their traditional match-ups. I’d be fine with that.
If we want an overall championship, then champions should be playing in a single-elimination tournament. No second chances. I’d be fine with that.
The current system can’t decide if it wants to determine the best team or the champion. It does neither and is unfulfilling.
Conversely, though, don’t the ‘opt-outs’ sort of render the whole thing moot? You may have won 12 games with your best players, but then some of them choose not to play in the bowl game. So are you still a top 4 (or whatever) team?