If you have a 16 team playoff, that means the overall winners will play
[ul]
[li]13 regular season games[/li][li]1 conference championship game[/li][li]3 playoff games[/li][li]1 championship game[/li][li]For a total of 18 games[/li][/ul]
Unless you realign the conferences and reduce the number of regular season games, I think that’s too many. The injuries will be pretty bad by the end of that season.
And if you cut down the number of regular season games you are costing the home teams significant money. Granted, they may get that back if they host playoff games, but most teams won’t ever host those games so you’re costing them money without giving them anything back. It probably would be fine for Alabama (who would be playing those playoff games) but not so great for Vanderbilt or Mississippi (who would give up 2 home games each year).
Now, if you pay the players and make it a business, great. But these players are essentially being force-worked at the whim of an organization in which they don’t have a voice, at the expense of their future earnings.
So what? If you won a Power 5 championship, you’re good enough for the tournament.
You touch on another point, the overemphasis on losses in the polls and in the committee. A close loss to even a very good team can kill you. So the top contenders fill up their non-conference schedules with the likes of Mercer, instead of testing themselves against the best or even the good. That’s not in anyone’s interest, especially the kids from the likes of Mercer, who get beat up but don’t get paid for it. Giving the conference champ an automatic bid covers a lot of that problem, and if you didn’t win the conference, well then, your argument for making the playoffs is weak.
Heaven forbid we miss such instant classics as Alabama-Mercer or Georgia-Samford. Are you really trying to argue that they NEED a 13 game regular season? The system currently rewards P5 teams for beating on lesser competition in meaningless matchups. Why not remove the bullshit games and trade them in for meaningful games later? Eight regular season games, two out of conference matchups, a conference championship for the worthy, and a max of four playoff games - coincidentally, the same number of games Georgia will play this year.
Because you need to convince the colleges that they want to take this on. Boring regular season games still generate lots of income for both teams. The big schools like an easy game and the small schools can use the income.
This isn’t something that can just be imposed from the outside; the colleges involved have to get something out of it. An 8 or 16 team playoff would certainly benefit most of the P5 teams but probably not all of them equally. And it would hurt many smaller conferences and teams.
It can be done. If you were imposing a system from scratch it would be easier. But if you want the buy in from all the Div 1 programs and the existing bowls you need to meet their needs. There are ways to make it work by restricting the playoffs to just the top tier of teams/conferences, but that’s just ensuring that whatever teams are great right now will always be great. Granted, that’s happening to a good degree already but it’s still a concern.
Interesting possible playoff structure that helps even things out, without putting too many teams/players at risk of playing too many games. But the schools/conferences have to buy into it, still a sticking point.
That one works only if the Power 5 conference championships consist of 5 of the 8 first round playoff games, and if the conferences keep the revenue. Without that they’ll never go for it, but with it they might.
Interestingly enough, I just saw where Saban is complaining that a week between playoff games isn’t enough. I can’t imagine what he’s been smoking - Bama hadn’t played a game since late November, now he says they need even more time between the Sugar Bowl and the national championship?
I’m with you regarding the long break between the end of the season/conference championships and the playoffs. It’s mainly there for tradition, not to mention allowing space for the dozens of minor bowls during December. With an 8-team playoff, you could do the first round in mid-December, maybe 2 weeks after conference championships; semifinals a week after that, and your championship game could be right around New Years.
But that would cut into the profitability of all those bowls. That’s the nut you’d have to crack to expand the playoffs.
The regular season is only 12 games, not 13. Teams in a conference championship game play 13. So you’re looking at 17 games for the two teams in the national championship; 16 for the losing semifinalists; 15 for the quarterfinal losers.
Personally, an 8-team playoff should be enough, and could be almost completely done during the month of December. That still means 16 games for the two title contenders (without any other changes), but that’s possible. Again, in my view, cutting the regular season to 11 would be fine, but university athletic budgets across the land would not agree with me.
It traditionally put the Big Bowls on New Year’s Day, and the lesser ones on the previous few days, allowing the fans to include a nice year-end vacation someplace warm along with the bowl trip. Move big games earlier in December and there will be empty seats and unhappy boosters.
Exactly, especially for smaller schools and/or schools without a national alumni network. Miami has trouble filling the stadium during the regular season, it’s a relatively small private school, a playground for wealthy north easterners, and doesn’t have a stadium on campus. UCF may have a large enrollment, but it’s mostly a commuter school and doesn’t have a massive alumni network nationwide.
So, you could have a larger playoff, but sending Miami and UCF to Tucson or Dallas to play a bowl game on December 15 would just ensure a half empty stadium at best.
Not for some time now. It’s a legitimate big-campus school.
Since the school was only founded in the Seventies, yes. That’s part of how it’s easy to screw 'em, of course - there are far fewer rich boosters to piss off. There are still a lot more Gators fans than Knights fans even in Orlando, even now - just look at the license plates. UCF has had to put out “Hometown Team” logo merch in Orlando to combat it.
The trouble I foresee is that, if you take the Big-4 bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar) and make them the quarter-finals, you run the risk of significantly reducing their take. A quarter-final Rose Bowl between, say, UCF and Clemson would probably not sell out. And, it removes those four bowls permanently from their traditional conference tie-ins.
Perhaps the solution is to schedule Christmas bowls for the quarter-finals, and let the semi-finals be run similar to how they are now (rotated among the big bowls). Some of the “lesser” bowls might be willing to become permanent quarter-final games, given that they don’t usually sell-out as it stands. But I’m dubious.
I expect that the playoffs will occur if and as when the bowls die out.
You mean the way the NIT “died out” when the NCAA started conducting its own basketball championship tournament?
There will always be bowls, if for no other reason than to give teams that have very little chance of getting into the playoff something to play for. (It also gives the host cities something to point at.)
Of course, the playoffs can be whatever a majority of the FBS schools want them to be - and if you include Coastal Carolina, which becomes a “full” FBS member in 2018 (August 1, if I am reading the bylaws correctly), the “haves” and “have nots” are divided evenly, 65-65, with Liberty joining the “have nots” in 2019.
Remember, tickets sold to bowl games mean nothing to ESPN.
Only TV ratings matter.
Even to the large number of bowl games they own and operate.
Armed Forces Bowl
Birmingham Bowl
Bahamas Bowl
Boca Raton Bowl
Camellia Bowl
Celebration Bowl
Famous Idaho Potato Bowl
Frisco Bowl
Gasparilla Bowl
Hawaiʻi Bowl
Heart of Dallas Bowl
Las Vegas Bowl
New Mexico Bowl
Texas Bowl
There was a time when College Football Rankings did not even consider post-season performance (Bowl Games) in the end-of-season rankings. After all, not all teams went to bowl games and, since they were merely exhibition games, how a school’s team performed in a bowl game might not be characteristic of how they performed over the season. This caused controversy, however, since you could end up with the #1 ranked team losing a bowl game but still maintain their #1 ranking. So, it was decided that this controversy could be eliminated by using the bowl performance in end-of-season rankings.
Then, as the number of bowl games increased and the majority of ranked teams were invited to a bowl game, it was argued that bowl performance should be considered in the end-of-season rankings, since the bowl games allowed teams to match off against each other that would not normally play during the season. The bowl games allowed the opportunity to better evaluate teams from different regions. This caused controversy, however, since there was nothing in place to insure the #1 ranked team would play the #2 ranked team. You could end up with, for example, the #1 ranked team losing to a #5 ranked team and the #2 ranked team losing the # 4 ranked team and #3 team beating #7. What a mess! So, it was decided that this controversy could be eliminated by making sure that #1 played #2 in a bowl game.
This, however, created problems where the #1 team had played and beat the #2 team during the season. Some people felt that a “rematch” was pointless and it would be better if a team that had not already lost to #1 could have a chance at the “title”. Oh, boy, did this cause controversy. The whole point of considering the bowl games in the end-of-season rankings was to help in evaluating teams that did not meet during the regular season, not to give losers a second chance to beat the #1 team. But, if we had a playoff, even with just 4 teams, then it would be highly likely that the top two teams would be included in that 4, so that would make sure the ultimate winner was deserving of being called “#1”! This, would surely end the controversy.
The only thing that expanding the playoffs will do is trivialize the regular season. As long as a team is “good enough” to get in the playoffs, how they played the regular season doesn’t matter. Even an 8-team system necessarily means that winning your conference isn’t important (in my opinion, the playoffs should only be between conference champions or highly-ranked independents; you don’t win your conference, too bad–do better next year).
No, expanding the CFB playoffs is the wrong direction. Just fix the BCS. If the #1 and #2 have played before, have the BCS game between #1 and #3. If you didn’t win your conference, you’re not eligible. If you want to be considered the team with the best season in College Football, winning a conference may not be a prerequisite, losing your conference really should disqualify you.
