Which is better, a 4, 8 or 16 team playoff?

[DrinkinwitTerrellFarley]

I say 8, and first round games are at the site of the higher seed. Too much travel costs otherwise and less of the 3rd party bowl businessmen involved the better

 

[simplekin]

5 power champs, and 3 at large.

 

[louisianared]

5 power champs and 3 at large.

I totally disagree that it would hurt the regular season. I've been a big fan of FCS football and having followed an FCS team the run for the playoffs has not diminished the regular season one bit. There is still a ton of dram because in order to ensure you are a lock for the playoffs you need to win out.

 

[Mavric]

I've said for years that 8 is the number. Five conference champs (provided you're in the Top 10) and fill in the rest. You get all the one loss teams so there's not the OSU/Baylor/TCU conundrum. Yeah, you'll likely have a couple two loss teams in there but this year there would have been two two-loss teams but three of their four losses were to other playoff teams so they're hardly undeserving.

People said any playoff would take away from the regular season. Can anyone say this year's regular season was watered-down? If anything, it saved this season because how would you only choose two teams to play for the championship out of Alabama/Oregon/Florida State?

I can see the argument that the NFL playoff is watered down but this is hardly the same situation. NFL takes 12 out of 32 teams to the playoffs (37.5%). Even an 8 team playoff when only looking at the Power 5 Teams (64) would be 12.5%.

I could also go for a six team playoff because that would almost always catch the one loss and better teams but I'm not sure the bye would fly. College is just such a different setup. On one hand, the extra rest would be an advantage. But not playing a game in a month while your opponent gets to play every two weeks could also be a disadvantage.

 

[The Dude]

6 teams with 1 & 2 getting a bye.

I've always thought 6 was the best number. And I'll go at length to tell you all why.

Sometimes, such as this year, there are more than 4 teams who can make a claim to being in the top 2 and deserve a chance to play for it. But I don't recall any legitimate arguments by more than 6 teams in any given year. If you have one loss, you have an argument. If you are a conference champion, you have an argument. Going to 8 teams expands too far outside of those parameters. Six is perfect.

Having six would increase the stakes during the regular season, as there would be clear advantages to being 1 or 2, versus 3 or 4, and 5 and 6. So going undefeated still matters, strength of schedule still matters, the polls still matter. Furthermore, the games (except the Championship games) should be played at a school's home stadium. This would eliminate the need for fans to travel to three consecutive neutral locations and would increase the importance of the higher seed. Plus, no one would host more than one game (3 and 4 would get one home game, then the winners travel to visit 1 and 2).

So if a 5 or 6 seed gets into the Championship game, they have truly earned it. Non-SEC teams would have a chance to earn a home playoff game with a strong enough regular season. No patsies are getting in. Attendance would not be a concern. The regular season (conference and non-conference) would matter more than ever.

6 is the correct answer.

It's so obviously perfect, yet no one talks about it.

 

[NUance]

No matter how many teams you have, the first one left out will always cry foul. Last year the #3 team made an argument. This year the #5 team claims they got screwed. If we had 64 teams then the #65 team would complain.

As for the number of teams for the playoffs, I think there were times in the past with only two teams when the #3 team might have actually been the best team (or at least in the top two). With four teams though I think we'll always end up with the best couple of teams making it in the playoff. So I'm okay with four teams.

 

[Husker NoNo]

12 Teams. Power 5 champions. C-USA Champion, MAC Champ, and Mountain West Champion with 4 at large. The top 4 seeds get a bye, and everyone is happy.

The playoff is going to make too much money to exclude non power 5's. There will be a lawsuit.

 

[Hedley Lamarr]

12 Teams. Power 5 champions. C-USA Champion, MAC Champ, and Mountain West Champion with 4 at large. The top 4 seeds get a bye, and everyone is happy.

The playoff is going to make too much money to exclude non power 5's. There will be a lawsuit.

The power 5 will just break off and form their own league then. The non power 5s either get fat checks to get their a$$ kicked in non con or get Jack sh#t if the power 5 tell the NCAA to pound sand

 

[Enhance]

5 power champs, and 3 at large.

Not to single you out, but many people say this and you just happened to be the one I picked out! But, anyone can answer.

Why would power 5 champs automatically get a berth into the 8-team playoff? Though it's likely conference champions would be in the Top 10, that's not a guarantee. What would you do in a year like 2012, when Wisconsin was something like 7-5 or 8-5 heading into the title game, and they won? Wisconsin was an above average team that year, but I think if you ask most college football fans, they were definitely not one of the eight best teams. Would they really deserve a shot at the title over say a team that maybe didn't win their conference but only lost one-to-two games and was ranked in the Top 10, and wasn't a power 5 champion? I would say a team like Wisconson does NOT deserve a spot in the playoff in that scenario.

The committee was put together to determine the four best teams in college football based on a variety of factors, not just if they happened to be conference champions or not. You make the committee more irrelevant than relevant by guaranteeing conference champions spots. And, ESPN ratings were great every week the new CFB playoff rankings came out. I don't see ESPN letting those discussions slip away, because there'd be no point discussing the rankings if we were just waiting for conference champs.

If they're going to expand it to eight, but make five of them conference champs, I'd rather just stay at four teams.

 

[Enhance]

12 Teams. Power 5 champions. C-USA Champion, MAC Champ, and Mountain West Champion with 4 at large. The top 4 seeds get a bye, and everyone is happy.

The playoff is going to make too much money to exclude non power 5's. There will be a lawsuit.

On what grounds would they file a lawsuit? Not trying to be abrasive - I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Glendower]

I am one that agrees with Troy, at the current 4 teams no team outside of the Big5 (maybe Notre Dame) will ever get in. I would prefer 8, not too watered down which 16 or more teams would do (and basically make the regular season worthless), but also enough to allow for the occasional Boise to slip in.

“There’s no doubt that it’s all set up for five conferences, as it is,” Calhoun said per the Colorado Springs Gazette. “You’ve got to be in one of those five conferences. It’s un-American, bottom line. We live in a country where upward mobility is possible, where games should be played out on the field.”

Air Force coach Troy Calhoun says four-team playoff is 'un-American'

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/air-force-coach-troy-calhoun-says-four-team-playoff-is--un-american-221755992.html

While I predicted this first year of the four team playoffs would piss more people off than ever, the end result feels surprisingly right. Only TCU and Baylor could make a case for injustice, and they've made it fairly meekly. For all the other college football fans not invested in a single team, these are the games we'd like to see. The teams left out can make their separate cases in other bowl games, just like the old days.

But as long as there are 5 major conferences and 3 potential Cinderallas, an 8 team playoff will always sound better.

But that's kind of the "thing," isn't it? It "feels" right. Four teams relies far, far too much on subjective responses, qualitative data, and inductive reasoning.

 

[HuskerTrucker]

Including 8 teams would insure that all truly viable teams would be included. Any more than that and you are just extending the seasons of some undeserving teams. If you only have 4 teams being included, there will be teams that have won a major conference that will not be included due to politics probably. There will always be conferences that will eat their own, depleting the records of the conference champions, and those teams could easily be better than those that went undefeated in weaker conferences.

 

[mrandyk]

Damn the bowl games. The FCS has a 24 team playoff and the FBS should too. What other league in this country doesn't have a real playoff?

 

[Kernal]

I'd rather have more playoff games and fewer FCS/lower division opponents. I voted 16.

Maybe the first 8 teams knocked out could be matched up in bowls, or something like that to even out the number of games each team gets to play.

 

[Glendower]

I'd rather have more playoff games and fewer FCS/lower division opponents. I voted 16.

Maybe the first 8 teams knocked out could be matched up in bowls, or something like that to even out the number of games each team gets to play.

I only voted 8 because I think that would be the "best" in that it would be the easiest to get people to agree to (especially after the way this post-season has gone). I'd really love a 16-team playoff.

I STILL don't know how it devalues the regular season. Even if it went somewhere crazy, like 32, that's still around 100 teams that get left out. Sixteen is still barely over 10% of the the teams-- that is a fairly elite population that really would have had to take care of business during the regular season to get in. It's not like the NFL where, what? just about a third of the teams get in? At 16, and especially at 8, a team really has to shine to get in. The regular season will matter SO MUCH. If anything, the old model made the regular season not matter for a vast majority of teams since only two could even be considered for the championship. Lose the "wrong" game? Oh, then you're definitely way out. Under the old model, Ohio State could have pretty much called it a season after losing to VT, but now they get a shot. I think that's pretty cool (not because it's Ohio State, but that the system can allow it).