Would like your thoughts on the new college football playoff

[Mavric]

Different system...same set of controversies...

Similar set of controversies. To me, it's much better to be arguing about who the #4 team is and the #5 team being left out than #2 vs. #3. And it's a lot better for the #9 team to be left out.

[Ulty]

Should have gone to 6

the 2 top conference champions get a bye

T he 2 other major conference champions are in with 2 wild card teams

One must be from a non major conference and the other would be the best record from a major conference (non champion).

 

The first 2 rounds should be played inside the conference zone who has the best record.( cut down travel cost)

 

There should be no crying win your conference (if a Major conference) your in

If you trip up you have a second shot if you have a good record.

I like this. I've always thought a 6 team bracket would be interesting but have never fully fleshed out the idea.

[HuskerinSunDiego]

I just can't get beyond Nebraska beating Oregon, FSU, Bama, AND USC (all in same year non-cons). It wouldn't matter what eventually happened later, I would be resting peacefully in the dirt.

 

 

Look at our 1981 nonconference schedule: Florida State, Penn State, Iowa, and Auburn. Unreal.

[HuskerinSunDiego]

I always thought a conference championship should be a requirement for a playoff.

 

The problem is that some conference are much weaker than others. Also, you could easily have a conference champion with 3 losses. I simply like the new system, where a group of people sit down and say, "Okay, who's really the best four teams in the country."

[Count 'Bility]

I always thought a conference championship should be a requirement for a playoff.

 

The problem is that some conference are much weaker than others. Also, you could easily have a conference champion with 3 losses. I simply like the new system, where a group of people sit down and say, "Okay, who's really the best four teams in the country."

But still, how can you say X is better than Y if not's not played out on the field. How do you know Bama is better than Michigan St right now? How do you know if Auburn or even Florida St is? That's why I'm a proponent of conference champs. it's played on the field. It eliminates the most nonsense and off-field bs of any other method. If youre really the best team, youre gonna win your conference and win the playoffs anyway. Then end prize is what it's all about after all.

[Guy Chamberlin]

Dumping the BCS and its attempt to match the top 2 teams means we can now argue about the teams who should have been ranked #3 and #4.

 

Pushing it to 6 teams means we can argue about the #7 and #8 teams who were unfairly left out.

 

Nature of the beast. Although Redmusky's plan looks about as whine-proof as we could get.

 

But the NCAA will get justifiably nervous about playoff scenarios where young men are asked to increase their injury risk for billions of dollars they'll never see, while taking them further away from the classrooms we're supposed to pretend they're attending.

[Ulty]

Here's something radical: Blow up all the conferences and create 15 conferences of 8 teams each (limit D-1 inclusion to 120 teams, maybe do a relegation/promotion system for the Southern Alabama and UMass type teams from year to year). The 8 team conferences play a 7 game round-robin schedule, resulting in clear champions for each conference.

 

After conference play, we have a 32 team bracket that is played out - champions plus a bunch of wild card teams selected by committe or BCS or whatever. There would still be controversy in the selection, but we know for sure the top teams would get in at least.

 

Teams who aren't included in the tourney, since there are still several weeks left in the season, get a new schedule made up for them, perhaps a series of regional tournaments with teams from other conferences so they still have something to play for. This would be a pain becuase people wouldn't be able to plan ahead before the season, but oh well.

 

Including the conference schedule and the couple teams who make it throw the whole tourney, we're only talking 12 games, so there is still room for non-conference play (three games?) in the first few weeks of the season. And by the time the championship game rolls around, the other teams can be sorted into the various bowls so everyone can go out like they do now.

 

So we've got a true champion played out on the field, new conference affiliations, maintain bowl traditions, not too many games, everyone is making money, and Pelini still goes 9-4.

[huskerinacaveman]

I always thought a conference championship should be a requirement for a playoff.

 

The problem is that some conference are much weaker than others. Also, you could easily have a conference champion with 3 losses. I simply like the new system, where a group of people sit down and say, "Okay, who's really the best four teams in the country."

But still, how can you say X is better than Y if not's not played out on the field. How do you know Bama is better than Michigan St right now? How do you know if Auburn or even Florida St is? That's why I'm a proponent of conference champs. it's played on the field. It eliminates the most nonsense and off-field bs of any other method. If youre really the best team, youre gonna win your conference and win the playoffs anyway. Then end prize is what it's all about after all.

Yes, thank you

[Herbie87]

I like the Conference Champ guaranteed bid scenario, but doesn't that mean you could use your non-conf games as practice? I like the scenario mentioned earlier about conf champ getting in but including the caveat that you have to be top 12 or something.

 

I'm having a hard time understanding this article. It actually talks about the conf champs getting automatic bid to the CFP just like everyone's been talking about. Take a look at the first couple of bullets--

 

 

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/tony-barnhart/24400200/before-bcs-ends-the-whens-wheres-and-whys-of-college-football-playoff

[VA Husker Fan]

I like the Conference Champ guaranteed bid scenario, but doesn't that mean you could use your non-conf games as practice? I like the scenario mentioned earlier about conf champ getting in but including the caveat that you have to be top 12 or something.

 

I'm having a hard time understanding this article. It actually talks about the conf champs getting automatic bid to the CFP just like everyone's been talking about. Take a look at the first couple of bullets--

 

 

http://www.cbssports...ootball-playoff

The CFP bowls include those bowl games that are outside of the 4 team playoffs. 2 of the bowl games are semifinals for the playoffs, the other 4 are just bowl games that are not part of the process, and they rotate. So, the Big 10 is guaranteed a spot in the playoffs OR one of the other CFP major bowl games (current big 4 or Cotton or Fiesta). If the Rose Bowl is a semifinal site the Big 10 champ is in the Rose Bowl if it doesn't make the playoffs. A second or even third Big 10 team could make the playoffs or major bowls. Note that the AAC (former Big East) lost their automatic major bowl game.

 

And yes, if you required a playoff team to be a conference champion, you would kill what's left of the non-conference schedule. There are still some good games out there, but why bother if the only route is to be a conference champ? That would suck. Not that this is a great argument against requiring conf champs for the playoffs, but it would be an unfortunate consequence.

[Goal-line]

Would like your thoughts on the new college football playoff

 

Should be expanded to 16 teams. Eventually, it will get to eight but I don't know if it will reach 16 until the dollars start rolling in. Once the money is realized, there will be a shift to more teams.

[krc1995]

I think 8 is a number that makes it interesting and is fair enough to get a true national champion. But I think for the monetary reasons you listed, we will see 16. Because anything worth doing is worth over doing, right?

[JTrain]

A bigger playoff absolutely does not tell you who the "best" or most accomplished team of that season was. It simply tells you which team was capable of getting hot at the right time and winning a small series of games in the postseason. This is particularly true in a single-game elimination format. The notion that a playoffs is more fair is simply nonsense. We can see countless examples of inferior teams winning championships in systems that use a postseason tournament format. College football has, since the Bowl Alliance, used a one game tiebreaker of sorts between the two teams who were judged to have championship seasons. Sometimes there was a #3 or #4 team that had a legitimate gripe. But I can not think of a #5 or #6 team that did.

 

Were the 2011 Giants the most accomplished team of the 2011 season? Not even close. They were the most accomplished team of the postseason. And that's what large postseason tournaments get you: postseason champions. College football is unique (in a good way, in my opinion) in that their are no 4 or 5 loss champions that were able to get hot for a few games at the end. To be a season national champion, you truly have to have had the greatest season, from early September to early January.

[Mavric]

You make some good points but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. The NFL takes over a third of its teams to the post-season (12/32). Even if you only consider the five major conferences, a four team playoff would be 6% of the teams in the playoffs. An 8 team playoff would be 12%.

 

My problem with only two teams is the sample size is so small that one loss likely means you're out - or at least have to have everything else go right. And the schedlue strenghts aren't balanced so it's not as easy as saying one team is 12-0 so they're automatically better than another team that's 11-1. Was Notre Dame even the second-best team in the nation last year? If tOSU wasn't banned, would Alabama really have been the third-best?

 

Having a playoff doesn't de-value the regular season. At four teams, you can lose one game but that's usually it. Are teams going to take a game off because they know they can afford to lose one? Or are they still going to play as hard as they can each game? It doesn't devaule the wins, it just give the very best teams a second chance so they aren't totally thrown out for having one bad game or a key player injured.

[JTrain]

No, I don't claim it is an exact analogy, just a valid one. Certainly I am not against a four-team playoff, because historically you will find a large number of #3 teams and a decent number of #4 teams that had truly national championship caliber seasons. If you go beyond that you start to run into more and more two-loss teams. And if you allow all five or six conference champions as automatic qualifiers, you run into major potential issues. One being that, in certain years, those conferences just suck. The other major one being, you will get some strategically-minded head coach with depth issues who rests his players during the non-conference. Why risk a season-changing injury to your star QB if all you need to do is win your average conference to have a chance? So you get valuable backup experience but go 1-3 in non-conference, then go 7-2 in your conference and take the title. Maybe everyone is fresh enough and you get just the right team chemistry at the right time (along with few good bounces of the ball) and you win the playoffs! 11-5 national champions. You may think it's absurd, but it's a perfectly logical approach within that system, and head coaches can be logical creatures once in a while.