Would like your thoughts on the new college football playoff

[huskerinacaveman]

I don't think it should really matter about the caliper of the conference. When the Cardinals won their last world series they were not the best team during the season, but I would say that minus Rangers fans, most would say that the Cardinals were the best team of the playoffs.

 

My issue is that players and coaches should determine their fate, not a committee.

 

I see how its not fair to exclude 2nd place conference teams from a playoff if they are clearly better than the teams who are part of a lower conference. This might cause some of the bigger teams to switch conferences to give themselves better opportunities to get into the playoffs. This would create a more balanced landscape, but I doubt teams of the Big 10, SEC, or Pac 12 really considering a move from their conference because its more about money then it is championships.

 

There has to be a prerequisite. That IMO should be the Conference title. Anything else is subjective.

 

As for having fluke games where the lowest seeded team beats the top seeded team. You could always instill a double elimination bracket, if you have two teams that play 15 games, who says that others can't play 14. It could work, how? That is for another discussion

[The Dude]

No regular season. 128 team playoff.

[Mavric]

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.

Definitely agree. That's way I think you take conference champions as long as they're rated high enough. Then fill in the rest.

[Kernal]

No regular season. 128 team playoff.

 

What will teams do for the other 10 weeks of the season?

 

Actually, a 128-team playoff could be done in five weeks, excepting the final four teams- two of which would have one additional week/game and two of which would have two additional weeks/games.

 

Like this:

• Week one: 128 teams = 64 games
  
• Week two: 64 teams = 32 games
  
• Week three: 32 teams = 16 games
  
• Week four: 16 teams = 8 games
  
• Week five: 8 teams = 4 games
  
• (Week six: 4 teams = 2 games)
  
• (Week seven: 2 teams = 1 game)
  

Now, 128-team playoff is kinda silly and would render the regular season meaningless, but there's no reason playoffs couldn't have 16 teams, or 24 teams as the FCS currently does.

[The Dude]

No regular season. 128 team playoff.

 

What will teams do for the other 10 weeks of the season?

Not my problem. Win or go home.

[JTrain]

[Count 'Bility]

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.

So my Chiefs were the best team in football this year, eh? They were the only 9-0 team you know. They fell of at the end, but that doesnt matter I guess.

 

Seriously? You'd rather have polls and computer deciding who the best team(s) are as opposed to settling it on the field? I understand it's about who gets hot at that point, but that means that teams improve and build up to that point. Unlike the NFL, youre not getting into an 8 team college football playoff with more than 2 losses probably anyway. Unlike the NFL, where a team can go 8-8 or 9-7, sneak into the playoffs or win a weak division and get hot and win it all. You would still have a 12 game process to win a conference and/or prove yourself worthy of a playoff opportunity. Hence, you have to be a pretty good team from the get go. Or, could we just have the playoff in the middle of the season, crown the champion, then playout the remaining 4-6 weeks of the season?

[JTrain]

 

Let me pick up this mess of mutilated straw men, then perhaps I'll get back to you (or perhaps not).

[Hoosker]