Why an eight-team College Football Playoff could come to pass sooner than we expect

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Face The Facts said:
16 is too many.
Regular season is watered down at that point.

Look at the past 20 years of college football and tell me what 15th and 16th ranked teams should have been voted national Champions.
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I don't know if 16 is the magic number or not, but depending on how it is set up I don't think the regular season is watered down. I would put conference champs in and then open it up for the next best teams. Just because it is a 16 team tournament doesn't mean the AP 1-16 are in. I think there are ten conferences and if you have to win your conference to get an automatic bid that is pretty hard to do and should be rewarded.

Now that the bowls are done, it is pretty clear UCF and the Big Ten probably should have been represented in the tournament. Not sure who you take out... Clemson? Oklahoma? Georgia? Alabama? Each team could be made an argument why they should and shouldn't have been in the tournament.
 

MNfootballfan said:
I don't know if 16 is the magic number or not, but depending on how it is set up I don't think the regular season is watered down. I would put conference champs in and then open it up for the next best teams. Just because it is a 16 team tournament doesn't mean the AP 1-16 are in. I think there are ten conferences and if you have to win your conference to get an automatic bid that is pretty hard to do and should be rewarded.

Now that the bowls are done, it is pretty clear UCF and the Big Ten probably should have been represented in the tournament. Not sure who you take out... Clemson? Oklahoma? Georgia? Alabama? Each team could be made an argument why they should and shouldn't have been in the tournament.
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What are you talking about? UCF and the Big10 did not deserve to be in the 4 team playoff.
 

Lakeville Goldy said:
Not sure I'm 100% sold on 16, but...

The one counter I'd make to both of the above statements is this - name any other sport that a conference champion does not get a chance to play for the overall championship. The only ones I'm aware of is there are a couple of very low tier conferences that the NCAA excludes from the D1 basketball tourney and a couple conferences that don't participate in the FCS tourney (I think by choice). Otherwise, as far as I know, every other sport that has conferences, college or professional, any conference champion has a shot at the overall championship. As it stands now, the best G5 team has ZERO chance of participating in the championship, let alone the other 4.

So to the first point specifically, to me it's not about making it like the NFL, it's about making it like every other college sport. There are 10 conferences. It could be 12, but 16 is more likely workable to ensure all conference champs get a shot.

To the second point, it isn't necessarily #16 as much as a conference champ that doesn't get a shot. Maybe it's number 15, maybe they're unranked. But again, what other sport wouldn't the MWC champ get a shot? Who's to say just because the "experts" said they're not one of the top 4 or 8 teams that they couldn't catch lightning in a bottle and win it. They won their conference, why don't they deserve a crack at Clemson?
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But why do we have to make it like other college sports? In what other sport does every single game matter the entire year? Award all the conf champs? Well then why are we even playing non conference games? There's no longer a purpose to play a good non conference team, that's for sure.
 


btowngopher said:
What are you talking about? UCF and the Big10 did not deserve to be in the 4 team playoff.
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fully disagree. there's no reason to include more than one team from a conference. And no reason to include a team that couldn't win its own division. Georgia was the SEC champion. We don't really know the relative strength of various conferences. We do know who the champion was of each conference. Playoffs, when it's only 4 teams, should be limited to those teams. Whether that's OSU or UCF instead of Alabama doesn't matter to me. I'd pick UCF personally.
 



Also you pick the playoff before the bowl games, and I don't recall anyone crying about how UCF wasn't getting a shot.
 

btowngopher said:
Also you pick the playoff before the bowl games, and I don't recall anyone crying about how UCF wasn't getting a shot.
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Plenty of articles out there on UCF's week by week Playoff rankings.
Many were disappointed weekly with their ranking which guaranteed they would not be considered for selection. Larger media outlets didn't run those stories for obvious reasons.
 

If you wanted to try to make sure everyone conference champion has a shot, I'd suggest having the top two group of five schools play a play in game after their conference play in.

So this year, UCF could have played Boise St I guess.
Surely we don't need to watch FAU and Toledo and Fresno St all play games sucking up 5 slots.

I don't know if there have really been that many years where people have felt, "Hey, that group of 5 school should have been in a BCS title game, and not only that one, but these other 3-4 group of 5 schools as well!"


Nothing would kill the spirit of a playoff more than watching #1 Clemson and #2 Georgia kick the crap out of Toledo and Fresno St as if it was September game.
 



btowngopher said:
Also you pick the playoff before the bowl games, and I don't recall anyone crying about how UCF wasn't getting a shot.
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That is why I said after the bowl games I don’t know how UCF shouldn’t have been a playoff team.
 

One major point that is overlooked in this piece...
The only way to expand to 8 teams is to eliminate CCGs. As a result, expansion is a net revenue LOSER for all entities that actually have a voice. Expansion to 6 does not involve the issue of having to eliminate CCGs (and the payday that conferences enjoy from them).

This was a particularly great year for an 8-team playoff. But if you look back to past seasons, 8 is not a number that usually makes any sense AT ALL. Most years, teams 6, 7, 8 will have very clearly shown during the regular season that they are not on the same level at all as 1,2 and 3.
 

Goldmember said:
One major point that is overlooked in this piece...

The only way to expand to 8 teams is to eliminate CCGs. As a result, expansion is a net revenue LOSER for all entities that actually have a voice. Expansion to 6 does not involve the issue of having to eliminate CCGs (and the payday that conferences enjoy from them).
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Please explain.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

8 is too much. 4 is perfect. We can get rid of 80% of the other bowls too.
 



WAGopher said:
Please explain.
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The CCGs are A virtual quarterfinal now. Except the conferences get to control it and keep their revenues.

If you add a quarterfinal to the tournament, there is no practical way to keep the CCGs. With 4 teams, the CCGs are already a problem:
Alabama essentially got a bye week and was selected over Auburn strictly because of Auburn’s CCG loss.
Alabama had the advantage of getting one addition week of rest over Clemson, and then played a semi-final game just 300-miles from campus.

The advantages Alabama enjoyed this year as the only non-CCG team in the tournament would extend to more teams in an 8-team tournament if CCG were to continue. So much so that making a CCG (if you could make the tournament without it) would be extremely punative.

6 teams actually eliminates this problem with byes and home games.
 


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