A plus-one and a 4-team playoff are different

I'm so tired of hearing a 4-team playoff bracket being referred to as a "plus-one" system. A plus-one was the name for the proposed change a while back that would have the BCS wait until after the bowl games to rank #1 and #2 and match them in the "BCS Title Game". A playoff matching 1v4 and 2v3 and then pairing the winners of those games is, obviously, a playoff. Not a plus one.

 

brool cory, sto.

 

It needs to be an 8 team playoff. We are near 8 conferences now, so just take the champs and let it fly. No votes or politicking or bias. You want in, win your conference. It doesnt get more fair than that. Every team in major college football has a chance to make it in.

How to seed them? Here are a few ways:

Team GPA
FG%
Penetrations
Conference Point differential

Anything but voters, panels or boards. This way, the media has no pull, what you did last year doesnt matter and a schools tradition plays no part. It is all decided on the field. With four teams, you are still subjecting yourself to voters that dont watch the games.

 

In the entire history of college football there is not one team in the final rankings with a 5 or worse ranking that had an ounce of anyway shape or form they were robbed of a National Championship.

Conference champions would allow teams like UConn to be in the hunt for a National Championship. I am sorry the 9-7 regular season Giants were not the best team in the NFL this year.

The rankings system does well enough for the top 4 teams. If you are number 5, you have a loss and probably a loss to someone above you, no excuses. The top 4 teams just about guarantees if you go undeafeted, even in smaller conference, that you are in the hunt. 8 teams, I can only think of one ranked number 5 team before the bowls that won the National Championship.

The top 4 teams with the current BCS rankings system, and couple minor tweaks, maybe you have to be a conference champion to be in the top 4, that works for me.

Anything more than 4 waters down the regular season and turns college football into a NFL version of playoffs.

I like waking up every Saturday in the fall and knowing for the Longhorns to have a chance at the National title that they have to beat Rice or they have to beat Oklahoma. Making it 8 teams means, eh we can lose a game here or there and still have a shot. We could lose all Non-Confernece games win our conference and still have a shot at the National Championship, not my cup of tea.

Knowing that if we obtain a perfect record, we will be champions, ahh a true champion, not a 9-7 squeeking into the playoffs and getting hot and catching teams at the right time.

Flame away, flame away.....

 

Yep. In my system, Bama had their shot and blew it, at home to LSU. You win your conference or you dont get in. Bama didnt even wint their division. It makes total sense. I am totally cool with it.

No votes, no opinions, no ESPN, no bias. Win your conference and you are in. So yes, you could lose all your OOC games, but they are what they are. You win your conference, youre in. You would get much better OOC games and you would also get a very heated conference race. What you wont get is a buy based on your reputation and tradition. No coaches begging for votes. No media driven agenda. All on the field.

 

penetrations?

[beavis]heh heh[/butthead]

 

Conference Champions would actually, worsen out of confernece games. There would be no reason to play any marquee games. You would play sisters of the poor to allow your younger players a chance to play and not have your star players risking injury in games that don't matter even the slightest.

Conference champions to be in the final four yes, a conferenc champion tournament at the end of the year no.

 

Other than 1977 name a time in college football history where the 5 ranked team before the bowls deserved a shot at the National Championship?

The top 4 teams with the current rankings system would be hard to question. You would need to have 5 undefeated teams for any team to have a legitimate beef.

Sorry college football is based on college royalty, that is what sells tickets. The top 20% of teams generate 80% of the revenue, yes they should be given the benefit of the doubt. Do it more than 1 year in a decade, do what Boise State did or what TCU did, yea then you will get the benefit of the doubt.

Flame away, flame away....

 

I think it depends on how you define "deserves a shot." If it is "should be ranked #2 and play in the title game instead of those ranked #2-#4," then you are probably right. But, it's a bit of a tautological argument.

If, on the other hand, you define it as "a reasonable threat to win against the teams ranked #1-#4" then I think the list may be pretty long. Frankly, I think OSU, Stanford, Oregon and even USC (were they eligible) could have beaten Alabama last year (note: don't think I'd bet against Alabama in any of those games, but I think each would be a real contest). In the previous year, TCU, Stanford, Wisconsin and even tOSU could have a case (again, not to be #2, but to have a chance to win).

If it is the former definition, then how would that apply to March Madness? Only the top few seeds would be "worthy" of being in the championship game <b>before the tournament</b>.
____________________________________

 

I'm with Bruthaman 100% on this. You want in? Win your conference.

In a ****** conference? Move to a better one or add some good teams to the one you've got.

Conference too big or too difficult, move to one that is smaller or less difficult.

This plan would stem the tide of the superconferences as well. Love it.

 

I still want a 12 team playoff. NO it won't be watered down like the NFL. Why? Because the NFL has 12 of 32 teams that make the playoffs.

Thats roughly 38% of the league that gets in. yuck.

If we had 12 teams from FBS football make it. That's 12 of 120 or 10% that make the playoff. If you make the top 10% you deserve to have a chance to win it all.

I would make top 6 seeds from conf champs. Next 6 seeds HAVE to include 4 wildcards and 2 from next highest ranked non BCS-type conferences.

Top 4 seeds get first round bye. Second round THEY HOST A GAME. So this makes the regular season VERY crucial.

You have conference champs fighting amongst each other/ jockeying to get a bye. You have 2 of the other non-bcs conference jockeying to make it in.. You have a pot of about 12 teams (2-3 from each conference) that are vying for the 4 wild card spots.

Don't tell me that it makes the regular season worthless. Lets pretend that Texas lost to OU and OU goes undefeated. THEN the rest of our season is worthless cuz we can't get in!!! But with a playoff system. The last game against TCU could decide WHICH of the two teams makes a playoff spot as a wild-card.

As it stands now, the final week of the regular season may only have 5-6 relevant games. With a playoff system, suddenly 20+ games are relevant.

 

I like the 8 team conference winners. I don't mind that the "best team" may be undefeated and lose the first round, and that a 9-3 team wins the championship. That is what playoffs are about, not a guarantee that the best team (in the opinion of the sports writers, coaches or who ever) will win out. Prove you're the best team on the field! Look what happend this year in he pros, Green Bay was touted as the "best team" as was New England, but who won 9-7 regular season New York.

 

Shiner, whats funny is that you will end up with teams like Florida and Oregon State (just examples) trying to join the Sun Belt for an so-called easier path to the playoff and the Sun Belt would tell them no.....LOL.

I think my model is perfect. How they determine the conference champ is up to the conference but nobody can say they didnt have a shot at the start of the conference schedule. Some of the big schools will whine about not being given special treatment though.

All that being said, the rich pricks that run things will never do this. They are going to pick a system that maximzes the dollars, not fair competition. Im against using bowls as playoff sites until the title game but people will insist on having them included. I say keep the money on campus, higher seed hosts. The bowls have had their chance and have been sticking it to us for years. Let them sit on the sidelines and watch from now on. They have been telling us a playoff will never work, so they can watch and see.

 

Even a plus-one where the BCS Championship matchup is chosen after the bowls is better than the current system; you get one more game to evaluate the contenders against out-of-conference opponents (and, more importantly, other contenders), and the field will be whittled down on the field.

A simple 4-team playoff would work well with the current bowl system. Play the semifinals at the higher seeds' home stadiums before all the other bowls start (what an exciting way to kick off bowl season), send the semifinal losers to BCS bowls as consolation, and send the winners to the BCS Championship Game.

If you really want to crown a champion, I recommend scrapping the bowls and having a 16-to-24-team playoff. Instead of March Madness, it's Winter Madness. I'm afraid the bowl system is too entrenched to make this work, so it remains a pipe dream. Still, a plus-one or 4-team playoff would be a huge step in the right direction.

 

I do not want to see another 2 loss team as the National Champion. Sorry if you think that is stupid. A team that is one game above .500 does not in my constitue a champion.

Why not just give everyone trophies then, hey everyone participated, trophies for all, hell let's not even keep score!!

I know of only two teams that were ranked outside the top 4 in the past 40+ years, before bowls that deserved a shot or were eventually named Champion. Both times an undefeated Texas team lost that day, kinda weird.....

Everybody has their opinion, my biggest one is that I do not want to see another 2 loss team as a National Champion. Ideally, I want to see a Champion be perfect from late August until September. Very few teams can say they went undefeated and were not crowned National Champions.

Looking back at the Final Four of football over the past 40 years or so, is exciting to think of what a 4 team playoff would have created. An 8 team playoff, not so much. Conference Champions, you want to give a 7-4 UConn team a chance? I don't......

College Royalty, without it you don't have college football. The top 20% of the teams are responsible for 80% of the revenue in college football, say what you will, but without those teams, there is not college football then or in the future.

The Big XII TV contracts, without Texas and Oklahoma do you think ABC/ESPN or FOX would pay that money? How many times has TCU sold out it's stadium in the last 10 years?

 

Those 9-7 Giants won their division, Bama didn't win anything to "deserve" a shot at anything other than the Citrus Bowl. Win your conference, get into the big dance. No politics involved. I think it would enhance scheduling, not water it down. If you knew you could play some more marquee games, and charge premium price for tickets, without the possibility of losing out on your BCS chance, teams would be more willing on the risk.

 

As a fan, I could care less about the money a school makes. They dont pay me one dime. I want to watch football and dont want people telling me who they THINK the best two, four our eight teams are.

As for you not wanting another two loss champion, that year you had no choice. Everybody had two or more losses unless another NON-AQ school got screwed.

Its simple. 8 conferences, 8 champs, 8 slots. No entitlements, no bias, no voters. Nothing about a school outside of that years conference play matters. Win your conference and youre in. This way, ESPN can hype whomever they want all they want and it wont help. No coaches have to worry about casting a vote for a team when they didnt see that team play. Isnt that a great thing? Could you imagine the first round of a playoff game at DKR?? I hate the horns, but I promise that place, along with any other stadium on earth would be standing room only for the every single game of a playoff. Heck, now the BCS bowls arent even full anymore.

 

16 teams. Set aside 6 to 8 slots for ranked conf champions. Using either rankings or a selection committee, pick the highest ranked other teams.

Rankings and selection committees suck, but there are too many teams and too few games to have a purely records based solution like the NFL playoff criteria.

As for 8 vs 16 teams, consider cases like 1996. Both UT and Neb would have gone with 16 teams. With the 8 conf champions only idea, you are sending the message that the regular season does not matter when Neb plays in a tougher division and has a better record than UT even after the game, but UT would have gone instead. 1996 was a great game, but I think both teams would need to be in any playoff, which necessitates 16 teams. Maybe you pull it off with 12 to give the benefit of the first round bye, but not 8.

 

Tough to take I know, but for me, opinions kill college football. In my system, you win and youre in. IMO, the recruiting will spread out more since every school in all 8 conferences have a shot to play in the big game. I am looking to end polls and bias, so in your scenario, texas would go to a bowl instead of the playoff because they didnt win the conference regardless what people think about them. Last year, Bama would have sit at home. They had their shot and blew it. Miami of Ohio didnt blow theirs.

 

College football is no different than Olympic ice dancing. Until you take out the subjectivity of pollsters and replace it with true conference champions you have a flawed champion. Win and you are in.

 

I don't believe all college conferences are deserving of playing for the National Championship.

As far as your 50 some odd undeafeted teams since the beginning of time, why don't you make your stat relative to the topic. Since you are obsessed with proving me wrong, how about you go back to 1990 and tell us how many teams were not crowned National Champions and undefeated. Ties are useless in todays argument.

Then tell us how many of those teams were not on probabation or in the top 4 post season and pre bowls rankings? That would be relavent stat for my contention of a 4 team playoff determined by the current system with a few minor tweaks which could be that to be in that four you have to have won your conference.

Some peoples obsession is so funny. I love pompous people.