So is it wrong to already be looking 2 years down the road? Take a lookie at the opening day non-conference match ups for Sept. 3, 2016. Alabama – USC LSU – Wisconsin Auburn - Clemson UCLA – aggy Notre Dame – Texas Sorry honey, I will see you on Sunday.
this committee-chosen 4 game playoff system will create the greatest fan backlash in the history of Western civilization...
The results from the selection committee are probably going to be worse than the old Olympic eastern bloc judges. Ty Willingham? Is clueless Ty really a good choice to be on a committee that decides the playoff teams? I really don't understand why they didn't just keep the BCS formula and play off the top 4 or 8 teams.
Vol.....seems like all I have heard from all directions is how the playoff system will enable top tier teams to be a little bit bolder early on in the season because they know that an early loss won't necessarily be the end of their championship hopes.
There's no doubt higher teams are making a stronger effort to claim a marquee OOC win for the committee to weigh in their favor. If they happen to be neck and neck getting in the 4some, these will hold much more relevance than before. Also agree 100% there will be tremendously more backlash now in who makes the final dance. Deciding #2 was tough before at times, but never absurd. I can't recall it being between more than 2 candidates. Now deciding #4 will be insane with far more candidates and variables to weigh since there could be 2-loss teams involved. Or even 3 1-loss teams. Make no mistake, winning the #4 spot will hold just as much value as taking the #2 spot for the MNC game prior. This will be a clusterf**k of gigantic proportions. Not only their team selections will be blasted, but the committee itself will be roasted for their questionable member list in the first place. I can only hope it's controversial enough over the first few years to spark public outrage and force expansion to 8 teams.
Playoffs will have to be expanded to at least 8 teams. Once you get to the 9 and 10 place teams they usually have at least 2 losses and less argument for being in playoff.
Seems to be that as long as no system in place or proposed will ever settle the water-cooler argument as to which team is "the best" or the "National Champion" they should go back to how it was in the good ole days and let market forces come into play - and good teams will be invited to good bowls in fun locations.
The new 4 team playoff is much better than the arbitrary ratings of the past. Most should agree that a top 4 is much more likely to contain a "best" team in the country. It is a step in the right direction that was slow in coming. The next step to 8 teams may take a number of years and if the super conference idea takes off, who knows what will result regarding a championship system. Be glad things are improving!
The answer is so obvious that no one of importance even mentions it. There are 10 conferences and a handful of independents. 10 conference winners go to a 10 team playoff, use the committee to decide the ranking of the 10 conference winners. The top 4 ranked get a bye week and then play the lowest seeds like a normal tournament. The independents would have to join a conference to win a National Championship. First two weeks the higher ranked team gets a home playoff game and then move to the current format for the 4 remaining teams. For those that think you might have two top ten teams in one conference, those teams probably would have played at least once during the season either in a conference game or in the conference championship game. The regular season is one big playoff by choosing a conference winner that would represent the conference in the national championship round. Pretty simple and would give everyone a chance to win a championship. I think it would allow great match-ups for out of conference games since it wouldn't really affect their ability to win the whole enchilada. It would help determine rankings of the 10 conference winners if they win their conference.
There's no way Conference USA and Sunbelt conference champs would be remotely legit inclusions in that 10-team playoff simply because they won their conference. Louisiana (4 losses) got hammered by their only 2 decent OOC opponents (KSU, Arkansas), and then beat up on an awful conference to win it. They even lost to Monroe in conference and Tulane in bowl. Same with Rice losing to A&M (21 pts) and UH in OOC. Then lost to North Texas in conference and was blasted by Miss. St. in bowl. Neither conference champ had a quality win on the national stage. Both got their asses handed to them when they faced remotely decent opponents (KSU, Arky, Miss St.) And even those 3 teams that crushed them had 20 combined losses (5,9,6)...none finishing above 5th in their major conference. Half the Big 12 and SEC would've beaten those guys. The teams in those conferences never threaten the Top 10 final rankings. I understand the winning your conference argument, and I agree a real national champion should win their conference. But there's truly no reason for those weak teams to even claim a right to the big dance because they made it winning awful conferences. We can put lipstick on a pig all day, but these guys have no business wasting a MNC playoff slot. Might as well give out 2 more byes and call it a day.
I like the conference champs scenario, but Brad has some good points. What if you give slots to the conference division winners. Win your division you are in the playoffs. 5 major conferences, but only 4 have divisions meaning 8 teams. Big12 winner plus the highest ranked independent gives you ten teams. No way should you play for a national championship when you can even win your own division(Alabama).
Fair and valid points. The bigger picture is that there is no arguing from any school that they would be left out. Also, if the mid-major conferences are such pansies then it would be no worries for any of the Fab 5 conference champ to win against for a first round game. In my opinion, there should never be a national champion who hasn't even won their own conference. Like I said earlier, the second best team in a power conference would have already had their chance in 99% of the scenarios to win the conference against the eventual winner.
Massively anti-playoff here. I like tradition. I like bowls regardless of whether it is Sun Belt, MWC, Big 12. Don't tell me no one cares. The players always play their tails off. If you don't like the bowls, then you are a lukewarm college football fan at best. You combine all other sports in college and pro and their tradition and pageantry does not meet up to college football. You can just feel the awesomeness of the Rose Bowl. Conversely, you can feel how uninspiring a place like Reliant is. You throw away rivalries like Texas-A&M, NU-OU, PItt-WVU, etc. it takes away from that tradition. You have inter conference games at Jerry World you take away a little something. I guess I am crazy for wanting to see UCLA in their powder blues when I flip the TV on instead of their black, unidentifiable unis. You give a championship game to a venue like Jerry World, you are throwing away tradition. I am not sure I have read or heard directly about what an awesome atmosphere is. I have purchased tickets to 7 games this year. I will not for the UCLA game. A 14 team conference is a pile of doo. Read on a different website that Georgia and Bama have not played in the regular season since 2008. We will get the power conferences. I have not verified but speculation about getting UT-UF scheduled. If that did happen, we would play them as many times as the Aggies would through 2020. And was it Georgia who made the SEC championship several years ago without having to play any of the top 3 teams from West division? This is not a business to me. It is personal. They may work towards pricing me out of it. And the team and players will lose because of it. Why? Because I give a ****, probably more than I should. My opinion is that if it not personal to you, then your opinion is worthless. If you don't know where you will be the Saturday before Labor Day or early October or Thanksgiving night (used to be anyway), then keep it shut. And I sure as heck would not be able to attend 3 playoff games in an 8 team format. How many people do you know that would? Keep in mind the logistics and cost if flights are involved. Keep in mind the time of year all this occurs. You have to arrange for school, work, and the holidays. It's already too corporate but this will make it more so. Enjoy your mid game cutouts to Justin Bieber and A-Rod and ridiculously long half time shows. Keep in mind, there is no perfect solution. I don't want a game of attrition to determine a champion. There should be no massive benefit of one team getting a home game in a playoff format. I watch the NFL. And a lot of it. Every weekend. College is so much better yet we seem want to take it to that level more and more as time goes on. Their rivalries are mostly propaganda. I have lived in Texas the entirety of my life and cannot name 5 fans of those teams. It ain't no rivalry if you don't live and breath amongst each other. Just wish people had spent all the time and energy on getting schools to schedule better non-conferences games. We all wanted better matchups. They should be home and home. But then again I get off my *** and make it to some of those for the Horns. And ticket allotments for the participating teams in this year's playoffs should be cause for an *** whipping. No one ever addresses that. Season ticket holders and donors will have to pay secondary market prices. These playoffs are just another step in the erosion of the greatness of college football.
I believe in a top 6 for the playoffs and a separation of powers among humans and computers to choose the top 6. A BCS type system that uses human polls and computer rankings.. A major improvement to the human polls is to throw out the top and bottom 15% for each team to weed out the anomalies (such as Briles) just like we do in the computer rankings. You do not have to win your conference and you can lose an early season game against a quality opponent and still get in. 1 and 2 get a first round bye and 3-6 play on 2nd Saturday in December. Losers on Super Saturday can still accept a bowl bid as a reward for a great season. Final Four on New Years day and the title game about a week or more later.
djack you make a lot of good points but very few of them are related to playoffs vs vote-directly-for-champion. Also, not caring about the Super Weedeater Edger Mower Combo 5500 Bowl does not make me a bad fan. Having an issue with 6-6 teams in bowl games does not make me a bad fan.
The bowls have become so watered down. The Taco Shack bowl with two .500 teams at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon with an empty stadium and nobody tuning in to watch, is not representative of college bowl games I want to see. These bowl games will still exist and the major bowls will be incorporated into the playoff system.
Sorry Bro, just not giving out free passes to the Sunbelt Conference winner who got ****-hammered by middle of the road teams, over a 1-loss Alabama type team that soundly beat highly legit talent over the season. Yo can argue all day on them being abused and deserving to be considered, sure. Had they won those OOC games and the conference title, yeah I'd give them preference over a 1-loss Alabama to be fair. Other than that, the free pass as a ****** conference winner idea is failing miserably to locate a true national champion. To the other point, I think the only way you do find a true champion is have 6 major conferences and an 8-team playoff. 6 champs and 2 overalls make it. 2 teams that didn't win the conf still have chances ranked 7th and 8th. But it'd take 3 tough postseason wins (starting with playing top seeds) to do so, and I'd say they earned it at that point.
The simplest and "fairest" playoff system is the following: 8 team playoff consisting of 6 major conference champs, winner of a quasi conference championship game between the 2 highest ranked non major conference teams, and the next highest ranked team (regardless of conference) that is not already in the playoff. Major conferences can decide individually how they determine their champion. Whatever they want. But you win the conference and you get to go to the playoffs. Let all the small conferences have a shot. Use whatever system you want ( i prefer a BCS type ranking system-or possibly a simple vote of the media and coaches from those conferences). They pick 2 teams that play and the winner gets in. Last team in is best out there. Could be ND. Could be Alabama. Could be Oregon. Use same determing factor used above. You have 7 games to be played. Have your top 7 bowls rotate each year for games. Little or no bitching. If you dont win your conference you cant ***** about not making it in. The regular season and conference season means everything. If Auburn beats Alabama in SEC champ game and Alabama doesnt make tourney they can argue they are better than maybe a 2 loss Texas that wins the Big 12 but that is subjective. Objectively, they lost to Auburn so they arent the best team in the country. Little guys get their shot and independents get their shot and one team gets a mulligan.
Auburn and Alabama wont play each other in the SEC championship as they are in the same division but I get your point. Forget the conference championships in regards to the playoffs. The SEC plans their sec schedules to promote which team has the best team to advance. There is no set cross division scheduling other than one team and then they only play 8 conference games. In 2008 both Texas and OU should have been in the top 4 playoff slots. The BCS ranking system should have remained in place and used to determine the top 4 or 8 teams for the playoff. The problem will be with the committee selection process for four teams. Big 10 Tom Osborne Nebraska Coach & AD Barry Alvarez Graduated Nebraska , Wisconsin Coach/AD SEC Steve Wieberg Graduated Missouri Archie Manning Ole Miss Jeff Long Arkansas AD, Chairman /Selection Committee Pac 12 Pat Haden USC graduate, player, AD Tom Jernstedt Oregon graduate Pac 12 / Big 10 / Notre dame Condy Rice Graduate Notre Dame / Professor Stanford Ty Willingsham Played at Michigan State, coached Stanford, Notre Dame , Washington and is presently volunteer assistant coach for the Stanford women's golf team. Big 12 Oliver Luck WVA player, graduate and AD All American (Big East) Mike Tranghese Big east Commish 1990-2009 ACC Dan Radavich graduate Miami(Fla) Clemson Ad, former ad at Ga Tech Mtn West / Service Acads Gen Mike Gould Airforce I have no confidence the above putting bias aside and selecting the best four teams in the country. I also don't see Big 12 teams getting a fair shake in close selection votes from those folks.
Diablo, I think you are spot on regarding the Big 12 and a fair shake. OU might get one, because they are, well OU. Osborne would throw his support their way, as would anyone with old Big 8 ties, given they view Texas, et al, as interlopers. And just from a personal bias, I would be troubled by anything that has Condi Rice's finger prints on it.
How exactly is the first 33% of the season meaningful now that it wouldn't be under my scenario? And based on this logic after the first 33% of the season the remaining 67% of the season is meaningless for almost everybody. I'd rather have a more meaningful 67 than 33. Not sure you get subjective versus objective. Deciding who is better between teams that haven't played each other is subjective. When 2 teams play and one wins then it is not subjective. Using conference champs is the fairest way to handle it. At least in conferences you play like schedules and then play a champ game to determine the winner. Subjectively there will always be an argument that say Alabama is better than a 3 loss Oregon. Might very well be true but it is not definitive. I would assume you think or thought Alabama should have been in a 4 team playoff last year. It would have been a strong argument. But then Alabama got beat soundly by OU who didn't even win the Big 12. It was very, very easy to argue that Alabama was better than OU before they actually played. But it was almost impossible to argue that Alabama was better the morning after the game. The playoffs in college football are designed to end the subjective debate. If Alabama goes undefeated but loses to Missouri in the champ game and gets left out of a playoff I don't care. I don't care that Alabama fans think their team is better than OSU or Texas or FSU or Stanford. They mightbe better, but we know they arent better than Missouri because they played them at the end of the season with everything on the line and lost. If an Alabama doesn't like it they can approach the big east for inclusion in their conference and I am sure they would be accepted. But they won't. They like all of the money and recruiting and prestige they get in the SEC. The winner of the SEC will always get in the playoff and, with the one wild card team, has the best chance to get 2 teams in. A one loss SEC team would probably get in as a wildcard over a one loss team from another conference. It's actually very fair.
What would be unfair is the advantage a playoff team would get by drawing a mediocre conference champion. Lets say under your scenario, Missouri loses two of it's out of conference games and wins a weak sec east division by going 4-4 in league play and then upsets the sec west team. One of the playoff teams gets a to play a mediocre 7-6 Missouri team in the first round. Kind of like Big East Champion UConn getting the Fiesta Bowl bid. Nobody wanted to see it and the opponent had a walk in the park.
