(01-07-2018 10:05 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-07-2018 01:56 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-06-2018 10:11 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-06-2018 08:30 PM)_C2_ Wrote:  

(01-06-2018 07:01 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  True, and we have never had that. Probably because the costs of doing so exceed the benefits. The current system has an extremely high chance of crowning the 'best' team as champ so why change it?

Based on what? The biases of a few people in a room? Not even the NCAA Tournament does an airtight job of getting it right, how many legit snubs have there been over the years and ridiculous seedings?

Crowning the best team, or at least the most accomplished team, begins and ends with making sure all conference champions get a shot.

Not necessarily. There's nothing magical about being a 'conference champion', it just means you beat out 10 or 11 of out 130 teams. Doesn't prove anything versus all those other teams that aren't in your conference.

So being champion of conference A doesn't necessarily mean you are better, and therefore more deserving of a spot in a national playoff than a team that didn't win conference B.

The most obvious example of this is OOC games. Team A might go 8-0 in its conference and win it, but be 8-4 over all thanks to losing four OOC games. Another team might be 7-1 in its conference and lose it, but be 11-1 overall thanks to OOC games. There's no reason to think that 8-4 team A is more deserving of a playoff spot than 11-1 team B. Quite the opposite.

Nothing magical about 13 guys in a room (especially these 13). I can get that at any sports bar (probably would get a more fair group). Even the NCAA Tournament, with the most famous selection committee in sports--only is allowed to fill less than half the field. The majority of the bracket is automatically filled based on conference championships. As Ive said before--if they dont mean anything---why play an 8 game conference schedule to crown a champ? Hell--why play any games? Just let the committee study the rosters and decide who has the best paper roster (we can solve the concussion issue that way).

I find it funny that people are perfectly willing to accept a team being eliminated in a playoff game---but those same people dont think a big game in division play (that eliminates an opponent from a conference championship contention) should mean anything. I find that thinking utterly perplexing.

Conference championships are always about making the right play at the right moment. Teams that win conference championships have done that. When faced with the big elimination game---they won it. When faced with a critical play in a game---they made it--time after time after time. So--yeah--I disagree---A conference championship is kind of magical.

We don't have to go over the obvious differences between football and hoops: The reason we can have all conference champs in the NCAA tourney is precisely because the nature of the sport permits a tournament large enough to ALSO accommodate basically every reasonable non-champ team with a chance to win the title as well.

Football isn't that way, we'll never have a 68 team playoffs, so rather than a "both" solution that includes 30 conference champs and 38 wild cards, we have to choose between them.

And given the need to choose, the logic i describe above shows why there's no reason to automatically include conference champs. Maybe use it as a "plus factor", something that is a feather in the cap when deciding if Fresno State or ECU should be in a playoff, but not auto-decisive, not by a long shot.

The problem with your defense of a conference champ as 'magical' is that all of those clutch heroics, the big plays and critical games won to win the conference - came within a tiny group of 10 or so teams out of 130. There's no reason for Michigan, e.g., to respect the heroics and clutch play that Fresno State exhibited to beat out SDSU and Colorado State to win the MWC, as they didn't do it to beat out Michigan. And vice-versa. It all happened in your little corner of the sand box.

Heck if anything, for the purpose of filling a *national* playoff, OOC games should count more than conference games, because those give a better indication of how a team did outside its corner of the sandbox, and thus its worthiness to compete nationally.

So contrary to what the other poster said, a system that includes all conference champs is not automatically the best, or even a good, system for a national playoff.

I agree there are obvious differences in basketball and football that affect the limits of the playoff field size. That’s why I support an 8 team playoff where the 5 P5 champs and the top G5 champ are all AQ. The two highest ranked non-champs would be wildcards—so the Committee rankings continue to be important—they just would be responsible for filling a much smaller portion of the bracket. The committee would simply determine the 2 wildcards and the top G5 champ (almost half the field). Better yet, 75% of the field would be reserved for conference champs. Still, 2 slots would remain open to deserving teams that maybe had one tough loss. It also guarantees that the #1 and #2 teams could never be left out due to CCG upsets.

I prefer the objective on the field results to be the primary method by which the bracket is filled. The 8 team playoff I describe seems to be the option gaining traction in the press. It makes sense, is possible, and while not perfect—it’s pretty darn good at eliminating most of the most unappealing aspects of the current system.