(12-07-2014 02:13 AM)FargoBison Wrote: Six team playoff, enough spots for the P5 conference champs if all are worthy. Gives the top two teams byes, always a big advantage having to play one less game. No worries about diminishing the regular season, in fact I think it would add to it since more teams would have a shot and the top teams would have something extra to play for.
If you aren't in the top six you probably don't deserve to be in anyway, so less controversy.
It still leaves arbitrary decisions in the process. Structure is what is needed. If you want six teams then think about redividing the best of the G5 into two conferences and the consolidating the P5 into a P4. Then take the six champions and give the top two seeds a bye and play it off. But even that stinks you see because somebody has to determine the seeds. What people don't get is that as long as there is a committee deciding matters the largest schools with the most money will continue to garner favors from those who profit off of them.
An expansion to 8 teams works if you divide the G5 into 3 conferences, keep the present P5 and set up a formula for determining the first round games and second round games. But now we have another problem. Big money schools in the P5 want to exclude the G5 so that they have a better chance of getting in and the networks want that as well because of the advertising draws of those top brand name schools. So what started as determining the top football team in the nation, on the field, gets sidetracked as the P5 fans start talking about how their conferences deserve teams in the mix that lost their conference championship. The second you want do overs for those who failed to attain the moniker of champion in their required conference championship then you've ceased being a process that determines an ultimate champion and have become again a process that favors the business of college football over the product of college football.
The only solutions we come up with that will work are those that are determined structurally prior to the involvement of the personalities of the institutions in any given year. Let's say that the G5 becomes a regionally based G4 and the P5 does the same. Then in any given year the champions of let's say (hypothetical only here) the PAC would play the champion of the MWC in the opening round of the playoffs, the SEC champ would play the Sunbelt champ, the Big 10 champ would play the MAC champ, and the ACC or Big 12 (depending on which one survives) champ would play the champ of CUSA or AAC (depending on which one survives). Then the West Regional Champ (PAC & MWC) plays the Midwestern Champ (Big 10 & MAC). The Southeastern Regional Camp (SEC & SBC) plays the either (depending upon which survives (the Big 12 & CUSA champ / or the ACC & AAC champ).
Now you have a structure that is inclusive of all of the FBS essentially and there is no need of any damned committee anywhere getting to decide who plays. It is prescribed every year and determined on the field. That is how structure solves a lot of corruption.
Here is what that structure does:
1. It keeps the meaning of every single game during the season because nobody can really become their conference champion without keeping that focus.
2. It upholds the meaning of conference championships as you aren't getting in without one.
3. It guarantees for those in the sports business (networks) that all 4 regions stay involved until the finals are played.
4. It doesn't exclude the FBS through segregation and gives the new G4 a reason to get better TV contracts.
5. It preserves the interest of millions of more college football fans who have been disenfranchised by many of the recent moves in realignment and politically within the NCAA.
6. The top bowls can be utilized (if necessary as I would rather the schools play most of the playoff games for the regions at campus sites so they can keep more of the profits and more of the fans can attend.)
7. It still gives the new P4 the separation they are looking for for marketing purposes and their contracts would be their own.
8. It eliminates the polls, the computers, and the committees and gives all fans what they want most before the opening kick every year, a fair chance that should lightening strike and their school have a great year (like Marshall or Tulane or Boise in the past) they will not be cursed to follow their schools all year long only to get hosed as Baylor and someone else will be tomorrow.