(01-15-2015 11:03 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (01-15-2015 10:28 AM)AppManDG Wrote: Having been involved with many 1-AA / FCS playoffs I know it will work at the P5 level. A couple of tweaks necessary.
Cut regular season back to 11 games as it was prior to 2006.
First round played the first week in December and essentially consists of conf championship games to determine the field of 8.
Second round played second week in December. The games played on the home field of the higher seeded teams.
Semi final games on new Years Day. 1-8 winner vs 4-5 winner & 2-7 winner vs 3-6 winner at a bowl site like this year.
Championship game played as they were this year.
The idea that I've seen kicked around in a few places (including Georgia Tech Swagger on a different thread) and I've thrown out on my blog before is to look at the progression of the physical locations in the opposite direction. If you want to incorporate teams' home fields in an 8-team playoff, do it in the *semifinal* round as opposed to the quarterfinal round. The quarterfinals in an 8-team playoff ought to be in the bowls (giving all teams that experience and preserving those games), while the semifinals that are going to be harder to travel to can be at the home sites of the higher seeded teams.
Call me crazy, but doesn't it seem to be a bit of an injustice that playoff participants that had monster seasons get a "reward" of going to Tuscaloosa or Columbus in the middle of December when no one can travel while the lesser teams in their leagues get guaranteed spots to travel to places like Pasadena and Miami for the holidays? The New Year's Day bowls aren't the games that are difficult to travel to, so you want to maximize those slots for schools. Instead, it's the games that come afterwards that are tougher. So, make the *semifinal* round into the home team venue. That provides some extra juice to being ranked #1 or #2, as well, in an 8-team format, as you can guarantee yourself a semifinal home game if you win your bowl game.
As I've said, the less you change, the more likely it will get implemented. Schedules also NEVER contract - they always expand. Reducing regular season games is a non-starter - Big Ten and SEC schools make several million dollars in revenue for every extra home game. They're not ever giving up that extra game (just as you'll never see MLB, NBA and NHL reduce their regular season schedules). Whatever system we end up with will keep the 12-game schedule and conference championship games. We're only going to ADD to what's in place - nothing is getting subtracted.
You are right. Going to Tuscaloosa makes no sense for a quarterfinal. To be honest, I personally don't think going to Atlanta or Dallas is all that great a prize either. In the Plus Three model you outlined elsewhere, which I am coming to like more and more by the day, those two sites make more sense to me as venues for the semis and finals.
I would prefer swapping Atlanta for a site like Orlando for one of the six access bowls. Then you would need to find a site for the other semi (Jerry World seems like the most obvious choice for what amounts to the collegiate Super Bowl). That site would need to be a large city west of the Mississippi with a pro type stadium (including luxury suites), and hopefully not somewhere where extreme weather is likely to be a frequent problem.
I just have a real problem at that stage of the playoff giving one team a home field advantage based solely on how they rank in a beauty contest. I realize that adds to the travel burden for fans of the teams that are involved. But these games are essentially "made for TV" games as it is, and attendance at them is not done in conjunction with a winter vacation.
This is what I would propose as a way to help with the travel problem.
First, I would give each of the four participating teams 2,000 seats, free of charge, between the 20 yard lines right behind their team's bench. These tickets would be allocated as follows:
400 tickets for the families and friends of the players and coaches.
200 tickets to faculty and spouses.
1250 for students, including the band.
150 for admin personnel and guests at each school's discretion.
All 2,000 would be given, at no cost to them, transportation to the game, hotel stay based on double occupancy, and $50 per person for meals and incidentals. Except for the families and friends, travel would likely be by charter planes and buses to enable everyone to get to a Saturday game with only one night at a hotel. Funding for this, and the travel expenses of the participating teams, would come out of the revenues the CFP gets from the networks.
Next I would give each school 8,000 tickets, at a cost to them of $150 each, located right behind the 2,000 free seats they already have. They may sell as many of these as they can to their fans, and are free to sell any that remain on the secondary market. Potentially, the CFP could reserve blocks of hotel rooms for some or all of these seats.
The remaining seats in the stadium would be presold by the CFP, and likely bought by corporations and local sports fans (thus the reason to put the games in large cities).
It's not perfect. But last year we had one post season game that was truly meaningful. This year we had three. In this model, we would have nine, with six of them being in prime vacation spots and times. And a lot more of the financial windfall would go to athletes, students and faculty than ever before. As I said, I'm coming to like this more and more.
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8 Team Playoff - more thoughts
