(01-06-2019 03:25 PM)ken d Wrote:  On any given day, the best team does not always win. Upsets happen. So the more games you must win in any given tournament, the more likely the best team will be upset and an inferior team will win the championship. That's simple statistics.

We see this all the time in college basketball, where the best team must win six games in a row to become champion. It is very common that the best team is not the champion.

The goal of the CFP is NOT to find out which team is the best. No tournament can do that. It is simply to produce a champion, which is a very different thing from the "best".

That's not all together a fair comparison. In basketball you have a regular season to win, a conference tourney to win, and a national tourney to win. In basketball there are a lot more schools who play well enough to knock off a contender who has a star that is cold shooting on any given game. Most of the games are within 5 buckets or less. And schools could face opponents multiple times in a season.

In football (at least until very recently) there were no rematches. Ten points can usually take 8 minutes to produce if your offense is hot. 10 points in basketball can be scored in 2 minutes of normal play. It's harder to upset a strong contender in football unless a key injury occurs and even then it might not be enough depending upon when in the game the injury occurred.

By pushing out the season via playoff expansion statistically the only thing that really changes is the greater risk of injury. If it happens to a key player then yes expanding the playoffs will lead statistically to a greater chance of a loss.

However, in football the truly elite teams are seldom 4, let alone 8. All the extra rounds of games will do is extend the season. The difference between the top 2 or 3 seeds and the 6th, 7th, and 8th seeds will likely be significant. The only really interesting game that would develop might be the 4th & 5th seeds.

Is it worth expanding to determine that spot? I would argue that history proves that in the majority of seasons the answer would be no.