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(01-12-2022 12:33 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 09:23 AM)RealDeal Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 08:45 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 08:42 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(01-12-2022 08:28 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  Maybe this lights a fire under the commissioners to stop being POSs and get expansion ironed out.

It does make me wonder, if it had been UC vs. Georgia I bet the TV audience would have been larger.

UC-Georgia or Alabama-Michigan both wouldve been far higher than this. You completely region-lock interest when this **** happens every year...Dan Wetzel put into words what I've been trying to tell friends and fans about for years why this iteration is terrible and expanding is the only answer, despite many saying it would be stupid in the past...they are starting to come around.

Either midwestern team against either SEC team would have rated better but I'm not sure how expansion would help championship game ratings. More teams in the playoffs means more opportunities for the better teams to advance; is there really any argument that an expanded playoff doesn't result in Bama vs UGA? Not to mention that if you go to 12 and have 4 SEC teams it's going to happen occasionally where 3 SEC teams get to the semis and hurts the ratings there. The issue is the sport is too regional and that's trending the wrong way as many southern states are expanding population wise at the expense of a lot of midwestern and northeastern states. To compete with you SEC schools you have to recruit nationally or clean up on the west coast if you're USC or Oregon.

More to the point: If an expanded playoff did NOT result in Alabama vs Georgia, would it have been fair to the players & coaches?

Those were clearly the two best teams to anyone who watched the whole year.

If Georgia had hiccupped during a 3-round playoff, that would just cheapen the national title for whoever won it. The current system limits the odds of a crappy Utah team going on a hot streak and stealing a national title that they don't really deserve.

That's my problem with the NCAA basketball tournament. The first week is outstanding, but the end result doesn't really matter to me because the best team rarely wins the tournament.

The same can be said about every single sport that has anything resembling a playoff after the regular season. I guess I'd take it a step further and just say why aren't you advocating for ending the season after the conference championship games, or even having those, because a worse team could win in that every now and again (which is what technically happened in 6 of them this year based on rankings). To me, your regular season performance earns you the right to compete for the glory...you still have to go out and beat the rest of the best who you didn't have a chance to play in the regular season...if you didn't you aren't the best team, period. Think of the UVA team that lost to UMBC...if that team had the capacity to lose to a .500 low major team, they weren't the best team in the country, because the best teams don't let that happen, but by your argument, they were and that game shouldn't have happened. In the long and illustrious history of playoffs in sports, how many times has a team like a "crappy Utah" won a championship? The whole argument is that if a team does hiccup, they aren't the best team, regardless of who their opponent at the time is, and talent wins out in prolonged stretches, a bad team can't beat 4 good teams in a row.

I will never understand people who want LESS excitement, fun, underdogs, and parity. There is nothing more American than the underdog getting a chance to take on the big dog and getting it done....that's literally the first 50 years of our existence as a country.