(12-14-2018 11:15 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(12-14-2018 11:02 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(12-14-2018 10:53 AM)McKinney Wrote:  

(12-14-2018 09:24 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  In contrast, if we are talking about an 8-team playoff with auto-bids, that won't be possible. Most conferences will be limited to just their conference champ making the playoffs, at most there would be two or three at-large teams.

To use your hoops example, the most bids a conference has ever received was the 2011 Big East with 11 bids. That's ~16% of the field. In this football playoff with 2 or 3 at-large teams, a single conference could theoretically put in 3 or 4 teams. That'd be up to 38%-50% of the teams. How is that not satisfactory for all but the greediest of organizations?

You can't eat a percentage. I'd much rather have $1,000 that is 1% of something than to have $10 that is 90% of something.

Bottom line is, in the hoops and baseball tournaments, all the top conferences can get 4, 5, 6, 7, or even more teams in. In an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and one of the G5, the most any conference could get would be 3, and if that happened all other conferences would be limited to one.

That's nothing at all like the hoops and baseball tournaments. That conference champs model was abandoned decades ago in those sports.

If we have an 8-team playoff, best to just have all at-large, no guarantees for any conferences, P5 or G5. That's a level playing field for everyone, and doesn't allow a team to leap-frog others merely because they win a conference - which proves nothing about how good they are versus teams from other conferences.

Of course its different. As long as 64 is more than 8---that will always be the case. Where it is similar is the champs decided on the court get in BEFORE subjective methods are used to fill out the rest of the bracket. In other words, subjective criteria bid claims are subjugated to claims based on objective "on the field championships". That makes sense. Its always made sense. And its done that way in virtually every other major sport one can name.

Again, just because something is decided 'on the field' doesn't mean it's better than something decided subjectively. In college football, conference titles don't prove much of anything other than you were better than 10-12 other teams you competed against, and maybe not even better than them, because in college football, only conference games count in determining the champ - not the case in pro sports.

Remember, both college hoops and baseball moved away from a champs-only model decades ago, and for good reason - it was obvious there were non champs that were being left out in favor of champs. The only reason that champs get auto-bids in hoops and baseball is because there is plenty of space for at-large teams to get in.

And that makes more sense: In a playoff of just 8 teams out of 130, we already have a severe mathematical constraint, so no sense in grafting on another one, conference champ auto-bids.

And if you don't like letting humans alone ranking the 8 teams because of bias, use a BCS type formula or computers alone.