(05-06-2019 07:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  Going back to 1985 (the year after BYU won the title), there are only 35 schools that have finished in the final AP top 4 even once. 11 of those 35 only did it one time. 20 schools (the 17 national champs in those 34 years + Oregon, Washington and Georgia) have 117 of those 136 top 4 slots. They are even more dominant with 94 of the 102 top 3 slots.

So you have Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio St., Penn St., Notre Dame, Florida, FSU, Miami, Clemson, Colorado, Auburn, Tennessee, LSU, Oregon, Georgia and Washington dominating the top. TCU, Arizona St., Stanford and Utah have each been there twice. The other 11 are Michigan ST., Oklahoma St., Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech (Coach's national champ-#2 AP), Boise, Missouri, West Virginia, Syracuse, South Carolina, Oregon ST. and Wisconsin.

So you have 35-45 members of the P5 who have a lot to gain by expanding the playoffs with a guaranteed autobid.

How many schools since 1985 have won an outright P5 conference title, the kind that would auto-qualify for your 8 team playoff?

I bet it's a pretty small number as well. And e.g. just looking at the B1G, some of these schools that have, like NW and Illinois, have done so once. Not sure that's having a lot at stake here in any system.