(05-12-2019 01:26 PM)bullet Wrote:  Just started looking at alternatives on an 8 team playoff. Kind of interesting that in 2018, UCF, along with Notre Dame, Georgia, Michigan and P5 champs, Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma and Ohio St. are in with a straight 8. With a 5-0-3, UCF gets displaced by Pac champ Washington. In a 5-1-2, its Michigan who gets displaced by Washington (who was #9).

The funny thing is, the way this debate over 8-team playoffs is often framed here is S8 on one side and 5-1-2 and 5-0-3 on the other, as if 5-0-3 and 5-1-2 are very similar and both differ significantly from S8. This seems to be because some are kind of fixated on the issue of whether P5 champs get an autobid or not, and that factor does distinguish S8 from 5-0-3 and 5-1-2.

But in terms of practical outcomes, truth is, if history is a guide, it is S8 and 5-0-3 that are extremely similar, with both being markedly different from 5-1-2.

E.g., looking at the 5 years of the CFP and using the top 8 CFP rankings as our guide, S8 and 5-0-3 would have produced the exact same playoff teams 2014 - 2017, the only year they would have differed at all was last year, when as you say Michigan would have gotten in under S8 while Washington would have displaced them under 5-0-3.

Now, the difference between S8/5-0-3 and 5-1-2 are much more significant, because the playoffs produced by 5-1-2 would have been different from that produced by S8 or 5-0-3 in all of the 5 years of the CFP. That's because in all five of those years, 5-1-2 would have mandated inclusion of a G5 team that would displace a P5 team in either S8 or 5-0-3.