(08-21-2019 03:58 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-21-2019 03:41 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(08-21-2019 03:25 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Straight 8 will never get the votes. The G5 hold a third of the votes and they will all vote no. The PAC 12 and Big Ten would be hard no votes as well, probably the Big 12 too.

Why would the B10 vote no? They stand to get 2-3 teams in every year with straight eight. Them and the SEC should be the biggest proponents.

The Big Ten is probably the most vocal about the importance of conference championships.

This is NOT about quantity in a particular year for the Big Ten. This is about ensuring that their top team is in the playoff (which makes the Big Ten Championship Game into a de facto playoff game) 100% guaranteed. Getting 3 teams in one year but then 0 teams in the next year is NOT what the Big Ten wants at all. When push comes to shove, they'd rather have at 1 team in every single year without any debate even if it means sacrificing an additional playoff team from time-to-time.

Making the playoff even 99% of the time isn't good enough for those in power. The argument that a power conference champ will "almost always make an 8-team playoff" is not acceptable. I can't emphasize that enough.

IMO, this is an unproven assertion. We won't know for sure until an 8-team playoff is brought up for debate, and a variation adopted.

Furthermore, history suggests that auto-bids for P5 champs is NOT of paramount importance to the B1G or anyone else. The evidence is the existence of the BCS and the CFP, which have existed for 22 years now without that requirement. And no, there was no logical or empirical reason that college football first had to adopt a 2- and then 4- team playoff system that mathematically precluded auto-bids for P5 champs. The conferences could have adopted your preferred 8-team playoff system with auto-bids for champs in 1998, or in 2012, but they didn't. Which means it was acceptable to the powers that be for their champs to not automatically make the playoffs. Indeed, even with the CFP, the conferences could have expressed their alleged extreme desire to have their champs auto-included with a rule that says "to be in the CFP playoffs, a team must be a conference champion". But they didn't do that either, they merely told the committee it should make that some kind of point of emphasis.

In the end, we shall see what happens and one of us will be proven right. If I'm wrong I'll be happy to say so.

BTW, if Straight 8 had been in effect the past five years of the CFP, the B1G champ would have gotten in the playoffs all five years. Plus a couple other teams as well.