(04-26-2021 02:51 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-26-2021 02:42 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-26-2021 02:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-26-2021 12:05 PM)ken d Wrote:  In an 8 team playoff, the first round would likely be played in early December. I could even see the start of the college season being moved up a week to the week before Labor Day to accommodate the playoffs. With expanded NFL playoffs, there will be less space available for college playoffs in January.

If you are eliminated in this early first playoff round, does that mean your season is over, or will the four losers move on to an NY6 game that isn't hosting a semifinal? Will those games be viewed as unattractive, because they are essentially consolation games? And will the host cities of the playoff bowls get the influx of tourists they enjoyed when those New Years bowl games were just fun rewards for fans as well as players instead of business trips?

The old adage "be careful what you wish for" applies to playoff expansion. Because whether the outcome of expansion is good or bad, we will never go back.

The first round of quarterfinals will likely be NYD to protect the current big bowls.

Agreed.

It's the least disruptive to the system.

Plus, there's a legal reason, too: the bowls are the contractual mechanism that enable the P5 to secure their "auto-bids" (which would really be contract bids) similar to the current CFP system (and the past BCS system, for that matter). The P5 won't (and can't) get into a room together and collectively decide that they'll be the only 5 conferences that get bids to this new playoff system. (That would likely be an illegal collusion in violation of antitrust law.) Instead, they can approach this in the exact same manner as the CFP system: any conference that can convince a bowl that paying $40 million (or likely much more in a playoff system) for their conference champion is worth more than an at-large bid is free to enter into a contract with such bowl. Of course, we all reasonably know that the only ones that are worth that much are the P5 champs, so they get the plausible deniability in that they're just letting the free market work. Once again, that's the argument that they use now: they're not preventing the AAC, MWC or any other G5 conference from getting a contract with an NY6 bowl, but rather the NY6 bowls aren't interested.

To be fair, access to the actual playoff has never had any direct dependence on having a contract bowl during the CFP era. Those contract bowls ties are about access to the biggest bowls--AND--of course--- who gets a "full share" payout----but those contract bowls never had a thing to do with who's actually in the playoff during the CFP era. That said---its not hard to craft language that does basically the same thing as making sure the P5 champs get in as well as top G5---but doesnt violate the law. It could be as simple as saying "the top 6 highest ranked conference champs get auto-bids with 2 wild cards selected by the committee". There might be one---but I cant remember a year where a P5 champ would have been eliminated with that "top 6 conference champs" language. I agree--you have to be careful---but I think there are ways to accomplish an effective 5-1-2 without getting into anti-trust trouble.

Eh, I'm not so sure. IMO a 5-1-2 system based on the bowls could have two issues.

1) Public relations. If the justification for the P5 having autobids is that the major bowls - which just coincidentally (LOL) are now the quarterfinals of the playoffs - want contracts with the P5 but not the G5, then we now have a situation where playoff participation is based on marketing not merit. That's basically what sunk the Euro Super League - the notion that because Real Madrid and Man United have huge marketing and fan bases, that they should automatically get to play for the European title every year regardless of how good their team performs, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including many of their own supporters. Playoffs are supposed to be purely about merit, not market forces. Now, a G5 fan will say "well the current system is a farce because we all know the CFP committee picks the teams based on brand name", but crucially, that's not a formal aspect of the system. Just as in Euro soccer, we all know Real Madrid is so rich they will never actually be relegated, nevertheless to both their fans and fans of others, the theoretical chance that they could be is crucial to the system's legitimacy.

2) Legal. A 8-team playoff based on contracts with NY6 bowls couples the playoffs with these bowls, and their auto-bids with the P5. As you say, that's different from how the current system works, where the NY6 autobids are decoupled from the playoffs. IMO a court could find that coupling problematic, and evidence of a restraint of trade, etc.

And if so, it's not solution to give the G5 one slot, because they will be treated differently from the P5, who get each of their conference champs in.

In contrast, "Straight 8" of course has no such difficulties.