Re: Playoff Setup

I don't think you can set up a system that includes byes, especially a system that subjectively chooses rankings/seedings. With six schools what criteria do you use to determine who gets the 2-seed and who gets the 3-seed? Having that bye is huge and will seem really unfair to schools 3-6.

If you expand, realistically it would seem that you go to 8- or 16-teams and avoid byes. No setup will make everyone happy, but the eight school tournament with five autobids for P5, one autobid for G5 along with two wildcards seems to be the most likely scenario. You throw a bone to the G5 and the P5 sets themselves up for more money. How many people would really complain about this?

Would the money really increase, though? Are we just trading the match ups we see in the non-playoff major bowls each year for another round of playoffs? Does that really constitute an increase in revenue? If I'm ESPN, does expanding the playoff lower the value of the other bowl games? I'm not going to want to pay out big $ for both the Fiesta Bowl and round 1 of an 8-team playoff where the Fiesta may pit No 3 BiG XII vs No 3 PAC-12.

Re: Regular season schedules

You may have to trim a game off the regular season schedule to make this expansion work. Athletic departments like their 7-home games. There are things to figure out here, but if the expanded playoff can make up a lot of the missed revenue of the 7th home game, there are other ways to make up the difference. That's why they pay their marketing guys the $ that they do. The championship weekend extra conference game in the Big Ten was a neat idea and can be implemented to help with revenues (getting the 12th game if you cut the regular season back to 11). Perhaps the two schools playing split the revenues after costs.

Re: Logistics

If BYU/Coastal Carolina can put together a game in a few days and the Big Ten can piece together champions week games a week before, logistics aren't as big of a concern as they used to be. If there's money to be made, people will figure out how to get it.

Re: Bowls

Bowls are inventory for ESPN. As long as people watch them and attend them (i.e. are profitable), they will try to keep them in the mix. Maybe you trim the number of bowls down, but there still seems to be a place for them.