(05-04-2021 12:31 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 12:06 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 09:49 AM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 07:36 AM)ohio1317 Wrote:  I think college basketball regular season is definitely hurt by the torunament. There are die hards who care regardless and the regular season is good for casual viewing if you are sitting looking for something, but there really is no must watch games. You can have the #1 and #2 teams in the country playing and it just doesn't feel like there are any stakes to me half the time (you are both going to the torunament as high seeds).

This is what I will personally miss with a bigger playoff (4 is already worse than 2, but not too big to end this completely). I love watching a team playing (whom I might have no otherwise interest in) knowing that they have to win to stay in the national title chase. Lose any game, they leave everything up to chance. It creates a lot of early/mid-season very big games when otherwise the stakes would feel far less.

I get the issues with the system, but this is what made me love the sport (and not just my own team) and it is very sad to see the transformation to be just like every other sport. I will still love it, but a piece of it is dying to me.

It's the underlying influences behind the prevailing thoughts that concerns me the most. Championships should be about who has the best team. With the CFP it seems sometimes to be about which 4 solid teams gain us the most viewers. So maximizing profits can conflict with fairly deciding a champion. And there is this growing socialist sentiment that no matter what you have done or failed to do in order to get in that every school who gets close deserves to be in and this is more about fan attitudes than team ability. Inclusion is in my mind a word anathema to the purposes of allowing a champion to win it on the field. I want to see teams that earned the right to play by being their conference's champion play. But I want those schools to have had better seasons than being the tallest midget in a weak conference to get into the playoffs. And quietly in the back of my mind is the relationship between the gambling industry and the NFL where the house wins 3/4ths of the time more or less. Gambling is always looking for angles to control the odds on outcomes. More teams in make injuries a wild card, with targeting it makes players ejections a wild card, and it provides match ups in which fans make big wrong assumptions.

We don't often truly consider the motivations behind these pushes. But gambling and TV ratings feed off of one another. And they can use the angle of "inclusion" for their purposes as long as it is part of the popular mantra of society. Championships are about winning, not do-overs, mulligans, or public sentiment, and they really shouldn't be about who garners the largest market share either!

To be honest, I actually think the CFP committee has done a pretty good job of picking the best 4 teams in most years if "best" is defined as, "Who are the 4 teams that would be the biggest favorites?" It's interesting that you bring up gambling because I believe that the CFP committee has been essentially applying the gambling standard: the CFP picks and the Las Vegas picks for the top 4 would likely be completely aligned.

The issue is that sports fans also want to see "deserving" teams (those that had objective achievements) in the playoffs, but those aren't necessarily always the "best" teams. Look back to my example above of where Ohio State was taken over Penn State for the 2016 CFP even though PSU won the Big Ten *and* even beat OSU head-to-head. IMHO, PSU was the more deserving team, yet OSU was looked at as the "better" team. The CFP committee clearly valued the latter, which is their prerogative, but then that brings up the accusations that the CFP is applying the subjective "eye test" instead of on-the-field results or the brand bias that you're referring to here.

So, I wouldn't ever call a system with auto-bids or some other requirements that takes power away from a committee as socialist. To the contrary, that's really the only way to mitigate real or perceived cronyism. The "deserving" teams are the ones with auto-bids and the other "best" teams are the at-larges. It doesn't have to be this "all or nothing" or "one or the other" straw man situation. This isn't exactly revolutionary: every other US pro and college sport has this type of playoff system at some level.

Horse Hockey Frank! My opinion has not changed low these many years. Let's include a P6 if we must to satisfy those who clamor for inclusion, but no at large, which makes a farce of the championship. Let the kids decide it on the field, period. So a 6 team playoff, champs only, I don't give rat's behind if one has 3 losses, and let them play it off. Ohio State got in over Penn State because PSU wasn't far enough removed from Sandusky and OSU has the much larger national audience.

And you twisted my statement slightly. The "socialist" ethos is among fans who "feel" that somehow many more deserve a shot. I can buy that to an extent so let's make a P6, but let's put the best of the G5 in it. But it's that populist need for more inclusion that the networks and gambling industry use to urge more at large bids so the committee process is needed to complicate for their own purposes things that should be decided on the field.

Let the CFP be a miniature tournament of those who earned their ticket by winning their conferences by whatever means that is decided. The winner and National Champion is then a champion among champions. No mulligans for football please! Make every game count and you keep them all valuable. Let the kids decide it on the field and nobody gets jobbed. It's called integrity and ESPN and Las Vegas need to deal with it as do Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State when they don't win their conferences but a committee essentially answerable to ESPN helps them find a way in and for what? Ratings and Revenue!

Seed 1 & 2 with byes if we must and let the 6 champs play!

The at large deals with situations where you have to use tiebreakers in conferences. The idea of a playoff should be to let anyone who has a reasonable claim to be the best team to decide it on the field. In 2008 Texas beat OU by 10 but lost a 3 way tiebreak for the Big 12 South title based on the poll voting. Big 12 changed its tiebreak the next year and Texas would have won that title under those rules. in 2011 had Arkansas beaten LSU in the season closer, the 3 best teams in the country would have been tied for the SEC West title. At larges have value. You just shouldn't overdo it.

If they start to loosen the CCG rules you could have 3 teams unbeaten in conference in these large conferences. You had that year where Ohio St. and Iowa both went unbeaten in conference in the Big 10 with only 11 teams.