(07-05-2021 01:20 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Every conference is under pressure to do away with them. They will be gone by the start of 2023 when the expanded playoffs begin. For sure the Pac-12 and ACC will ditch them, likely also the Mountain West as they all see them as detrimental to their best schools playoff chances. The American thinks that way as well, and they are working off a waiver. Divisions are artificial in the Sun Belt (exist only for football so they don't have to play 9 games), so they would be ditched at the first chance. The Big 12 doesn't have them, and of course doesn't support them.

There is no empirical data to show that divsions would be detrimental to the Pac-12 or ACC in the new proposed playoff system. Clemson has won six consecutive conference titles. Divisions have not kept them out or led to a unranked team winning the conference. As for the Pac-12, below are the CCG matchups from 2014 through 2019 with the team's CFP ranking before the game:

2014 – Oregon No. 2 vs Arizona No. 7 (Oregon won 51-13)
2015 – Stanford No. 7 vs USC No. 20 (Stanford won 41-20)
2016 – Washington No. 4 vs Colorado No. 8 (Washington won 41-10)
2017 – USC No. 10 vs Stanford No. 12 (USC won 31-28)
2018 – Washington No. 11 vs Utah No. 17 (Washington won 10-3)
2019 – Utah No. 5 vs Oregon No. 14 (Oregon won 37-15)

Every single season, the Pac-12 winner in the CCG would have made the playoffs under the proposed new system. In 2019 after beating Utah, Oregon jumped to No. 6 in the CFP rankings. In 2015, USC had one G5 school ahead of them, which was Houston at No. 19. Houston won their CCG and moved up to No. 18. Had USC won, they would have still would have made the top six and they would have moved past Houston in the rankings.

Dropping divisions does not guarantee anything. If a conference does decide to go without divisions, then does it make sense to have a CCG? Just take the conference regular season winner and hope they played well in nonconference play. In the case of the Pac-12, they were just tossing ideas around. Not all ideas are good ideas. They are under no pressure to get rid of divisions. They have much bigger issues than football divisions.