(04-30-2019 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 12:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:10 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's perfectly intellectually consistent to want a 4-team playoff without any restrictions on creating the field and an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and a slot for the G5. It's simple math: a 4-team playoff is too small to start putting in qualifiers, while the 8-team playoff is large enough to accommodate auto-bids along with a couple of at-large slots.

In an 8-team scenario, it boggles my mind how much college football fans get so ornery about the thought of an "unworthy" conference or division champ getting into the playoff. That happens in every other sport quite frequently (*especially* in the NCAA Tournament), but everyone understands it because that is an objective on-the-field determination where everyone knows the rules and it's not based on the eye test or some other subjective criteria based on the whims of some old dudes sitting in a conference room in Dallas. You can have auto-bids in an 8-team playoff without bringing in any subjectivity for those slots while still having at-large bids for those schools that might have been the 2nd best team in the country but just happened to be stuck in a division with the best team in the country. That can all be quite easily accommodated and every other major sport in America has already shown that it can be done.

Two points about the bolded parts:

1) I disagree about the frequency with which perceived "unworthy" division champs make the playoffs in other sports. I think it's extremely rare, and the reason for that is because of how the champs are determined: Crucially, in the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB, the division champ is the team with the best OVERALL record, not division record. E.g., if the Giants go 8-0 in the NFC East and the Redskins go 6-2, but the Giants overall record is 10-6 while the Skins are 12-4, the Skins win the division, and everyone agrees they deserved to.

But in college football, only conference records count. So it's possible for e.g., Iowa to finish 10-2, with a H2H win over Penn State, while Penn State goes 9-4, but because of how the divisions shake out, Penn State wins the B1G. That is an awful look.

2) Now yes, in college hoops, sometimes a team that had a bad regular season, and say finished 6th in the ACC, goes on a run and wins the ACC tournament, thus claiming an automatic spot. But, that isn't a problem either, because the NCAA tournament is so large that all the ACC teams that had better seasons than them will make the tournament anyway as at-larges.

Not so in an 8-team playoff. In that Iowa/PSU scenario, with 6 of 8 spots guaranteed to champs and just two at-large, it is very likely that the Unworthy champ is the only team from the conference that makes the playoffs.

IMO, that's a big problem: The college system of choosing its conference champs is too flawed, and there are too few at-large spots, to give guaranteed spots to conference champs in an 8 team playoff.

Those who talk about how "all the other major sports" manage to give their division/conference champs a guaranteed spot in playoffs overlook the fact that there are key differences in how those sports choose their division champs which give them far more legitimacy than college conference champs for claiming a guaranteed slot.

You have 7-9 division champs making the playoffs. They won their division. Mets won the National League at 82-80. The teams in the division won their division and won the league/conference championship game. You are trying to split microscopic hairs.

And for that matter, the non-conference schedule in college football may not be anywhere comparable, unlike pro sports where it is at least similar.

"Micro"? No, the problem of not counting OOC games is a HUGE problem. It's 1/3 of the schedule, and conceptually, the more valid aspect for determining playoff worthiness, because these are games vs other conferences.

But then again .. what you say about OOC schedules is also correct. E.g., one SEC team might go 2-2 OOC but they might have played Clemson and FSU while another might go 4-0 OOC while playing nobody but G5 and FCS patsies, which makes the OOC schedule non-comparable. Plus, just as problematic, the schools themselves determine their OOC schedules rather than them being determined by an impartial league office.

Which is why college conferences only count conference games in determining their champs. It would be wrong to count OOC games, for the reasons we've given.

BUT, that still leaves us with the problem of only conference games counting.

And that's why it makes no sense to give conference champs an *auto* bid to the playoffs. For that to make sense, we'd need to count ALL games like the NFL etc. do to determine a conference champ, but for the reasons we've discussed we CAN'T do that.

Ergo, no auto-bids for conference champs.

(04-30-2019 08:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:29 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 03:44 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  College football isn't fair for all teams in Division 1 unless there's an 8 team playoff with a G5 autobid.

Screw the G5. If they have a school among the top three at large, then fine. Otherwise the top one still gets the NY6 consolation game.

Fair by what standard? If you invest 1/3rd less than P5, and most G5 schools invest less than 1/2 of the typical P5, never mind the elite 20 programs seriously in the hunt for a playoff berth, then you deserve no better than a 2/3 shot at best.

You may be winning poker at the $20 minimum table, but that doesn't get you an invite to $500 minimum table.

With that argument, the G5 schools are investing more of their own money than any of the P5. The P5 is investing donor and ESPN dollars.

Hogwash! Every G5 school is subsidized by 25% or more for football. They aren't investing their own money. They are investing taxpayers money.

Well its the taxpayer money they could be spending on the school instead of the football team.

The P5 is not spending significant school money on the team.

So saying the G5 isn't investing, is hogwash in regards to most of the G5.

(05-01-2019 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 12:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:10 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's perfectly intellectually consistent to want a 4-team playoff without any restrictions on creating the field and an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and a slot for the G5. It's simple math: a 4-team playoff is too small to start putting in qualifiers, while the 8-team playoff is large enough to accommodate auto-bids along with a couple of at-large slots.

In an 8-team scenario, it boggles my mind how much college football fans get so ornery about the thought of an "unworthy" conference or division champ getting into the playoff. That happens in every other sport quite frequently (*especially* in the NCAA Tournament), but everyone understands it because that is an objective on-the-field determination where everyone knows the rules and it's not based on the eye test or some other subjective criteria based on the whims of some old dudes sitting in a conference room in Dallas. You can have auto-bids in an 8-team playoff without bringing in any subjectivity for those slots while still having at-large bids for those schools that might have been the 2nd best team in the country but just happened to be stuck in a division with the best team in the country. That can all be quite easily accommodated and every other major sport in America has already shown that it can be done.

Two points about the bolded parts:

1) I disagree about the frequency with which perceived "unworthy" division champs make the playoffs in other sports. I think it's extremely rare, and the reason for that is because of how the champs are determined: Crucially, in the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB, the division champ is the team with the best OVERALL record, not division record. E.g., if the Giants go 8-0 in the NFC East and the Redskins go 6-2, but the Giants overall record is 10-6 while the Skins are 12-4, the Skins win the division, and everyone agrees they deserved to.

But in college football, only conference records count. So it's possible for e.g., Iowa to finish 10-2, with a H2H win over Penn State, while Penn State goes 9-4, but because of how the divisions shake out, Penn State wins the B1G. That is an awful look.

2) Now yes, in college hoops, sometimes a team that had a bad regular season, and say finished 6th in the ACC, goes on a run and wins the ACC tournament, thus claiming an automatic spot. But, that isn't a problem either, because the NCAA tournament is so large that all the ACC teams that had better seasons than them will make the tournament anyway as at-larges.

Not so in an 8-team playoff. In that Iowa/PSU scenario, with 6 of 8 spots guaranteed to champs and just two at-large, it is very likely that the Unworthy champ is the only team from the conference that makes the playoffs.

IMO, that's a big problem: The college system of choosing its conference champs is too flawed, and there are too few at-large spots, to give guaranteed spots to conference champs in an 8 team playoff.

Those who talk about how "all the other major sports" manage to give their division/conference champs a guaranteed spot in playoffs overlook the fact that there are key differences in how those sports choose their division champs which give them far more legitimacy than college conference champs for claiming a guaranteed slot.

You have 7-9 division champs making the playoffs. They won their division. Mets won the National League at 82-80. The teams in the division won their division and won the league/conference championship game. You are trying to split microscopic hairs.

And for that matter, the non-conference schedule in college football may not be anywhere comparable, unlike pro sports where it is at least similar.

"Micro"? No, the problem of not counting OOC games is a HUGE problem. It's 1/3 of the schedule, and conceptually, the more valid aspect for determining playoff worthiness, because these are games vs other conferences.

But then again .. what you say about OOC schedules is also correct. E.g., one SEC team might go 2-2 OOC but they might have played Clemson and FSU while another might go 4-0 OOC while playing nobody but G5 and FCS patsies, which makes the OOC schedule non-comparable. Plus, just as problematic, the schools themselves determine their OOC schedules rather than them being determined by an impartial league office.

Which is why college conferences only count conference games in determining their champs. It would be wrong to count OOC games, for the reasons we've given.

BUT, that still leaves us with the problem of only conference games counting.

And that's why it makes no sense to give conference champs an *auto* bid to the playoffs. For that to make sense, we'd need to count ALL games like the NFL etc. do to determine a conference champ, but for the reasons we've discussed we CAN'T do that.

Ergo, no auto-bids for conference champs.

It's a misnomer to state the non-conference games don't count in an auto-bid system. While you're correct that the non-conference games won't matter for the auto-bids themselves, they would actually count a great deal in practicality in determining any at-large bids. If anything, it would encourage much more risk-taking in playing high profile non-conference games by power teams because they're not going to be effectively disqualified for losing an early non-conference game to a top opponent when they still have the opportunity for an auto-bid with its conference schedule. We can see this in college basketball where the NCAA Tournament format ends up putting a huge emphasis on non-conference games for at-large bids (even when the auto-bids are all determined by conference tournaments played over a few days in March, much less any regular season games).

Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State don't worry about playing each other in the opening week of every college basketball season because the NCAA Tournament system legitimately rewards playing tough non-conference schedules... and not completely killing a team if it happens to suffer a loss to a really tough opponent.

The current college football playoff system gives lip service to stating that non-conference games matter, but a loss against a tough non-conference opponent is still generally seen as worse than going undefeated with a mediocre non-conference schedule. As of now, there is basically no benefit for any school looking for a CFP spot to play more than 1 non-conference game of any value. The Alabama formula is to play 1 name brand non-conference game (which is distinguished from whether it's actually a good non-conference game in reality - see their 2017 win against FSU that looked great in week 1 but then was really a middling win by the end of the year if you didn't look at the FSU brand) and then 3 patsies. Granting the P5 conferences auto-bids actually encourages power teams to do more than the Alabama formula with their non-conference schedules because there isn't a de facto elimination from the CFP race with a loss (while you can climb into the CFP race with a win if you didn't win your conference).

Ultimately, there is only ONE thing that a conference member is in complete control of on-the-field: winning its conference championship. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to independents like Notre Dame.) You can't reasonably control your strength of schedule (as even a marquee brand name team like FSU can turn into a statistically mediocre game in a year like 2017) and many of those games are scheduled many years (even a decade or more) in advance.

Once again, if a 7-5 Pitt team upsets a 12-0 Clemson team in the ACC Championship Game, then that's the fault of Clemson because they didn't take care of business on-the-field where they had 100% control of their own destiny. It's at *that* point where a subjective committee does serve a purpose in determining whether that Clemson team deserves an at-large slot based on its body of work, including performance in non-conference games. That spot for Clemson should be in addition to (NOT in lieu of) the automatic spot for Pitt that won in a manner where they had 100% control.

Pretty much all that anyone can ask for in sports is to have 100% control over its own destiny, where if you do x, y, and z, then you're in without any old guys in a conference room in Dallas wondering whether you meet the eye test or some other post-hoc justification to determine if you're worthy. If you fail to do x, y, and/or z, though, then it's fair that such old guys in a conference room in Dallas can now determine your fate because you didn't fulfill the objective requirements to avoid that process.

That is what is bothering me so much here because an 8-team playoff that has auto-bids and at-large bids gives *both* objective on-the-field bids where teams don't need to go through the B.S. eye test crap, while also providing enough flexibility to have at-large bids to acknowledge that there are teams that didn't win their conference that did enough during the regular season and non-conference games to warrant inclusion in the playoff. Auto-bids don't eliminate that 12-0 Clemson team that was upset in the ACC Championship, but rather just puts their fate in the hands of the subjective committee (while the team that fulfilled everything that it was 100% in control of doesn't have to put their fate in such hands). I just want to take as much of the decision process out of the hands of that subjective committee as possible - giving them 2 or 3 at-large bids to determine while the rest of the field is set in stone allows for schools to know that they're 100% in the playoff if they do x, y, and z and the flexibility to include "worthy" schools that didn't do z.

Let's put it this way - the chances of a "worthy" team (AKA a team that is legitimately in position to win the national championship) being left OUT of an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids and 2 to 3 at-large bids is pretty much zero. We're generally arguing here about whether we're somehow letting an "unworthy" team IN to an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids, and once again, I simply have zero concern about that because those spots are being clinched in a 100% on-the-field objective manner, which is what sports should be all about.

(05-01-2019 10:09 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:29 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 03:44 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  College football isn't fair for all teams in Division 1 unless there's an 8 team playoff with a G5 autobid.

Screw the G5. If they have a school among the top three at large, then fine. Otherwise the top one still gets the NY6 consolation game.

Fair by what standard? If you invest 1/3rd less than P5, and most G5 schools invest less than 1/2 of the typical P5, never mind the elite 20 programs seriously in the hunt for a playoff berth, then you deserve no better than a 2/3 shot at best.

You may be winning poker at the $20 minimum table, but that doesn't get you an invite to $500 minimum table.

With that argument, the G5 schools are investing more of their own money than any of the P5. The P5 is investing donor and ESPN dollars.

Hogwash! Every G5 school is subsidized by 25% or more for football. They aren't investing their own money. They are investing taxpayers money.

Well its the taxpayer money they could be spending on the school instead of the football team.

The P5 is not spending significant school money on the team.

So saying the G5 isn't investing, is hogwash in regards to most of the G5.

The public is being forced to invest in a product that is not supporting itself Bullet. Your original inference left out the fact that everyone of those schools was being at least 1/4 subsidized and many of them much much more. At a time when revenue for the public infrastructure is at a premium to acquire this is plain and simple waste in a effort to make smaller schools seem larger than they are, alumni donors more important than they are, and to continue pork barrel local spending on pet projects within regions of states is the work of lousy state representatives.

Quite frankly if an Athletic Department can't operate in the black then the product they offer is a luxury that the citizens who fund that state school can't afford. Where does it say in our Constitution that every state university or college is entitled to football whether their alumni support it or not?

Part of the problem that nobody wants discuss with regard to the FBS is just how many schools are trying to play the sports card to keep enrollment up when market forces say they should reduce tuition, increase enrollment, and offer a better product for the job market in order to attract students and stay in business. If their sports programs need subsidizing those programs quite frankly need to be reduced or eliminated. It's nothing more than market forces at work.

(05-01-2019 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 12:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:10 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's perfectly intellectually consistent to want a 4-team playoff without any restrictions on creating the field and an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and a slot for the G5. It's simple math: a 4-team playoff is too small to start putting in qualifiers, while the 8-team playoff is large enough to accommodate auto-bids along with a couple of at-large slots.

In an 8-team scenario, it boggles my mind how much college football fans get so ornery about the thought of an "unworthy" conference or division champ getting into the playoff. That happens in every other sport quite frequently (*especially* in the NCAA Tournament), but everyone understands it because that is an objective on-the-field determination where everyone knows the rules and it's not based on the eye test or some other subjective criteria based on the whims of some old dudes sitting in a conference room in Dallas. You can have auto-bids in an 8-team playoff without bringing in any subjectivity for those slots while still having at-large bids for those schools that might have been the 2nd best team in the country but just happened to be stuck in a division with the best team in the country. That can all be quite easily accommodated and every other major sport in America has already shown that it can be done.

Two points about the bolded parts:

1) I disagree about the frequency with which perceived "unworthy" division champs make the playoffs in other sports. I think it's extremely rare, and the reason for that is because of how the champs are determined: Crucially, in the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB, the division champ is the team with the best OVERALL record, not division record. E.g., if the Giants go 8-0 in the NFC East and the Redskins go 6-2, but the Giants overall record is 10-6 while the Skins are 12-4, the Skins win the division, and everyone agrees they deserved to.

But in college football, only conference records count. So it's possible for e.g., Iowa to finish 10-2, with a H2H win over Penn State, while Penn State goes 9-4, but because of how the divisions shake out, Penn State wins the B1G. That is an awful look.

2) Now yes, in college hoops, sometimes a team that had a bad regular season, and say finished 6th in the ACC, goes on a run and wins the ACC tournament, thus claiming an automatic spot. But, that isn't a problem either, because the NCAA tournament is so large that all the ACC teams that had better seasons than them will make the tournament anyway as at-larges.

Not so in an 8-team playoff. In that Iowa/PSU scenario, with 6 of 8 spots guaranteed to champs and just two at-large, it is very likely that the Unworthy champ is the only team from the conference that makes the playoffs.

IMO, that's a big problem: The college system of choosing its conference champs is too flawed, and there are too few at-large spots, to give guaranteed spots to conference champs in an 8 team playoff.

Those who talk about how "all the other major sports" manage to give their division/conference champs a guaranteed spot in playoffs overlook the fact that there are key differences in how those sports choose their division champs which give them far more legitimacy than college conference champs for claiming a guaranteed slot.

You have 7-9 division champs making the playoffs. They won their division. Mets won the National League at 82-80. The teams in the division won their division and won the league/conference championship game. You are trying to split microscopic hairs.

And for that matter, the non-conference schedule in college football may not be anywhere comparable, unlike pro sports where it is at least similar.

"Micro"? No, the problem of not counting OOC games is a HUGE problem. It's 1/3 of the schedule, and conceptually, the more valid aspect for determining playoff worthiness, because these are games vs other conferences.

But then again .. what you say about OOC schedules is also correct. E.g., one SEC team might go 2-2 OOC but they might have played Clemson and FSU while another might go 4-0 OOC while playing nobody but G5 and FCS patsies, which makes the OOC schedule non-comparable. Plus, just as problematic, the schools themselves determine their OOC schedules rather than them being determined by an impartial league office.

Which is why college conferences only count conference games in determining their champs. It would be wrong to count OOC games, for the reasons we've given.

BUT, that still leaves us with the problem of only conference games counting.

And that's why it makes no sense to give conference champs an *auto* bid to the playoffs. For that to make sense, we'd need to count ALL games like the NFL etc. do to determine a conference champ, but for the reasons we've discussed we CAN'T do that.

Ergo, no auto-bids for conference champs.

I don’t think it’s a major problem, if it were, then the NCAA would allow every conference to play a CCG without divisions.

Hell, the old 10 team SEC had a 7 game conference schedule up until the late 80’s, and they could still settle on a champ.

There are simple rules at play here: (1) win your conference games to ensure a chance at the conference title. (2) Win your OOC games to ensure the best chance at a wildcard and/or higher final ranking.

(05-01-2019 11:00 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 12:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:10 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's perfectly intellectually consistent to want a 4-team playoff without any restrictions on creating the field and an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and a slot for the G5. It's simple math: a 4-team playoff is too small to start putting in qualifiers, while the 8-team playoff is large enough to accommodate auto-bids along with a couple of at-large slots.

In an 8-team scenario, it boggles my mind how much college football fans get so ornery about the thought of an "unworthy" conference or division champ getting into the playoff. That happens in every other sport quite frequently (*especially* in the NCAA Tournament), but everyone understands it because that is an objective on-the-field determination where everyone knows the rules and it's not based on the eye test or some other subjective criteria based on the whims of some old dudes sitting in a conference room in Dallas. You can have auto-bids in an 8-team playoff without bringing in any subjectivity for those slots while still having at-large bids for those schools that might have been the 2nd best team in the country but just happened to be stuck in a division with the best team in the country. That can all be quite easily accommodated and every other major sport in America has already shown that it can be done.

Two points about the bolded parts:

1) I disagree about the frequency with which perceived "unworthy" division champs make the playoffs in other sports. I think it's extremely rare, and the reason for that is because of how the champs are determined: Crucially, in the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB, the division champ is the team with the best OVERALL record, not division record. E.g., if the Giants go 8-0 in the NFC East and the Redskins go 6-2, but the Giants overall record is 10-6 while the Skins are 12-4, the Skins win the division, and everyone agrees they deserved to.

But in college football, only conference records count. So it's possible for e.g., Iowa to finish 10-2, with a H2H win over Penn State, while Penn State goes 9-4, but because of how the divisions shake out, Penn State wins the B1G. That is an awful look.

2) Now yes, in college hoops, sometimes a team that had a bad regular season, and say finished 6th in the ACC, goes on a run and wins the ACC tournament, thus claiming an automatic spot. But, that isn't a problem either, because the NCAA tournament is so large that all the ACC teams that had better seasons than them will make the tournament anyway as at-larges.

Not so in an 8-team playoff. In that Iowa/PSU scenario, with 6 of 8 spots guaranteed to champs and just two at-large, it is very likely that the Unworthy champ is the only team from the conference that makes the playoffs.

IMO, that's a big problem: The college system of choosing its conference champs is too flawed, and there are too few at-large spots, to give guaranteed spots to conference champs in an 8 team playoff.

Those who talk about how "all the other major sports" manage to give their division/conference champs a guaranteed spot in playoffs overlook the fact that there are key differences in how those sports choose their division champs which give them far more legitimacy than college conference champs for claiming a guaranteed slot.

You have 7-9 division champs making the playoffs. They won their division. Mets won the National League at 82-80. The teams in the division won their division and won the league/conference championship game. You are trying to split microscopic hairs.

And for that matter, the non-conference schedule in college football may not be anywhere comparable, unlike pro sports where it is at least similar.

"Micro"? No, the problem of not counting OOC games is a HUGE problem. It's 1/3 of the schedule, and conceptually, the more valid aspect for determining playoff worthiness, because these are games vs other conferences.

But then again .. what you say about OOC schedules is also correct. E.g., one SEC team might go 2-2 OOC but they might have played Clemson and FSU while another might go 4-0 OOC while playing nobody but G5 and FCS patsies, which makes the OOC schedule non-comparable. Plus, just as problematic, the schools themselves determine their OOC schedules rather than them being determined by an impartial league office.

Which is why college conferences only count conference games in determining their champs. It would be wrong to count OOC games, for the reasons we've given.

BUT, that still leaves us with the problem of only conference games counting.

And that's why it makes no sense to give conference champs an *auto* bid to the playoffs. For that to make sense, we'd need to count ALL games like the NFL etc. do to determine a conference champ, but for the reasons we've discussed we CAN'T do that.

Ergo, no auto-bids for conference champs.

It's a misnomer to state the non-conference games don't count in an auto-bid system. While you're correct that the non-conference games won't matter for the auto-bids themselves, they would actually count a great deal in practicality in determining any at-large bids. If anything, it would encourage much more risk-taking in playing high profile non-conference games by power teams because they're not going to be effectively disqualified for losing an early non-conference game to a top opponent when they still have the opportunity for an auto-bid with its conference schedule. We can see this in college basketball where the NCAA Tournament format ends up putting a huge emphasis on non-conference games for at-large bids (even when the auto-bids are all determined by conference tournaments played over a few days in March, much less any regular season games).

Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State don't worry about playing each other in the opening week of every college basketball season because the NCAA Tournament system legitimately rewards playing tough non-conference schedules... and not completely killing a team if it happens to suffer a loss to a really tough opponent.

The current college football playoff system gives lip service to stating that non-conference games matter, but a loss against a tough non-conference opponent is still generally seen as worse than going undefeated with a mediocre non-conference schedule. As of now, there is basically no benefit for any school looking for a CFP spot to play more than 1 non-conference game of any value. The Alabama formula is to play 1 name brand non-conference game (which is distinguished from whether it's actually a good non-conference game in reality - see their 2017 win against FSU that looked great in week 1 but then was really a middling win by the end of the year if you didn't look at the FSU brand) and then 3 patsies. Granting the P5 conferences auto-bids actually encourages power teams to do more than the Alabama formula with their non-conference schedules because there isn't a de facto elimination from the CFP race with a loss (while you can climb into the CFP race with a win if you didn't win your conference).

Ultimately, there is only ONE thing that a conference member is in complete control of on-the-field: winning its conference championship. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to independents like Notre Dame.) You can't reasonably control your strength of schedule (as even a marquee brand name team like FSU can turn into a statistically mediocre game in a year like 2017) and many of those games are scheduled many years (even a decade or more) in advance.

Once again, if a 7-5 Pitt team upsets a 12-0 Clemson team in the ACC Championship Game, then that's the fault of Clemson because they didn't take care of business on-the-field where they had 100% control of their own destiny. It's at *that* point where a subjective committee does serve a purpose in determining whether that Clemson team deserves an at-large slot based on its body of work, including performance in non-conference games. That spot for Clemson should be in addition to (NOT in lieu of) the automatic spot for Pitt that won in a manner where they had 100% control.

Pretty much all that anyone can ask for in sports is to have 100% control over its own destiny, where if you do x, y, and z, then you're in without any old guys in a conference room in Dallas wondering whether you meet the eye test or some other post-hoc justification to determine if you're worthy. If you fail to do x, y, and/or z, though, then it's fair that such old guys in a conference room in Dallas can now determine your fate because you didn't fulfill the objective requirements to avoid that process.

That is what is bothering me so much here because an 8-team playoff that has auto-bids and at-large bids gives *both* objective on-the-field bids where teams don't need to go through the B.S. eye test crap, while also providing enough flexibility to have at-large bids to acknowledge that there are teams that didn't win their conference that did enough during the regular season and non-conference games to warrant inclusion in the playoff. Auto-bids don't eliminate that 12-0 Clemson team that was upset in the ACC Championship, but rather just puts their fate in the hands of the subjective committee (while the team that fulfilled everything that it was 100% in control of doesn't have to put their fate in such hands). I just want to take as much of the decision process out of the hands of that subjective committee as possible - giving them 2 or 3 at-large bids to determine while the rest of the field is set in stone allows for schools to know that they're 100% in the playoff if they do x, y, and z and the flexibility to include "worthy" schools that didn't do z.

Let's put it this way - the chances of a "worthy" team (AKA a team that is legitimately in position to win the national championship) being left OUT of an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids and 2 to 3 at-large bids is pretty much zero. We're generally arguing here about whether we're somehow letting an "unworthy" team IN to an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids, and once again, I simply have zero concern about that because those spots are being clinched in a 100% on-the-field objective manner, which is what sports should be all about.

If we are going with a 5-1-2 system, which many who support an 8-team playoff seem to favor, then that leaves just two at-large teams. That is precious few, very few. And the OOC games would only matter in determining those paltry two bids.

Again, a big difference between hoops and football is that there is a plethora of at-large bids, such that it is not uncommon for a P5 conference to get 5, 6, 7, even 8 teams in the tournament.

It's that kind of situation that permits, even encourages, the free-wheeling OOC matchups vs top teams during the regular season. If we were talking a 16-team or 24-team playoff with lots of at-large bids, then my concern wouldn't be much of one.

And IMO, having 'control of your destiny' is only meaningful if the path laid out is rational. E.g., imagine a system in which to make the playoffs, only every third game counts. The other two don't, but if you win every third game, you are in, regardless of whether the third game is any more of a test of how good you are then games one and two. That would be irrational.

That is what we have with conference autobids. You're an SEC team, your game with Ole Miss counts towards an autobid, your game with Ohio State doesn't, for no good reason. Not the way its done in the NFL, MLB, etc.

It’s not pro though, it’s college, where winning the Big Ten title sells a hell of a lot more t-shirts than winning the NFC South. It just matters to win a conference in football, because it’s hard!

There shouldn’t be a 5-1-2 or 5-2-1 or whatever. It should be a 5-3 with a clause that states “any school outside the P5 ranked in the top 8 of the final Playoff Poll earns a birth to the playoffs.” Reminiscent to the old BCS language. Which by the way, a computer should rank the teams and pick the wild cards.

(05-01-2019 11:00 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 08:44 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:55 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 12:37 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:10 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think it's perfectly intellectually consistent to want a 4-team playoff without any restrictions on creating the field and an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 and a slot for the G5. It's simple math: a 4-team playoff is too small to start putting in qualifiers, while the 8-team playoff is large enough to accommodate auto-bids along with a couple of at-large slots.

In an 8-team scenario, it boggles my mind how much college football fans get so ornery about the thought of an "unworthy" conference or division champ getting into the playoff. That happens in every other sport quite frequently (*especially* in the NCAA Tournament), but everyone understands it because that is an objective on-the-field determination where everyone knows the rules and it's not based on the eye test or some other subjective criteria based on the whims of some old dudes sitting in a conference room in Dallas. You can have auto-bids in an 8-team playoff without bringing in any subjectivity for those slots while still having at-large bids for those schools that might have been the 2nd best team in the country but just happened to be stuck in a division with the best team in the country. That can all be quite easily accommodated and every other major sport in America has already shown that it can be done.

Two points about the bolded parts:

1) I disagree about the frequency with which perceived "unworthy" division champs make the playoffs in other sports. I think it's extremely rare, and the reason for that is because of how the champs are determined: Crucially, in the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB, the division champ is the team with the best OVERALL record, not division record. E.g., if the Giants go 8-0 in the NFC East and the Redskins go 6-2, but the Giants overall record is 10-6 while the Skins are 12-4, the Skins win the division, and everyone agrees they deserved to.

But in college football, only conference records count. So it's possible for e.g., Iowa to finish 10-2, with a H2H win over Penn State, while Penn State goes 9-4, but because of how the divisions shake out, Penn State wins the B1G. That is an awful look.

2) Now yes, in college hoops, sometimes a team that had a bad regular season, and say finished 6th in the ACC, goes on a run and wins the ACC tournament, thus claiming an automatic spot. But, that isn't a problem either, because the NCAA tournament is so large that all the ACC teams that had better seasons than them will make the tournament anyway as at-larges.

Not so in an 8-team playoff. In that Iowa/PSU scenario, with 6 of 8 spots guaranteed to champs and just two at-large, it is very likely that the Unworthy champ is the only team from the conference that makes the playoffs.

IMO, that's a big problem: The college system of choosing its conference champs is too flawed, and there are too few at-large spots, to give guaranteed spots to conference champs in an 8 team playoff.

Those who talk about how "all the other major sports" manage to give their division/conference champs a guaranteed spot in playoffs overlook the fact that there are key differences in how those sports choose their division champs which give them far more legitimacy than college conference champs for claiming a guaranteed slot.

You have 7-9 division champs making the playoffs. They won their division. Mets won the National League at 82-80. The teams in the division won their division and won the league/conference championship game. You are trying to split microscopic hairs.

And for that matter, the non-conference schedule in college football may not be anywhere comparable, unlike pro sports where it is at least similar.

"Micro"? No, the problem of not counting OOC games is a HUGE problem. It's 1/3 of the schedule, and conceptually, the more valid aspect for determining playoff worthiness, because these are games vs other conferences.

But then again .. what you say about OOC schedules is also correct. E.g., one SEC team might go 2-2 OOC but they might have played Clemson and FSU while another might go 4-0 OOC while playing nobody but G5 and FCS patsies, which makes the OOC schedule non-comparable. Plus, just as problematic, the schools themselves determine their OOC schedules rather than them being determined by an impartial league office.

Which is why college conferences only count conference games in determining their champs. It would be wrong to count OOC games, for the reasons we've given.

BUT, that still leaves us with the problem of only conference games counting.

And that's why it makes no sense to give conference champs an *auto* bid to the playoffs. For that to make sense, we'd need to count ALL games like the NFL etc. do to determine a conference champ, but for the reasons we've discussed we CAN'T do that.

Ergo, no auto-bids for conference champs.

It's a misnomer to state the non-conference games don't count in an auto-bid system. While you're correct that the non-conference games won't matter for the auto-bids themselves, they would actually count a great deal in practicality in determining any at-large bids. If anything, it would encourage much more risk-taking in playing high profile non-conference games by power teams because they're not going to be effectively disqualified for losing an early non-conference game to a top opponent when they still have the opportunity for an auto-bid with its conference schedule. We can see this in college basketball where the NCAA Tournament format ends up putting a huge emphasis on non-conference games for at-large bids (even when the auto-bids are all determined by conference tournaments played over a few days in March, much less any regular season games).

Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State don't worry about playing each other in the opening week of every college basketball season because the NCAA Tournament system legitimately rewards playing tough non-conference schedules... and not completely killing a team if it happens to suffer a loss to a really tough opponent.

The current college football playoff system gives lip service to stating that non-conference games matter, but a loss against a tough non-conference opponent is still generally seen as worse than going undefeated with a mediocre non-conference schedule. As of now, there is basically no benefit for any school looking for a CFP spot to play more than 1 non-conference game of any value. The Alabama formula is to play 1 name brand non-conference game (which is distinguished from whether it's actually a good non-conference game in reality - see their 2017 win against FSU that looked great in week 1 but then was really a middling win by the end of the year if you didn't look at the FSU brand) and then 3 patsies. Granting the P5 conferences auto-bids actually encourages power teams to do more than the Alabama formula with their non-conference schedules because there isn't a de facto elimination from the CFP race with a loss (while you can climb into the CFP race with a win if you didn't win your conference).

Ultimately, there is only ONE thing that a conference member is in complete control of on-the-field: winning its conference championship. (Obviously, this doesn't apply to independents like Notre Dame.) You can't reasonably control your strength of schedule (as even a marquee brand name team like FSU can turn into a statistically mediocre game in a year like 2017) and many of those games are scheduled many years (even a decade or more) in advance.

Once again, if a 7-5 Pitt team upsets a 12-0 Clemson team in the ACC Championship Game, then that's the fault of Clemson because they didn't take care of business on-the-field where they had 100% control of their own destiny. It's at *that* point where a subjective committee does serve a purpose in determining whether that Clemson team deserves an at-large slot based on its body of work, including performance in non-conference games. That spot for Clemson should be in addition to (NOT in lieu of) the automatic spot for Pitt that won in a manner where they had 100% control.

Pretty much all that anyone can ask for in sports is to have 100% control over its own destiny, where if you do x, y, and z, then you're in without any old guys in a conference room in Dallas wondering whether you meet the eye test or some other post-hoc justification to determine if you're worthy. If you fail to do x, y, and/or z, though, then it's fair that such old guys in a conference room in Dallas can now determine your fate because you didn't fulfill the objective requirements to avoid that process.

That is what is bothering me so much here because an 8-team playoff that has auto-bids and at-large bids gives *both* objective on-the-field bids where teams don't need to go through the B.S. eye test crap, while also providing enough flexibility to have at-large bids to acknowledge that there are teams that didn't win their conference that did enough during the regular season and non-conference games to warrant inclusion in the playoff. Auto-bids don't eliminate that 12-0 Clemson team that was upset in the ACC Championship, but rather just puts their fate in the hands of the subjective committee (while the team that fulfilled everything that it was 100% in control of doesn't have to put their fate in such hands). I just want to take as much of the decision process out of the hands of that subjective committee as possible - giving them 2 or 3 at-large bids to determine while the rest of the field is set in stone allows for schools to know that they're 100% in the playoff if they do x, y, and z and the flexibility to include "worthy" schools that didn't do z.

Let's put it this way - the chances of a "worthy" team (AKA a team that is legitimately in position to win the national championship) being left OUT of an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids and 2 to 3 at-large bids is pretty much zero. We're generally arguing here about whether we're somehow letting an "unworthy" team IN to an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids, and once again, I simply have zero concern about that because those spots are being clinched in a 100% on-the-field objective manner, which is what sports should be all about.

Here, here!

(05-01-2019 03:33 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 10:09 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:29 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Screw the G5. If they have a school among the top three at large, then fine. Otherwise the top one still gets the NY6 consolation game.

Fair by what standard? If you invest 1/3rd less than P5, and most G5 schools invest less than 1/2 of the typical P5, never mind the elite 20 programs seriously in the hunt for a playoff berth, then you deserve no better than a 2/3 shot at best.

You may be winning poker at the $20 minimum table, but that doesn't get you an invite to $500 minimum table.

With that argument, the G5 schools are investing more of their own money than any of the P5. The P5 is investing donor and ESPN dollars.

Hogwash! Every G5 school is subsidized by 25% or more for football. They aren't investing their own money. They are investing taxpayers money.

Well its the taxpayer money they could be spending on the school instead of the football team.

The P5 is not spending significant school money on the team.

So saying the G5 isn't investing, is hogwash in regards to most of the G5.

The public is being forced to invest in a product that is not supporting itself Bullet. Your original inference left out the fact that everyone of those schools was being at least 1/4 subsidized and many of them much much more. At a time when revenue for the public infrastructure is at a premium to acquire this is plain and simple waste in a effort to make smaller schools seem larger than they are, alumni donors more important than they are, and to continue pork barrel local spending on pet projects within regions of states is the work of lousy state representatives.

Quite frankly if an Athletic Department can't operate in the black then the product they offer is a luxury that the citizens who fund that state school can't afford. Where does it say in our Constitution that every state university or college is entitled to football whether their alumni support it or not?

Part of the problem that nobody wants discuss with regard to the FBS is just how many schools are trying to play the sports card to keep enrollment up when market forces say they should reduce tuition, increase enrollment, and offer a better product for the job market in order to attract students and stay in business. If their sports programs need subsidizing those programs quite frankly need to be reduced or eliminated. It's nothing more than market forces at work.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you. I'm just calling bs on someone else's claim that G5 aren't trying, when its tougher for them than for more established (or luckier-see Wake Forest) programs which have a strong alumni donor base.

(05-01-2019 08:24 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 03:33 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 10:09 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 08:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  With that argument, the G5 schools are investing more of their own money than any of the P5. The P5 is investing donor and ESPN dollars.

Hogwash! Every G5 school is subsidized by 25% or more for football. They aren't investing their own money. They are investing taxpayers money.

Well its the taxpayer money they could be spending on the school instead of the football team.

The P5 is not spending significant school money on the team.

So saying the G5 isn't investing, is hogwash in regards to most of the G5.

The public is being forced to invest in a product that is not supporting itself Bullet. Your original inference left out the fact that everyone of those schools was being at least 1/4 subsidized and many of them much much more. At a time when revenue for the public infrastructure is at a premium to acquire this is plain and simple waste in a effort to make smaller schools seem larger than they are, alumni donors more important than they are, and to continue pork barrel local spending on pet projects within regions of states is the work of lousy state representatives.

Quite frankly if an Athletic Department can't operate in the black then the product they offer is a luxury that the citizens who fund that state school can't afford. Where does it say in our Constitution that every state university or college is entitled to football whether their alumni support it or not?

Part of the problem that nobody wants discuss with regard to the FBS is just how many schools are trying to play the sports card to keep enrollment up when market forces say they should reduce tuition, increase enrollment, and offer a better product for the job market in order to attract students and stay in business. If their sports programs need subsidizing those programs quite frankly need to be reduced or eliminated. It's nothing more than market forces at work.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you. I'm just calling bs on someone else's claim that G5 aren't trying, when its tougher for them than for more established (or luckier-see Wake Forest) programs which have a strong alumni donor base.

And I don't totally disagree with your position. There are many G5's who are trying, and very hard, but for every one of those there's two along for the ride and all are subsidized. From a pure business perspective as taken from the viewpoint of any state's budget, I have to call that into question.

And quite frankly no P5 schools should be receiving any form of a subsidy, including student activity fees. While those subsidies are frequently less than 5% they need to go away altogether.

(05-01-2019 06:57 PM)esayem Wrote:  It’s not pro though, it’s college, where winning the Big Ten title sells a hell of a lot more t-shirts than winning the NFC South. It just matters to win a conference in football, because it’s hard!

There shouldn’t be a 5-1-2 or 5-2-1 or whatever. It should be a 5-3 with a clause that states “any school outside the P5 ranked in the top 8 of the final Playoff Poll earns a birth to the playoffs.” Reminiscent to the old BCS language. Which by the way, a computer should rank the teams and pick the wild cards.

Why should an expanded playoff just give more access to all P5's? If you're not going to concede 1 spot to the highest G5 champion than they should do the top 8 ranked teams without any sort of P5/G5 champion monkier attached.

Six makes sense to me top two get a bye week.
The conference championship games would be the first round basically.
Five conference champs with one runner up or at large.
Makes the conference race and CCG more important.
Three and four seed could host five and six and everything else stays the same.
Gives the G5 a theoretical chance that will never happen.
Takes the human opinion factor out of it gives a true champ.

(05-01-2019 06:57 PM)esayem Wrote:  It’s not pro though, it’s college ...

I know that. But it seems like those who support auto-bids for conference champs often invoke the pros, as in "the NFL, etc. all have their division champs in the playoffs", so I felt the need to address that.

(05-02-2019 12:56 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 06:57 PM)esayem Wrote:  It’s not pro though, it’s college, where winning the Big Ten title sells a hell of a lot more t-shirts than winning the NFC South. It just matters to win a conference in football, because it’s hard!

There shouldn’t be a 5-1-2 or 5-2-1 or whatever. It should be a 5-3 with a clause that states “any school outside the P5 ranked in the top 8 of the final Playoff Poll earns a birth to the playoffs.” Reminiscent to the old BCS language. Which by the way, a computer should rank the teams and pick the wild cards.

Why should an expanded playoff just give more access to all P5's? If you're not going to concede 1 spot to the highest G5 champion than they should do the top 8 ranked teams without any sort of P5/G5 champion monkier attached.

Because that’s the only way it will happen; the P5 need assurance they have a spot locked in.

Imagine a year where the highest ranked G5 is like an 18 ranked Sun Belt team and Notre Dame is ranked 8. This is where the G5 auto-bid makes no sense. They’re not actually playing another team for a spot on the field like the P5 CCGs. It would essentially be stealing a Wild Card from a more deserving team. I’m telling you, and you can thank those non-BCS world beaters, if the G5 gets anything it will be a guarantee if they finish in the top 8.

To summarize:
• Expanded Playoff needs support from P5, auto-bids guarantee their security.
• An auto-bid to a G5 “champ” is more like a reserved Wild Card which is too messy unless you are including the Independent teams. Even then, it becomes Notre Dame’s to lose every year.
• I fully expect a clause, inspired by non-BCS conferences being shut out of the BCS, some language that states the locked-in inclusion of a non-P5, so long as they meet some standard. In other words, no 18th ranked Sun Belt teams will be garnering a Wild Card.

Personally, I wish every conference could get an auto-bid, but to do that is almost impossible at this point because you would have to convince everyone to drop back down to an 11 game regular season and drop CCGs. Also, eliminate the bowl games.

(05-02-2019 08:25 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(05-02-2019 12:56 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  

(05-01-2019 06:57 PM)esayem Wrote:  It’s not pro though, it’s college, where winning the Big Ten title sells a hell of a lot more t-shirts than winning the NFC South. It just matters to win a conference in football, because it’s hard!

There shouldn’t be a 5-1-2 or 5-2-1 or whatever. It should be a 5-3 with a clause that states “any school outside the P5 ranked in the top 8 of the final Playoff Poll earns a birth to the playoffs.” Reminiscent to the old BCS language. Which by the way, a computer should rank the teams and pick the wild cards.

Why should an expanded playoff just give more access to all P5's? If you're not going to concede 1 spot to the highest G5 champion than they should do the top 8 ranked teams without any sort of P5/G5 champion monkier attached.

Because that’s the only way it will happen; the P5 need assurance they have a spot locked in.

Imagine a year where the highest ranked G5 is like an 18 ranked Sun Belt team and Notre Dame is ranked 8. This is where the G5 auto-bid makes no sense. They’re not actually playing another team for a spot on the field like the P5 CCGs. It would essentially be stealing a Wild Card from a more deserving team. I’m telling you, and you can thank those non-BCS world beaters, if the G5 gets anything it will be a guarantee if they finish in the top 8.

To summarize:
• Expanded Playoff needs support from P5, auto-bids guarantee their security.
• An auto-bid to a G5 “champ” is more like a reserved Wild Card which is too messy unless you are including the Independent teams. Even then, it becomes Notre Dame’s to lose every year.
• I fully expect a clause, inspired by non-BCS conferences being shut out of the BCS, some language that states the locked-in inclusion of a non-P5, so long as they meet some standard. In other words, no 18th ranked Sun Belt teams will be garnering a Wild Card.

Personally, I wish every conference could get an auto-bid, but to do that is almost impossible at this point because you would have to convince everyone to drop back down to an 11 game regular season and drop CCGs. Also, eliminate the bowl games.

As some of you like to point out when discussing why some schools are in the P5 and why others aren't "Deserves got nothing to do with it" (from the movie Unforgiven).

First of all you are taking the most extreme position (an 18th ranked SB team vs. #8 Note Dame). Second, the rankings are completely arbitrary, as it has been proven time and again that these rankings are biased for the Helmet schools (see the AP Poll which has included a 4-8 Nebraska Team in their Top 25 for this upcoming season). However, using your model and the SB team is undefeated and played a strong OOC schedule and #8 Notre Dame is 10-2 with losses against the only decent teams on their schedule then yes I would say it would be just to put the undefeated Sun Belt team over the Irish.

(04-30-2019 03:44 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  College football isn't fair for all teams in Division 1 unless there's an 8 team playoff with a G5 autobid.

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG....

No autobid scenario is fair - not one. Not even where the best conference has a fluke Conference Playoff Champ.... never, never NO.

This "everybody gets a trophy" BS has to stop. You WILL NEVER get a unanimous decision on the best 2, 4, 8 or even 16 - NEVER, no matter how you try to decide it.

Of all the metrics and measurements available, the Human Decision and "eye test" is still the best way to get the best playoff field. The last team out is going to ***** no matter what.

I would rather have the more appealing and correct top vs. bottom seed game over a scenario where "Houston" (not picking on Houston) was the best G5 but the metrics say they are only 15th or so best team in the country but "Auto Bid" says they are in when Florida State is out and the metrics say they are much better than Houston (obviously this is a made up scenario, but the likelihood of it really happening like this in some form is pretty high if auto bid existed).

(05-02-2019 09:11 AM)Eldonabe Wrote:  

(04-30-2019 03:44 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  College football isn't fair for all teams in Division 1 unless there's an 8 team playoff with a G5 autobid.

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG....

No autobid scenario is fair - not one. Not even where the best conference has a fluke Conference Playoff Champ.... never, never NO.

This "everybody gets a trophy" BS has to stop. You WILL NEVER get a unanimous decision on the best 2, 4, 8 or even 16 - NEVER, no matter how you try to decide it.

Of all the metrics and measurements available, the Human Decision and "eye test" is still the best way to get the best playoff field. The last team out is going to ***** no matter what.

I would rather have the more appealing and correct top vs. bottom seed game over a scenario where "Houston" (not picking on Houston) was the best G5 but the metrics say they are only 15th or so best team in the country but "Auto Bid" says they are in when Florida State is out and the metrics say they are much better than Houston (obviously this is a made up scenario, but the likelihood of it really happening like this in some form is pretty high if auto bid existed).

There's more evidence of school's getting ranked higher and being "awarded participation trophies" (better bowls) that are in the P5 than in the G5.

5-1-2 is objectively the best.....

It’s settled on the field.

(05-02-2019 08:25 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(05-02-2019 12:56 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  Why should an expanded playoff just give more access to all P5's? If you're not going to concede 1 spot to the highest G5 champion than they should do the top 8 ranked teams without any sort of P5/G5 champion monkier attached.

Because that’s the only way it will happen; the P5 need assurance they have a spot locked in.

I don't necessarily agree with this. IMO the biggest factor will be money. The BCS became the CFP because Disney was willing to pay a LOT more money for the CFP.

If the same is true for an 8-team playoff, we will get an 8-team playoff, even if the TV networks veto the idea of P5 champ auto-bids.

If there isn't more money in it, we won't get an 8-team playoff no matter what the format.

(05-02-2019 11:09 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-02-2019 08:25 AM)esayem Wrote:  

(05-02-2019 12:56 AM)AuzGrams Wrote:  Why should an expanded playoff just give more access to all P5's? If you're not going to concede 1 spot to the highest G5 champion than they should do the top 8 ranked teams without any sort of P5/G5 champion monkier attached.

Because that’s the only way it will happen; the P5 need assurance they have a spot locked in.

I don't necessarily agree with this. IMO the biggest factor will be money. The BCS became the CFP because Disney was willing to pay a LOT more money for the CFP.

If the same is true for an 8-team playoff, we will get an 8-team playoff, even if the TV networks veto the idea of P5 champ auto-bids.

If there isn't more money in it, we won't get an 8-team playoff no matter what the format.

The biggest factor is money, for sure, and as with March Madness, the CFP playoff is only going to expand if a ton of new money is offered for an expansion. But I have never seen any indication that ESPN or any other TV outlet would block autobids for P5 champs. If anything, ESPN and Fox would be enthusiastic about those autobids because that would make the rights they already own for CCGs much more valuable.