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Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
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Captain Bearcat Offline
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Post: #101
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 12:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(07-13-2021 09:55 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  
(07-13-2021 08:50 AM)esayem Wrote:  So worst case scenario for the Rose Bowl is they host a semifinal the week after NYD once every three years and the other two years host the runner-up (possibly second runner ups) of the Big 10/Pac 12 on their traditional date? This would mean campus sites for 1st round and quarterfinals.

Best case they host a quarterfinal on NYD every year with the option to host a semi a week later every three years?

Pretty much.

Though co-owner the City of Pasadena probably doesn't want to host the Quarterfinals AND the Semi-finals every year, so probably best case for the Rose Bow, is they host a quarterfinal on NYD every year, and leave the privilege of hosting the semifinals to the other bowls who aren't guaranteed to host on NYD every year.

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(07-13-2021 07:05 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(07-12-2021 09:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  ESPN owns the bowls.

Right, 35 out of 40. But so?

Some would draw a distinction between the bowls that ESPN Events owns outright and those that ESPN "owns" in the sense that they survive because they had a slot on the ESPN bowl broadcast schedule ... but certainly the highest profile bowls would not consider themselves "owned" by ESPN just because ESPN holds their broadcast rights.

ESPN gets a big benefit from those bowls filling their broadcast schedule. Many of those bowls disappear without ESPN. ESPN is not going to be in favor of killing something they benefit from.

ESPN wants the bowls to be played just so they can have live sports on TV, but their value is minimal.

This is because other than the contract bowls & playoffs, most most of the bowls don't get great ratings. The average non-contract bowl in 2021 got 2.23 million viewers.


The highest non-contract bowl this year was the Citrus bowl (Auburn-Northwestern), which got a 2.8 rating and 4.78 million viewers. That's about the same as the average 1st round NCAA basketball tournament game on CBS.

4 of the bowls got under 1 million viewers. That's about the same as a First Four NCAA tournament game on True TV.

Sources:
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college...v-ratings/
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2021/03...e-not-bad/
07-13-2021 12:52 PM
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esayem Offline
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Post: #102
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 12:21 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  
(07-13-2021 08:50 AM)esayem Wrote:  So worst case scenario for the Rose Bowl is they host a semifinal the week after NYD once every three years and the other two years host the runner-up (possibly second runner ups) of the Big 10/Pac 12 on their traditional date? This would mean campus sites for 1st round and quarterfinals.

Best case they host a quarterfinal on NYD every year with the option to host a semi a week later every three years?

I don’t understand the big controversy.

To me the obvious compromise on travel is to place the semis on campus. This is something I posted about years ago and I think Frank Tank was an advocate as well. This means the 6 bowls can maintain their traditional dates and two would be out of the playoff picture every three years.

Talk about starting the spring semester with a bang on campus!

The controversy is as Dodd stated, the Rose is coming out of NYD if they want to take part. The QF will take place prior to the 1st (probably at CCG sites or campus sites) to mitigate travel. This way you can get the SF scheduled the Saturday preceding NFL WC weekend.

I can’t believe people believe weeknight SFs will even be considered. Again, listen carefully to the 15 min mark of that podcast. As soon as they announced 6+6 I knew the Rose and its organizers were completely cut out from the setup.

Went back and listened again. I didn’t hear anything about the quarterfinals not happening on or around NYD and having to be in December.
07-13-2021 01:23 PM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #103
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 12:52 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  ESPN wants the bowls to be played just so they can have live sports on TV, but their value is minimal.

This is because other than the contract bowls & playoffs, most most of the bowls don't get great ratings. The average non-contract bowl in 2021 got 2.23 million viewers.

The highest non-contract bowl this year was the Citrus bowl (Auburn-Northwestern), which got a 2.8 rating and 4.78 million viewers. That's about the same as the average 1st round NCAA basketball tournament game on CBS.

4 of the bowls got under 1 million viewers. That's about the same as a First Four NCAA tournament game on True TV.

Sources:
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college...v-ratings/
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2021/03...e-not-bad/

Each of the four bowls that had fewer than a million viewers was played on a weekday afternoon. Also, for pretty much every bowl game, the audiences are much larger than they would be for any non-live programming ESPN would show in the bowls' time slots.

Even if the dollar value of each minor bowl is minimal, ESPN wants to keep the bowls and will keep them even if there is a 12-team playoff. Just as importantly, the FBS schools want to keep all the bowls because they like having them as "participation trophies" for every team that wins at least 6 games.
07-13-2021 01:35 PM
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RUScarlets Offline
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Post: #104
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 01:23 PM)esayem Wrote:  Went back and listened again. I didn’t hear anything about the quarterfinals not happening on or around NYD and having to be in December.

Yes, I am still assuming this point. But this is because it is obvious given the way the calendar is set up. They are not going to cram three QF games on what is technically a work night (NYD) most years. You spread out 4 QF games between two nights in the middle of Xmas and NYD (similar to how the SF falls on the middle Saturday when not the Rose and Sugar). And this will be the case because the SF must be played the 1st Saturday of January. Any later and you’d be looking at four fanbases traveling on Monday Tuesday nights in the middle of January. That’s just not going to happen from a logistics or TV point of view. We are not Europe.

Why else is it important to play QF before NYD? Dodd confirms they are still leaving all options on the table for QF host venues, including retaining campus sites. However, CCG sites in Atlanta and Dallas is much more feasible than Pasadena, especially since bye teams will have just played their CCGs there.

So if you are Oklahoma, you play Baylor in your CCG. If you finish in the top 4, you are comfortably placed in Jerry World again for the QF. SEC champ can play in NO. Ohio State on the other hand, much more feasible to keep them in Indy for the QF rather than travel to Pasadena to “host” a 5-12 in the QF. Same deal for ND although they will never “host” a QF, so no conflicts with Lucas Oil/B1G champion as far as a “neutral” QF site.
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2021 01:02 PM by RUScarlets.)
07-13-2021 02:23 PM
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ken d Offline
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Post: #105
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
Let's say that the quarterfinals are played on the last Saturday in December at the home fields of the four bye schools (all conference champions). About one year in every seven year cycle that would conflict with New Year's Day bowls. If you are the Rose Bowl, and you don't host a quarterfinal, you would instead be pairing B1G and PAC schools that were ranked outside the Top 12 every year.

Only once in the first 7 years of the CFP would one of those schools be unranked. These would have been the pairings in those years based on the final CFP ranks.

2014 #18 Wisconsin vs #14 UCLA
2015 #13 Northwestern vs #15 Oregon
2016 ..NR Nebraska (9-3) vs #18 Stanford
2017 #16 Michigan State vs #13 Stanford
2018 #22 Northwestern vs #13 Washington State
2019 #14 Michigan vs #22 USC
2020 #14 Northwestern vs #17 USC

Something tells me the Rose Bowl could live with that, especially if the 6NY bowl sites rotated for the semis and finals in addition to their bowl game.
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021 03:11 PM by ken d.)
07-13-2021 03:11 PM
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RUScarlets Offline
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Post: #106
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 03:11 PM)ken d Wrote:  Let's say that the quarterfinals are played on the last Saturday in December at the home fields of the four bye schools (all conference champions). About one year in every seven year cycle that would conflict with New Year's Day bowls. If you are the Rose Bowl, and you don't host a quarterfinal, you would instead be pairing B1G and PAC schools that were ranked outside the Top 12 every year.

Only once in the first 7 years of the CFP would one of those schools be unranked. These would have been the pairings in those years based on the final CFP ranks.

2014 #18 Wisconsin vs #14 UCLA
2015 #13 Northwestern vs #15 Oregon
2016 ..NR Nebraska (9-3) vs #18 Stanford
2017 #16 Michigan State vs #13 Stanford
2018 #22 Northwestern vs #13 Washington State
2019 #14 Michigan vs #22 USC
2020 #14 Northwestern vs #17 USC

Something tells me the Rose Bowl could live with that, especially if the 6NY bowl sites rotated for the semis and finals in addition to their bowl game.

You sure none of those Pac12 schools won the conference with that ranking all those years? I mean, throw 2020 out the window, but this is really best case scenario. You got to believe the top 2-3 teams from the B1G are sniped for the CFP every year. So it would be B1G #3/4 vs Pac12 #2/3 most years... 6/7 years.

The Rose Bowl can host a QF game and get out of the traditional tie-in perhaps in 2029 because NYD falls on the 1st Saturday. The Rose could host a QF this upcoming year under the new 6+6 format were it to go into effect.
07-13-2021 03:29 PM
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Crayton Offline
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Post: #107
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 02:23 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  
(07-13-2021 01:23 PM)esayem Wrote:  Went back and listened again. I didn’t hear anything about the quarterfinals not happening on or around NYD and having to be in December.

Yes, I am still assuming this point. But this is because it is obvious given the way the calendar is set up. They are not going to cram three QF games on what is technically a work night (NYD) most years. You spread out 4 QF games between two nights in the middle of Xmas and NYD (similar to how the SF falls on the middle Saturday when not the Rose and Sugar). And this will be the case because the SF must be played the 1st Saturday of January. Any later and you’d be looking at four fan bases traveling on Monday Tuesday nights in the middle of January. That’s just not going to happen from a logistics or TV point of view. We are not Europe.

Why else is it important to play QF before NYD? Dodd confirms they are still leaving all options on the table for QF host venues, including retaining campus sites. However, CCG sites in Atlanta and Dallas is much more feasible than Pasadena, especially since “bye” teams will have just played their CCGs there.

So if you are Oklahoma, you play Baylor in your CCG. If you finish in the top 4, you are comfortably placed in Jerry World again for the QF. SEC champ can play in NO. Ohio State on the other hand, much more feasible to keep them in Indy for the QF rather than travel to Pasadena to “host” a 5-12 in the QF. Same deal for ND although they will never “host” a QF, so no conflicts with Lucas Oil/B1G champion as far as a “neutral” QF site.

This year it would work out.
QFs on Saturday, January 1st
SFs on Saturday, January 8th (Week 18 of NFL)
NC on MLK Day, January 17th (day after NFL WCs)

2 out of 7 years, MLK day is the 17th or later. In years when MLK day is on the 15th or 16th, you may just move the Semis to Monday; OR those can be the years when the Rose is a NYD "access" bowl and the QFs are moved to late December.
07-13-2021 03:38 PM
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RUScarlets Offline
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Post: #108
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 03:38 PM)Crayton Wrote:  This year it would work out.
QFs on Saturday, January 1st
SFs on Saturday, January 8th (Week 18 of NFL)
NC on MLK Day, January 17th (day after NFL WCs)

2 out of 7 years, MLK day is the 17th or later. In years when MLK day is on the 15th or 16th, you may just move the Semis to Monday; OR those can be the years when the Rose is a NYD "access" bowl and the QFs are moved to late December.

So I haven't confirmed this myself, but beginning in 23'-24', the NFL calendar gets a bump, meaning week 18 will fall on MLK weekend. Given the bye week between CC weekend and SB, President's Day will give most people a day off following the SB. That's what the NFL had in mind with week 18. That's why they didn't have to resort to a Week 19 with 18 games + 1 bye or 17 games + 2 byes. I'm not sure if the NFL is bumping the season up +1 week or if this is just a natural output of the Gregorian calendar. Outkick covered this at the time the 17th game was announced and that's where I heard this. It doesn't make sense to me, but I think the NFL needs to work something out with Daytona so we can get that Holiday after the SB. It is no coincidence that ESPN is negotiating ahead of all this to secure the best possible television real estate.

Edit: President's Day is third Monday of February, so SB should still fall on Sunday of the week prior, but this is unrelated to updated CFP schedule.
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021 04:34 PM by RUScarlets.)
07-13-2021 04:05 PM
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Crayton Offline
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Post: #109
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 04:05 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  
(07-13-2021 03:38 PM)Crayton Wrote:  This year it would work out.
QFs on Saturday, January 1st
SFs on Saturday, January 8th (Week 18 of NFL)
NC on MLK Day, January 17th (day after NFL WCs)

2 out of 7 years, MLK day is the 17th or later. In years when MLK day is on the 15th or 16th, you may just move the Semis to Monday; OR those can be the years when the Rose is a NYD "access" bowl and the QFs are moved to late December.

So I haven't confirmed this myself, but beginning in 23'-24', the NFL calendar gets a bump, meaning week 18 will fall on MLK weekend. Given the bye week between CC weekend and SB, President's Day will give most people a day off following the SB. That's what the NFL had in mind with week 18. That's why they didn't have to resort to a Week 19 with 18 games + 1 bye or 17 games + 2 byes. I'm not sure if the NFL is bumping the season up +1 week or if this is just a natural output of the Gregorian calendar. Outkick covered this at the time the 17th game was announced and that's where I heard this. It doesn't make sense to me, but I think the NFL needs to work something out with Daytona so we can get that Holiday after the SB. It is no coincidence that ESPN is negotiating ahead of all this to secure the best possible television real estate.

As I look, Week 18 will be the Sunday after the first Thursday every January. What I have read/seen is that there will not be a bump to sync it with Presidents Day... though that would help both the NFL and keeping CFB QFs on NYD.

Don’t have the time presently to work out the 7 permutations.
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021 04:32 PM by Crayton.)
07-13-2021 04:30 PM
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Post: #110
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-12-2021 07:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(07-12-2021 06:21 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 09:49 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  In CFB at 3-3 with just 12 in the playoffs you're still going to have to have a really great record to make the playoffs. Probably two losses, maybe three at most. That's a very high bar. And at 3-3 you've run out of time.

Except if two of those losses were OOC, you are maybe 2-1 in conference and still very early days in the conference championship hunt. This is the reason why media partners would value the "Top X conference champions" part of the package. And if most of your in-division games are later in the season, a lot of your destiny may still be in your hands, in terms of what losses you can inflict on your division rivals to make sure they also have a conference loss and have the head on head over them.

There will be exceptions sure, just like in the NFC East last year there were teams in the hunt with 5-7 records because the divisions was so bad. Nut the bottom line to me is that 12 teams out of 120 or whatever isn't going to keep mediocre teams in the hunt anything like the NFL system, with 12 out of 32 making it, does. That's still a very exclusive playoff.

Not that keeping mediocre teams in the hunt is a good thing - IMO it isn't, but that's another issue.

As for the NFL playoffs, I think the ratings show that a lot more than just fans of the teams involved are watching. They draw national audiences. The CFP does too, for all of the criticism of it.

The thing I worry about is more local - sure, in CFB like in all sports, attendance tends to vary with performance. With a few exceptions, like schools with 200-game sellout streaks and the like, if Arkansas is having a good year it will draw more fans than if it is having a bad year. But "good" and "bad" have never been dependent on making playoffs. If CFB moves to a pro-leagues style "playoff culture", that could change, and it could work against home attendance, because I suspect more teams can create an impression of having a "good year" in November under the current standards than under a playoff standard.

This happens in the NFL too, but the NFL has a different business model - over 50% of NFL revenues come from TV deals, and that money is basically split evenly across the league. So fluctuations in attendance don't hurt as much (about 15% of NFL revenues are home attendance, the remainder is corporate sponsorships). Even NFL teams with fans staying away in droves and wearing paper bags on their heads in embarrassment are still rolling in dough from the league revenues.

On the other hand, despite the big P5 conference media deals, most CFB programs still rely much more heavily on local sources of revenue. For example, Alabama gets about $45 million from the SEC, but more than $100 million from money linked to game attendance. For G5 schools, the conference revenue is peanuts compared to their overall budgets.

(07-13-2021 03:11 PM)ken d Wrote:  Let's say that the quarterfinals are played on the last Saturday in December at the home fields of the four bye schools (all conference champions). About one year in every seven year cycle that would conflict with New Year's Day bowls. If you are the Rose Bowl, and you don't host a quarterfinal, you would instead be pairing B1G and PAC schools that were ranked outside the Top 12 every year.

Only once in the first 7 years of the CFP would one of those schools be unranked. These would have been the pairings in those years based on the final CFP ranks.

2014 #18 Wisconsin vs #14 UCLA
2015 #13 Northwestern vs #15 Oregon
2016 ..NR Nebraska (9-3) vs #18 Stanford
2017 #16 Michigan State vs #13 Stanford
2018 #22 Northwestern vs #13 Washington State
2019 #14 Michigan vs #22 USC
2020 #14 Northwestern vs #17 USC

Something tells me the Rose Bowl could live with that, especially if the 6NY bowl sites rotated for the semis and finals in addition to their bowl game.

Whether teams are unranked doesn’t really matter. With an expanded playoffs, a non-playoff Rose Bowl game will quickly become a lesser exhibition event…players will opt-out, fans won’t travel and viewers won’t watch. That is a big financial hit to the Rose Bowl parade and organizers. Jim Delaney may try to salvage the traditional BIG-PAC-NYD-Rose Bowl set-up, but this new CFP proposal is going to suck-up a lot of revenue. He’ll be hard pressed to get much support for NYD traditions.
(This post was last modified: 07-13-2021 05:01 PM by Wahoowa84.)
07-13-2021 04:37 PM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #111
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-12-2021 07:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  The thing I worry about is more local - sure, in CFB like in all sports, attendance tends to vary with performance. With a few exceptions, like schools with 200-game sellout streaks and the like, if Arkansas is having a good year it will draw more fans than if it is having a bad year. But "good" and "bad" have never been dependent on making playoffs. If CFB moves to a pro-leagues style "playoff culture", that could change, and it could work against home attendance, because I suspect more teams can create an impression of having a "good year" in November under the current standards than under a playoff standard.

If you're thinking that without a playoff, a team can convince its fans that any season is a huge success just because the team goes to the Garden State Bowl or the Weed Eater Bowl, well, I think those days are long gone if they ever existed. In the pre-Alliance, pre-BCS years everyone would think that winning the conference and playing in a Rose/Sugar/Orange level bowl was great, and that is still true except for a few extremely spoiled and delusional fanbases.

But if you're arguing that diehard fans of Arkansas (to use your example) would believe that a 7-5 season is wonderful if there is no playoff, but terrible if there is a playoff, I can't agree.

A 12-team playoff is only going to slightly modify fan expectations -- and only for teams whose fans rightly expect consistently great seasons. Fans who can expect no worse than a CFP bowl today, or maybe the bowl level just below CFP, are going to be thinking playoff. But for fans whose teams are doing well just to make any bowl game, or are just hoping for a post-Xmas bowl instead of a pre-Xmas bowl, a 12-team playoff changes nothing.
07-13-2021 05:04 PM
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Alanda Offline
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Post: #112
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 08:50 AM)esayem Wrote:  So worst case scenario for the Rose Bowl is they host a semifinal the week after NYD once every three years and the other two years host the runner-up (possibly second runner ups) of the Big 10/Pac 12 on their traditional date? This would mean campus sites for 1st round and quarterfinals.

Best case they host a quarterfinal on NYD every year with the option to host a semi a week later every three years?

I don’t understand the big controversy.

To me the obvious compromise on travel is to place the semis on campus. This is something I posted about years ago and I think Frank Tank was an advocate as well. This means the 6 bowls can maintain their traditional dates and two would be out of the playoff picture every three years.

Talk about starting the spring semester with a bang on campus!

The way Dodd made it sound it was an either/or. Either you as the bowl are fully committed to the playoff or you aren't in it at all. So your worst case would not happen. Only your best case would happen if they are involved in the playoffs though the date/time may be different. Again if the bowls are used in the quarterfinals to begin with. But if they are, what we know as tradition would be gone because the focus is on the game itself and not what the bowls are accustomed to. But he also said Delaney was advising the Rose, B1G, and PAC so we'll see how that goes.
07-13-2021 05:49 PM
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Post: #113
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-12-2021 12:33 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-12-2021 12:16 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(07-12-2021 11:23 AM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 08:53 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 07:07 PM)Wedge Wrote:  That's not what happens at all.

Last season's Tampa Bay Buccaneers were 7-5 after 12 games and won the Super Bowl.

The 2011 NY Giants were 6-6 after 12 games and won the Super Bowl.

The whole point of the NFL format, like it or not, is that your 3-3 team could easily make the playoffs and might even win it all if they get hot. There are many things to dislike about the NFL, IMO, but they do a great job of selling hope to as many fan bases as possible.

They also have the benefit of the draft, salary caps and free agency to keep the gap between the best and worst teams as small as possible. The only way to come close to that in college football is to have much smaller leagues, each with schools with similar resources compared with their competitors. You can't do it with 130 teams in the same division (FBS). Even the entire P5 as a separate division would be too many schools.

College basketball has the same gaps in resources. Yet college basketball has more parity, and more hope for fans of different teams, than college football even with more than 300 teams in Division I. The last 10 NCAA men's basketball tournaments have had 8 different champions and 29 different Final Four teams. And if you extend it out to the Elite 8 and then the Sweet 16 you would have substantially more teams involved over that period of time.

College basketball has a 68-team playoff. And typically, about 40 or so of those teams are from the FBS. So that's 40 out of 130 FBS schools that get in, compared to 12 in the proposed playoff, a much smaller field.

Plus, if you are the P5 conferences, why on earth would you want "more parity"? Parity just means that you lose relative status.

You're thinking solely in terms of conferences, not individual teams. That's not how presidents and ADs think about these things.

Why does "the SEC" want a 12-team playoff? Because the individual members of the SEC think it will help their own school. TAMU, Auburn, Florida, etc. don't have the goal of putting Alabama in the playoff -- they want to see their own team in the playoff. The limited amount of "more parity" that a 12-team playoff offers will benefit the SEC teams who are not Alabama, the Big Ten teams who are not Ohio State, etc., among others. It's about increasing the number of different teams that are involved.

This. The expansion of the playoff reminds me of when UEFA expanded the Champions League in soccer in the late 90s to included 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams from the major leagues. The parity between the leagues eroded to that point that today realistically only clubs from four or five countries can win the thing as opposed to clubs from 8-10 countries prior.

The same thing will happen in college football. Most years the SEC and Big 10 will get 3-4 teams in and everybody else will get one. Don't be surprised if the final four consists of 3 SEC schools and 1 B1G school. Not that this is a bad thing but it will be another kind of repetitive result (instead of the same schools in the final four it will be the same conferences).

I'm not entirely sure that long term the Pac-12, Big 12 or ACC will benefit from this. Most years they will not have a team in the semifinals. I fully believe that Clemson will lose a lot of recruits to schools like LSU, Georgia, and Florida who may not be able to get by Alabama in the SEC but don't need to when the SEC gets 3-4 schools in while if Clemson slips up twice in the ACC, it probably doesn't get in if it doesn't win the ACC CCG.

It is going to turn into a de-facto Power 2.
07-13-2021 08:07 PM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #114
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 05:04 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-12-2021 07:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  The thing I worry about is more local - sure, in CFB like in all sports, attendance tends to vary with performance. With a few exceptions, like schools with 200-game sellout streaks and the like, if Arkansas is having a good year it will draw more fans than if it is having a bad year. But "good" and "bad" have never been dependent on making playoffs. If CFB moves to a pro-leagues style "playoff culture", that could change, and it could work against home attendance, because I suspect more teams can create an impression of having a "good year" in November under the current standards than under a playoff standard.

If you're thinking that without a playoff, a team can convince its fans that any season is a huge success just because the team goes to the Garden State Bowl or the Weed Eater Bowl, well, I think those days are long gone if they ever existed. In the pre-Alliance, pre-BCS years everyone would think that winning the conference and playing in a Rose/Sugar/Orange level bowl was great, and that is still true except for a few extremely spoiled and delusional fanbases.

But if you're arguing that diehard fans of Arkansas (to use your example) would believe that a 7-5 season is wonderful if there is no playoff, but terrible if there is a playoff, I can't agree.

A 12-team playoff is only going to slightly modify fan expectations -- and only for teams whose fans rightly expect consistently great seasons. Fans who can expect no worse than a CFP bowl today, or maybe the bowl level just below CFP, are going to be thinking playoff. But for fans whose teams are doing well just to make any bowl game, or are just hoping for a post-Xmas bowl instead of a pre-Xmas bowl, a 12-team playoff changes nothing.

I'm not sure that a playoff culture won't cause more fan bases to define "good season", and thus maintain interest, more stringently than now or in the past, but I suspect it will. The current ultra-extreme exclusivity of playoffs gives schools and their bases more psychological wiggle-room to define a successful season. A playoff culture would IMO make that much more stark and unforgiving.

And college teams rely on active fan participation, via attendance, much more than do NFL teams.
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2021 06:23 AM by quo vadis.)
07-14-2021 06:06 AM
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RUScarlets Offline
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Post: #115
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
No question, winning a playoff game will feel like a Championship for G5 schools. The round of 8 will be a wash as most of the games sans your 4v5 will be routs. But that 5-12 will be the benchmark for most schools not named Clemson Bama OSU. I don’t see 7-12 making any additional headway 99% of the years.
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2021 09:34 AM by RUScarlets.)
07-14-2021 09:33 AM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #116
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-14-2021 06:06 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  And college teams rely on active fan participation, via attendance, much more than do NFL teams.

The major threat to CFB attendance isn't the playoff, it's TV. The size of the playoff is a very minor detail compared to figuring out ways to get people off of their couches and build their whole Saturday around traveling to the stadium, being there for several hours, and traveling home, and then getting them to do that 6 or 7 times each fall instead of making it a once-a-year deal like the family trip to Disneyland.
07-14-2021 11:05 AM
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quo vadis Offline
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Post: #117
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-14-2021 11:05 AM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-14-2021 06:06 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  And college teams rely on active fan participation, via attendance, much more than do NFL teams.

The major threat to CFB attendance isn't the playoff, it's TV. The size of the playoff is a very minor detail compared to figuring out ways to get people off of their couches and build their whole Saturday around traveling to the stadium, being there for several hours, and traveling home, and then getting them to do that 6 or 7 times each fall instead of making it a once-a-year deal like the family trip to Disneyland.

No question, the combo of media deals that put basically every game on TV, and the availabilty of cheap big TVs and the ease of streaming have all impacted attendance.

But only so much. And a playoff culture could exacerbate it.
07-14-2021 11:22 AM
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Post: #118
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-13-2021 12:21 PM)RUScarlets Wrote:  The controversy is as Dodd stated, the Rose is coming out of NYD if they want to take part.

This does indeed look like the ambit claim of one faction: that the bowls will stop being "the tail wagging the dog".

That is not likely to be the way that the bowls look at it. And as Dodd reports, the issue of getting this done as a contract extension is the issue of getting all of the main contract holders to be "made whole". Unless the Rose, Sugar and Orange Bowls agree, there is no contract extension and so the start date is 2026 rather than 2023.

We see the threat that this faction holds, since Dodd presents it: that the 12 team CFP will have games that are so meaningful the brand names of the big brand bowls are mostly just decoration: any of them can be replaced. Indeed, via on-campus sites (or bye-school conference designated sites, if SEC schools don't want to have to play freezer bowls in the Great Lakes or Great Plains), they can be frozen out of the QF entirely.

So they may be the first preference, because of those brand names, but "nobody is irreplaceable".

However, if the CFP alternative FOR the big brand name bowls is too big a step down, they can just veto the contract extension version, and say they will take their current role for the balance of the current CFP contract and then deal with the reduced role in their future starting in 2026.

Quote: The QF will take place prior to the 1st (probably at CCG sites or campus sites) to mitigate travel. This way you can get the SF scheduled the Saturday preceding NFL WC weekend.

Semifinals is a plural. A SF scheduled the Saturday of NFL WC weekend and a SF schedule the Monday of NFL WC weekend is an available alternative.

Quote: I can’t believe people believe weeknight SFs will even be considered. Again, listen carefully to the 15 min mark of that podcast. As soon as they announced 6+6 I knew the Rose and its organizers were completely cut out from the setup.

Except also listen to the part about ESPN not wanting it to go to an extension, and there being enough money to go around to make everyone whole.

Making the bowls whole to get it done by 2023 and using the threat of 2026 to force the bowls to accept a situation where they take the opponents and dates that the CFP tells them to take and say "thank you, kind sir" ... the proposal that they "stop being the tail the wags the dog" ... is a tension in the discussion which doesn't get raised because it's a discussion forum where that tension is not going to get noticed and raised.

And even so, Dodd leaves an out in pointing out that Jim Delany is advising the Rose Bowl, so if the ambit claim does not win out, it can be explained as due to that crafty Delany, and Dodd still "told you so".

Because they are brands, and the college football viewer demo trends older, where long standing traditions have more weight than in the key demo, the big Bowls can expect that if they are willing to just take the dates and the opponents the CFP dictates and slap their brand name on it, they can certainly get a system where they rotate being the QF and SF hosts starting in 2026. So if they are willing to accept that, they can just insist on the current contract being played out and the CFP going to market, and still get that.

So if a system is going to get going in 2023, it seems likely they are going to have to be presented a better deal than that. "Making them whole" entails giving them a role in the 12 team playoff that compensates for the status quo value for the last three years of the current system.

Which may be, after all, why the 12 teams in the playoff was kept under wraps for two years ... to give the best opportunity to lay the groundwork and to put the big brand name bowls on the back foot and force them to play catch up.
(This post was last modified: 07-14-2021 09:23 PM by BruceMcF.)
07-14-2021 09:19 PM
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owl at the moon Offline
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Post: #119
Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-11-2021 01:38 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 01:02 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Kind of perversely, I think CFB could fall in to an NFL-trap.

An NFL team that is at .500 with 3 games remaining (now that they play 17) maintains fan interest because they still have a very realistic shot at the playoffs. That's not a trap; that's the ideal to which CFB can aspire but never reach.

Compare that to the current state of college football, in which every team is effectively eliminated from playoff contention the minute they pick up their second loss of the season.

If CFB teams with 2 losses still have a chance to reach the playoff, and some teams with 3 losses still have an outside chance in November, there will be a lot more teams playing November games that TV can sell as meaningful, and a lot more teams who can sell hope to their fans in November and not just in September.


Your point is a good one, but you have dramatically understated how bad the current system is.

Only a third of CFB is eliminated by their second loss.

Another third is eliminated by their FIRST loss.

And I’m sort-of ok with those two shortcomings.

The biggest problem I have with the current system is that one-third of the teams are literally eliminated from contention before they take the field for their very first game.
07-14-2021 09:35 PM
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Post: #120
RE: Dodd: CFP expansion is complicated and could get messy
(07-14-2021 09:35 PM)owl at the moon Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 01:38 PM)Wedge Wrote:  
(07-11-2021 01:02 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Kind of perversely, I think CFB could fall in to an NFL-trap.

An NFL team that is at .500 with 3 games remaining (now that they play 17) maintains fan interest because they still have a very realistic shot at the playoffs. That's not a trap; that's the ideal to which CFB can aspire but never reach.

Compare that to the current state of college football, in which every team is effectively eliminated from playoff contention the minute they pick up their second loss of the season.

If CFB teams with 2 losses still have a chance to reach the playoff, and some teams with 3 losses still have an outside chance in November, there will be a lot more teams playing November games that TV can sell as meaningful, and a lot more teams who can sell hope to their fans in November and not just in September.


Your point is a good one, but you have dramatically understated how bad the current system is.

Only a third of CFB is eliminated by their second loss.

Another third is eliminated by their FIRST loss.

And I’m sort-of ok with those two shortcomings.

The biggest problem I have with the current system is that one-third of the teams are literally eliminated from contention before they take the field for their very first game.

Nobody is entitled to a spot at the playoff table. You have to earn it. The entire season is a playoff.
07-15-2021 08:15 AM
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