(02-08-2022 08:18 PM)Blazer4Life14 Wrote:  I already don’t watch college football, so nothing would change there, my hate for it would just grow.
I’m a big College Basketball fan, so if a split were to occur there, I’d be pretty bummed, and it’d likely fall by the wayside for me, just as college football has.

Hey Grimey, you’re missing out on a lot of good FCS football!

Personally I would follow my team, my team's conference and other opponents. Pretty much what I do now. I still prefer the old bowl system when conferences and regions were embroiled in arguments about who was the best. Much more fun than watching the ncg between Alabama and Ohio St or Alabama and Clemson or Alabama and Georgia.

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Hear, hear. Let the Europeans have their boring sport.

(02-08-2022 04:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 01:33 PM)ken d Wrote:  I began following college sports before television played a significant role and it did just fine. The NCAA tournament wasn't televised at all. I imagine I'll continue to follow it no matter what happens.

When I started following it there were about 250 or so schools. None of the bottom 100 would be missed at all. In fact, I think it would vastly improve the tournament. 1 vs. 16 and 2 vs 15 are boring.

Of course they wouldn’t be missed. Most people who even somewhat follow sports have no clue where a St Peters or Monmouth is. For the normies, they look at seeds and I don’t think they care if a school is from the WCC or the MEAC. My parents understand that Georgetown plays in a high level conference, but they’d pay as much attention to a (looking at this year) 16 seeded St John’s vs Gonzaga or Auburn matchup as they would for the same including a MEAC or MAAC school or whomever.

There are plenty of CAA or MEAC or whatever conference schools that have great fanbases and sure, people will root for them in a 16-1 or 15-2, but I’m not convinced that things would change if we culled 150-200 programs from D1.

And yes, glass houses and all.

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Apart from the invitational "Big Dance", each division would still have it's own tournament.

I have said this before myself. For the invitational, use all of the bowls not in the CFP

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

If they choose to break away, so be it. For me, I'm watching my team regardless so it doesn't matter.

The teams/conferences not chosen can continue to press forward even with limited exposure. I don't think ESPN or anyone would completely cut them out because there will still be some interest from fans. It sucks for the sport but let's be real, those universities and the NCAA quit caring about the nature of the sport long ago and are ONLY motivated by $$$.

(02-09-2022 10:35 AM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  If they choose to break away, so be it. For me, I'm watching my team regardless so it doesn't matter.

The teams/conferences not chosen can continue to press forward even with limited exposure. I don't think ESPN or anyone would completely cut them out because there will still be some interest from fans. It sucks for the sport but let's be real, those universities and the NCAA quit caring about the nature of the sport long ago and are ONLY motivated by $$$.

Division II gets virtually no coverage. I guess if there were a top 80 or so, the next 100 would get coverage. But if it were a top 200, I don't see the 150 dropped getting any noticeable coverage. With streaming, a lot of is possible, but coverage would be very limited.

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

FWIW, I wasn't endorsing that college hoops become like European soccer with the promotion/relegation stuff.

What I was trying to say is that one similarity between the NCAA tournament and the European Champion's League (which the proposed Super League was supposed to replace) is that formally, very small underdog programs and teams have a path to the championship, and this element, even though for practical purposes rarely materializes, is crucial to the fan appeals of those events.

(02-08-2022 02:54 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:49 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:42 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5..

The way I see it, you're making my point for me. The way it is now, the bulk of the NCAA's money comes from the existing Big Dance. They they use that money for all sorts of things, including financing D2 and D3, compliance, marketing, etc. It doesn't all flow to the school's athletic departments. If all that Big Dance money were flowing only to the participants, there would be a substantial increase to them. And yes, it could be constructed so that money came to the participant's conferences rather than to the participants, or some combination thereof. So the money could be both higher and stable.

The key here is that tournament money isn't flowing to the "hangers on" that are just in D1 for the association with the Big Dance.

Fair point.

But OK, do you know what % of the Big Dance money goes to the "hangers on", the conferences that are not P5 or G5?

I'm not sure it's a huge amount, but maybe I'm wrong.

No I don't, but I have seen P5 complaints about it so it must be enough to make a difference.

I can buy that, but IMO there is a much less drastic solution than breaking away or trying to push some of the low-end D1 schools down - just adjust the distribution formula to be more like the CFP, where the P5 get a larger chunk of the money regardless of performance.

(02-09-2022 10:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

Interesting ideas prompted some thoughts:

1) I'm not sure going to 8 or 12 or 16 teams in the playoff will break up the logjam of dominant teams at the top of CFB. So far, IMO, every move in a playoff direction, from historical "bowls and polls" to BCS to CFP has resulted in a bit more rigidity. Maybe four is the inflection point, and above that number things will loosen up, but maybe the trend will continue.

2) I think NIL has the possibility of loosening things up no matter what the playoff system is. E.g., this year we saw Texas AM rise to the top of the recruiting rankings. Now granted, that's not exactly a case of the Little Sisters of the Poor becoming #1, but it is striking and reports I've seen are that AM built that class via NIL appeal. Sure, we can expect powers like Alabama and Ohio State to be strong in NIL as well, but there could be some leveling effects as schools may vary in their ability to attract NIL for their athletes.

3) Even though I helped introduce the topic of rigidity here, maybe I overstated it a bit. E.g., regarding English soccer, while no question the top players want to sign with teams that make the Champion's League, and so this becomes a self-perpetuating thing because the teams that sign the best players are then more likely to make the CL, I think this has always been going on. Here are the number of different EPL champions for the last few decades:

2010-2020 ..... 5
2000-2010 ..... 3
1990-2000 ..... 4
1980-1990 ..... 4
1970-1980 ..... 5

So the 2010s (2010-2011 to 2019-2020) actually had more different EPL champs than any decade since the 1970s.

Similarly, despite changes in format, college football has always been dominated by an elite crust of blue-bloods. There does seem to be more rigidity now thanks to the CFP, but it's always been dominated by a top crust.

IIRC, one thing that has shaken the EPL up a little bit is money. E.g., Manchester City was a dormat until it was bought by a billionaire in 2008 who has dumped tons of money into it. Chelsea became a title-winner again when a billionaire bought it in 2003.

Maybe NIL will be similar in CFB, allowing some lesser-level teams to rise up? We'll see.

(02-09-2022 11:34 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-09-2022 10:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

Interesting ideas prompted some thoughts:

1) I'm not sure going to 8 or 12 or 16 teams in the playoff will break up the logjam of dominant teams at the top of CFB. So far, IMO, every move in a playoff direction, from historical "bowls and polls" to BCS to CFP has resulted in a bit more rigidity. Maybe four is the inflection point, and above that number things will loosen up, but maybe the trend will continue.

2) I think NIL has the possibility of loosening things up no matter what the playoff system is. E.g., this year we saw Texas AM rise to the top of the recruiting rankings. Now granted, that's not exactly a case of the Little Sisters of the Poor becoming #1, but it is striking and reports I've seen are that AM built that class via NIL appeal. Sure, we can expect powers like Alabama and Ohio State to be strong in NIL as well, but there could be some leveling effects as schools may vary in their ability to attract NIL for their athletes.

3) Even though I helped introduce the topic of rigidity here, maybe I overstated it a bit. E.g., regarding English soccer, while no question the top players want to sign with teams that make the Champion's League, and so this becomes a self-perpetuating thing because the teams that sign the best players are then more likely to make the CL, I think this has always been going on. Here are the number of different EPL champions for the last few decades:

2010-2020 ..... 5
2000-2010 ..... 3
1990-2000 ..... 4
1980-1990 ..... 4
1970-1980 ..... 5

So the 2010s (2010-2011 to 2019-2020) actually had more different EPL champs than any decade since the 1970s.

Similarly, despite changes in format, college football has always been dominated by an elite crust of blue-bloods. There does seem to be more rigidity now thanks to the CFP, but it's always been dominated by a top crust.

IIRC, one thing that has shaken the EPL up a little bit is money. E.g., Manchester City was a dormat until it was bought by a billionaire in 2008 who has dumped tons of money into it. Chelsea became a title-winner again when a billionaire bought it in 2003.

Maybe NIL will be similar in CFB, allowing some lesser-level teams to rise up? We'll see.

Oh - I agree that who actually wins the national title may not change as much whether it's a 4-team playoff versus a 12-team playoff.

I'm looking at it more holistically at the entire event of who gets to participate in the postseason. Alabama and Ohio State have had intractable advantages for multiple generations and that may not change. However, a more open playoff system inherently provides a larger number of teams with a proverbial "bite at the apple".

My concern is that "top 4" seems to be a particular playoff size that paradoxically provides less variety in participants compared to the top 2 BCS system. A super-closed top 2 system provides more variety in participants due to randomness and a more open 12-team playoff provides more variety due to more spots being available. The top 4 seems to be a strange sweet spot where it's just large enough to allow around 6 teams to dominate the slots just as we see in the Premier League (see Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Notre Dame) yet small enough that it's becoming super difficult for other schools beyond that handful to make it.

So, I think that whenever we discuss playoff discussion, any focus on who whether there will be variety in who actually wins the national title isn't really the issue. It's about the variety for the playoff field overall since that is what gets more fan bases invested, drives up interest in a greater number of regular season games, etc.

To be sure, there's a tipping point. An NCAA Tournament-style CFP where every conference champ gets an auto-bid would be a bridge too far where it saps a lot of the value of the regular season for the P5. I was long an 8-team playoff proponent, but the way that the 12-team playoff is structured (with the top 4 conference champs getting byes) has me convinced that it's the best way to balance playoff expansion AND providing an incentive to winning your conference AND maintaining a high ranking even if you do win your conference in a much better way than, say, either an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids or a 16-team playoff with auto-bids for all conference champs.

The 12-team playoff as proposed is a great compromise between those that believe that conference champs should be elevated and those that want to maintain the week-to-week rankings horse race. That is best achieved with the top 4 conference champ byes here - any other system that requires those teams to play the same number of rounds as everyone else (whether 8 teams or 16 teams) really devalues both the importance of the conference championships *and* the in-season rankings. IMHO, those top 4 conference champs byes have become a *really* important feature and attribute in the CFP expansion proposal. That totally changes the value of the leagues' respective conference championship games (where they'll go up in value dramatically) along with preserving the importance of that week-to-week top 4 horse race that we see now. In contrast, an 8-team or 16-team playoff would have the rankings be more of a seeding exercise at the top with more concentration on the "bubble teams" at the bottom like we do for the NCAA Tournament, which doesn't really optimize the value of the football regular season.

(02-09-2022 12:49 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-09-2022 11:34 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-09-2022 10:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

Interesting ideas prompted some thoughts:

1) I'm not sure going to 8 or 12 or 16 teams in the playoff will break up the logjam of dominant teams at the top of CFB. So far, IMO, every move in a playoff direction, from historical "bowls and polls" to BCS to CFP has resulted in a bit more rigidity. Maybe four is the inflection point, and above that number things will loosen up, but maybe the trend will continue.

2) I think NIL has the possibility of loosening things up no matter what the playoff system is. E.g., this year we saw Texas AM rise to the top of the recruiting rankings. Now granted, that's not exactly a case of the Little Sisters of the Poor becoming #1, but it is striking and reports I've seen are that AM built that class via NIL appeal. Sure, we can expect powers like Alabama and Ohio State to be strong in NIL as well, but there could be some leveling effects as schools may vary in their ability to attract NIL for their athletes.

3) Even though I helped introduce the topic of rigidity here, maybe I overstated it a bit. E.g., regarding English soccer, while no question the top players want to sign with teams that make the Champion's League, and so this becomes a self-perpetuating thing because the teams that sign the best players are then more likely to make the CL, I think this has always been going on. Here are the number of different EPL champions for the last few decades:

2010-2020 ..... 5
2000-2010 ..... 3
1990-2000 ..... 4
1980-1990 ..... 4
1970-1980 ..... 5

So the 2010s (2010-2011 to 2019-2020) actually had more different EPL champs than any decade since the 1970s.

Similarly, despite changes in format, college football has always been dominated by an elite crust of blue-bloods. There does seem to be more rigidity now thanks to the CFP, but it's always been dominated by a top crust.

IIRC, one thing that has shaken the EPL up a little bit is money. E.g., Manchester City was a dormat until it was bought by a billionaire in 2008 who has dumped tons of money into it. Chelsea became a title-winner again when a billionaire bought it in 2003.

Maybe NIL will be similar in CFB, allowing some lesser-level teams to rise up? We'll see.

Oh - I agree that who actually wins the national title may not change as much whether it's a 4-team playoff versus a 12-team playoff.

I'm looking at it more holistically at the entire event of who gets to participate in the postseason. Alabama and Ohio State have had intractable advantages for multiple generations and that may not change. However, a more open playoff system inherently provides a larger number of teams with a proverbial "bite at the apple".

My concern is that "top 4" seems to be a particular playoff size that paradoxically provides less variety in participants compared to the top 2 BCS system. A super-closed top 2 system provides more variety in participants due to randomness and a more open 12-team playoff provides more variety due to more spots being available. The top 4 seems to be a strange sweet spot where it's just large enough to allow around 6 teams to dominate the slots just as we see in the Premier League (see Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Notre Dame) yet small enough that it's becoming super difficult for other schools beyond that handful to make it.

So, I think that whenever we discuss playoff discussion, any focus on who whether there will be variety in who actually wins the national title isn't really the issue. It's about the variety for the playoff field overall since that is what gets more fan bases invested, drives up interest in a greater number of regular season games, etc.

To be sure, there's a tipping point. An NCAA Tournament-style CFP where every conference champ gets an auto-bid would be a bridge too far where it saps a lot of the value of the regular season for the P5. I was long an 8-team playoff proponent, but the way that the 12-team playoff is structured (with the top 4 conference champs getting byes) has me convinced that it's the best way to balance playoff expansion AND providing an incentive to winning your conference AND maintaining a high ranking even if you do win your conference in a much better way than, say, either an 8-team playoff with P5 auto-bids or a 16-team playoff with auto-bids for all conference champs.

The 12-team playoff as proposed is a great compromise between those that believe that conference champs should be elevated and those that want to maintain the week-to-week rankings horse race. That is best achieved with the top 4 conference champ byes here - any other system that requires those teams to play the same number of rounds as everyone else (whether 8 teams or 16 teams) really devalues both the importance of the conference championships *and* the in-season rankings. IMHO, those top 4 conference champs byes have become a *really* important feature and attribute in the CFP expansion proposal. That totally changes the value of the leagues' respective conference championship games (where they'll go up in value dramatically) along with preserving the importance of that week-to-week top 4 horse race that we see now. In contrast, an 8-team or 16-team playoff would have the rankings be more of a seeding exercise at the top with more concentration on the "bubble teams" at the bottom like we do for the NCAA Tournament, which doesn't really optimize the value of the football regular season.

I agree. I long thought 16 was a good number (in an top 8 champs, 8 wildcard format), but I can see the value in 12, especially as the number of power conferences has decreased. With 16 (8+8) you get some 4 or greater loss champs and usually at least one 3 loss wildcard. 11 makes a lot of sense as well.

Obviously, I think 8 makes more sense than 4. And its clear a lot of college ADs agree with you about 4 creating a concentration of power. Someone, perhaps Bowlsby, said, "We had no idea how harmful it would be to not get in." Its become a huge advantage for Alabama, Ohio St. and Clemson and very good for Oklahoma, Georgia and Notre Dame.

(02-09-2022 10:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

I am glad to see that you are now making the same argument I have been making for the last few years. I call it the NCAA Basketball Tournament effect, where 50% of the P5 + Big East schools get in, and effectively 50 major programs give top players an opportunity to get in the big show, 25 of those perpetually in. The result is a much more wide open season and playoff.

Football has narrowed it down to Alabama and whomever their rival that year in the SEC is, plus the very top team in the B1G (pretty much Ohio State), ACC (pretty much Clemson) or B12 (pretty much Oklahoma) as the only viable programs to get that exposure. Right now you have 1 mega-team, maybe 2-3 competitive power teams, and maybe half a dozen have a chance teams to pick from with four. NFL drafts, especially the first two rounds are stacked with those few schools. Talent has concentrated, it's statistically verifiable via the NFL draft.

An 8 team playoff expands the choices by maybe half a dozen schools (15 have a shot), while a 12 team playoff expands it to at least 20, more than doubling the opportunity choices. Market competitions will lead to more opportunities and better distribution of NIL -- there are huge opportunities in the Northeast and West which are basically untapped. This is bound to spread out talent and make the whole of college football more unpredictable.

It will of course take a few years. I think four or five before the effect really shows and the game wide open. But stay as we are and it'll be Alabama versus one of a half dozen competitors we can name as being there most years.

(02-09-2022 02:30 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(02-09-2022 10:05 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 09:00 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-08-2022 02:22 PM)teamvsn Wrote:  I've mentioned this previously....

The one thing that solves all the problems is a 3rd party sponsoring an Invitational tournament. The tournament could invite anyone they wanted from any division, even D2 if they thought a team worthy. The sponsorship and broadcast money would be huge, and it would flow to the schools that actually earned an invitation.

And it might save the NCAA. Right now there's an enormous conflict of interest with the NCAA being a content provider (i.e. games) that bring huge money, and being a regulator of conduct. See North Carolina academic fraud controversy. Take the huge money from the NCAA, and they'll be able to better do their job of regulating.

As many have said here, a division of just the P5 wouldn't be interesting. See what happened in Euro soccer when they tried to form a super league last year. The fans rebelled, and it was totally unexpected from the organizers. It was cancelled.

So you'd have a major reshuffling of divisions:
D1a = P5 & G5 (schools that spend and earn enormous amounts of money)
D1b = Schools the spend a lot of money but don't earn a lot of money
D2 = Schools that spend a moderate amount of money
D3 = Schools that don't offer scholarships

Everyone would want to be D1a, but only the P5 & G5 would qualify
The remainder of existing D1 would be D1b, plus a lot of big D2s that that would now find it viable to be D1(b)
D2s would consist of smaller schools that want to offer athletic scholarships and play at a high level, but keep other costs low, including some existing D3s. You would also get some D1b step downs, who find that D1 has lost its charm once they aren't in the same division as Duke and Michigan.
D3 would still be the remainder that doesn't offer athletic scholarships.

Just about the bolded parts -

First, I think this money distribution would run counter to what the P5 want. As others have noted, school administrators do not like 'variable' income flows. They like guaranteed money. The PAC collects that huge $60m CFP check, and a $40m Rose Bowl check most years as well, even if they don't place anyone in the playoffs. That's how the big conferences want it. So IMO, if anything, we are likely to see a revamp of the NCAA tournament distributions in a direction less oriented towards merit - making the tournament - and more towards guaranteed money for the P5.

That segues in to the second bolded statement. I agree, interest in a P5-only tournament would be far less than in the current tournament. As with European soccer, the romance of the sport, what attracts casual fans who sponsors crave, is the chance of big Cinderella upsets. And by that I don't mean Ole Miss beating Texas. But on the other hand, it's also IMO true that the great bulk of the appeal of the NCAA tournament is from the big P5 brands. People love to see underdog Pepperdine vs big dog Duke, but they also love to see big dog Kentucky vs big dog Duke. They don't have any interest in seeing underdog Pepperdine vs underdog Texas Pan-American. So the P5 are still where most of the value of the event lies.

Finally, about your categories, I would say that almost all G5 are best described as "spend enormous amounts of money but earn very little money".

Just my two cents ....

Lost me at European soccer. I don’t understand these hipsters comparing and longing for any American sport to be constructed like European soccer. “Promotion, regulation, gaaaaaah our uniforms look like stock cars!!” GTFO of here with European soccer.

Not you personally, just see a lot of people thinking college athletics being constructed like that and think it’s dumb and totally unrealistic.

Here's the other thing with the European soccer comments that we see frequently on these forums (beyond the fact that promotion/relegation will absolutely, 100% *never* happen in power college sports): it actually entrenches power at the top much more than American sports and there are *fewer* Cinderellas.

Ever since the English Premier League started receiving annual bids for their top 4 teams to the Champions League in 2002, ALL of those bids have been won by only a combination of 6 clubs with the exception of the miracle Leicester City championship in 2016 (the same year that the Cubs won the World Series, by the way, so something was in the water). The promotion/relegation system has the effect of the top players wanting to aggregate themselves on teams that are so talented that (a) they're effectively assured of never being relegated at the low end and (b) have the best chance of playing in the Champions League at the top end, so the top teams keep accruing more and more talent (and more and more money).

To quo's point about the lack of variety of teams in the CFP, we're essentially seeing the same effect with the top 4 system with so many players aggregating talent at the same handful of programs to get the best chance to make that playoff (e.g. Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson). That's very similar to what we have seen in the English Premier League in the past 20 years where "top 4" is also a bright line qualifying standard.

It's almost as if "top 4" is a perfect number to encourage stasis with entrenched power. A top 2 standard (like the old BCS system) often has a lot of randomness in cutting off between who is #2 and #3 (or beyond), so it's not very predictable who is going to be the top 2 every year and even the best teams can't count on making it consistently. On the other end of the spectrum, an 8-team or 12-team playoff will introduce a lot more variety of teams shuffling in or out at the bottom of the bracket (which is really what European soccer supporters mean by the advantages of promotion/relegation - it's about changeover of teams at the *bottom* as opposed to the top).

Top 4, on the other hand, is just large enough to ensure that a handful of dominant power teams can get bids frequently, but not large enough to allow for a bottom half of a bracket that will have a churn of a variety of teams. We've seen that in the Premier League and now we're seeing it with the CFP (which is why I've been advocating for at least an 8-team playoff since the BCS days).

I am glad to see that you are now making the same argument I have been making for the last few years. I call it the NCAA Basketball Tournament effect, where 50% of the P5 + Big East schools get in, and effectively 50 major programs give top players an opportunity to get in the big show, 25 of those perpetually in. The result is a much more wide open season and playoff.

Football has narrowed it down to Alabama and whomever their rival that year in the SEC is, plus the very top team in the B1G (pretty much Ohio State), ACC (pretty much Clemson) or B12 (pretty much Oklahoma) as the only viable programs to get that exposure. Right now you have 1 mega-team, maybe 2-3 competitive power teams, and maybe half a dozen have a chance teams to pick from with four. NFL drafts, especially the first two rounds are stacked with those few schools. Talent has concentrated, it's statistically verifiable via the NFL draft.

An 8 team playoff expands the choices by maybe half a dozen schools (15 have a shot), while a 12 team playoff expands it to at least 20, more than doubling the opportunity choices. Market competitions will lead to more opportunities and better distribution of NIL -- there are huge opportunities in the Northeast and West which are basically untapped. This is bound to spread out talent and make the whole of college football more unpredictable.

It will of course take a few years. I think four or five before the effect really shows and the game wide open. But stay as we are and it'll be Alabama versus one of a half dozen competitors we can name as being there most years.

Well, I'm not sure Alabama's dominance has much to do with the CFP. Yes, Alabama has been dominant under the CFP, but Alabama also won 3 of the last 4 national titles under the old BCS system. Alabama is dominant not because of format IMO but for the reason most teams have been dominant historically - they have a great coach.

Before Alabama, during the 2000s USC (Carroll) had a super-team every year, with Florida (Urban), Ohio State (Tressel) and LSU (Saban, and then, well LSU is unique in that they win titles without great coaches) were in the hunt almost every year.

In the 1990s, FSU (Bowden) was in the top 3 every year, with Florida (Spurrier) and Nebraska (Osbourne) also dominating.

In the 1980s, there was the Miami (Schnell/Johnson/Erickson) juggernaut, with Notre Dame (Holtz) and Penn State (Paterno) nipping at their heels.

In the 1970s, Alabama, Oklahoma, USC, Notre Dame and Nebraska were always up there.

FWIW, I am fine and dandy with a 6+6 playoff. I just suspect people will be disappointed if they think it will result in a Great Opening of opportunity.