The FCS goes there, announcing a 24-team playoff beginning in 2013.
“The concern has been we’ve haven’t had a full tournament with automatic qualifiers for all the existing conferences. That’s a big part of making sure everybody has an opportunity for their champion to participate,” said Appalachian State athletic director Charlie Cobb, the new chairman of the Division I Football Championship Committee. “The sentiment is that by seeding the top eight, it keep more to a truer sense of what a national tournament is about, and I think that’s the beauty of what we have.”
That’s a five-round tourney with the finalists playing 15- or 16-game schedules. But that’s okay, because it’s really not just one season.
“It’s tough,” Cobb said. “But the playoffs are called the second season for a reason. Once you get to it, everybody’s got a chance. And I think if you ask any coach or any player, they’d rather be in the playoffs than not in the playoffs.”
It’s not that FBS players are such wimps. It’s that they don’t know what they’re missing.
Get The Picture 
A couple questions for you Senator:
– Are you happy they implemented a 2 team playoff back in 1998?
– Are you happy they will be expanding the playoff to 4 teams in 2014?
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As to your first question, here’s what I say on my “About Me” page:
So, yeah, I was fine with that.
I can’t really answer your second question until I see what the BCS geniuses come up with. Some four-team proposals are far better than others.
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Ok, I was just wondering. Sometimes it seems like you’re against going to 4 teams but that’s probably me reading too much into it. I know your real beef is with the playoff getting too big. Same here.
I think I’ll be ok with the 4 team format as long as they don’t put in the “conference champs only” clause.
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There are four-team formats I could certainly live with.
My fear is that they come up with something structurally unstable, such as the conference champs only format you reference. That’s pretty much guaranteed to explode into a bigger playoff.
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“My fear is that (as evidenced by every other post season format they’ve ever implemented),
theythe people in charge of running the FBS post season will inevitably come up with something structurally unstable, such as the conference champs only format you reference. That’s pretty much guaranteed to explode into a bigger playoff.”There, FIFY.
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You can see from the comments to that post alone that nothing is going to satisfy everyone. I’m convinced that the college football post-season has moved into a unique and somewhat bizarre niche in the public conscious. More than in any other sport I can think of, casual fans look at college football’s post-season as something that can change, and that they have a role in deciding what it changes in to. It’s not set in stone, and no one is in charge. It feels like every college football fan got a message that the determination of the post-season was going to be crowd-sourced by anyone and everyone with an opinion on it.
It makes for some lively discussions, for sure. More than anything else though it’s why I know the playoff will keep expanding. Too many people will always feel it’s not quite finished…
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Certainly Southerners get it when you say Brer Rabbit convinced Brer Fox to toss him into the briar patch because he convinced him of a nonexistent fear.
By increasing that fear using BBall playoffs and now an FBS proposal, you seek to keep that “slippage” fear around to discourage those who propose the inevitable. The fear of “slippage” is based on dilution, another season needed for playoffs and many other conjures to make us hesitant of proposing past 4 teams in a playoff. “Slippage” is a figment meant to press into uninquiring minds to not question or propose otherwise. I don’t buy that.
A playoff will eventually involve 8 seeded teams emerging from a bowl series as the arena that qualifies without wholly biased selection. The biased 4-team selection(rather than the present biased 2-team selection) will fall to the wayside within 3 yrs to be replaced with a much less biased 8 teams who had to play for the honor to be in the playoff for the NC. It is the most logical path that this process will eventually follow and to put it off because someone has invented the “slippage” conundrum, is folly.
I propose the word “gameage” to describe what “slippage” proponents are fearful to see occurring. It’s the age for true games to be played in the arena to establish a NC based upon a playoff. Let’s get to it right off the bat and be done with the National Festering Contest.
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Sorry, but I have to ask: Does the uninquiring mind ever question? 🙂
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Not when they have been pressed and only when they want to ask for whom to vote. 🙂
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The issue is what one values more: 1) an objective national champion or 2) the importance of regular season games. Those that think that an objective champion is the highest goal will encourage a process that diminishes the regular season even if it’s a only a matter of degree. 4 teams does that to some extent, and 24 obviously diminishes the season to a greater extent. I personally think that protecting the regular season is far more valuable than a process that names an objective champion. Among the reasons for that conclusion is that any system inevitably will lead to a “undeserving” champion. By that I don’t mean a bad team, but a team that controlled its destiny and failed but is then given another shot. Last year is a perfect example. Alabama had a chance at home and got beat. LSU, arguably the most accomplished regular season team in history, had to beat Alabama again to win what it should have already won. Frankly, the system in place in the 1960’s when the MNC was selected before the bowls would have been more than adequate to determine who the most deserving team was in 2011.
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You cannot defend “dilution” or “diminished season”(same buzz meaning to me) as you put it. Which games in the upcoming year would be “diminished” if such a system was in place? If we were playing in a bowl to get into the NC game, which games would you not attend and “Woof!” like hell? Which playoff games? We would all be as excited as when we won in the Sugar Bowl. And the NC would be more meaningful.
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Ok. Let’s say we are 7-0 in the sec and we have 1.5 game lead. Who cares if we beat UK in Lexington? Why not rest your starters for the SEECG? I can see fans going apoplectic if the starting qb gets hurt in that game. That would be the stupid result of promoting stupid ideas conjured by stupid people.
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Well in that case, let’s just rest them for Georgia Tech too , since it’s the week before the SECCG.
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How does a playoff system dictate what you do to rest first string for an SECCG? We do that already, it doesn’t have anything to do with playoffs How does the Playoff diminish the regular season? By diminish, I take it to mean that some games won’t be attended or as exciting. You have that already concerning the cupcake oocs. How are the SEC games diminished?
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You know that for bowl and national title implications that every game counts. To suggest otherwise is simply to lie. There have been and will be no starter resting instances in any system to date. A playoff system does threaten that.
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See the NFL for the answers to your questions. Once you’re in the playoff, the importance of regular season games diminishes. Once you’re seeded highly, the importance diminishes further. If you can lock up the top seed, regular season games cease to matter at all.
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That works for a 4-team playoff as well.
Why would it diminish our games with SEC members? You mean we won’t enjoy beating the hell out of Auburn again? Or Tech?, Or Fu?, Or SC? Or Vandy?
How does playing three games past the bowl games “diminish” our seasons play and victories? And two games doesn’t? That isn’t logical.
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The FCS postseason is going from 20-24 teams. (It was at 16 as recently as three seasons ago.) That’s not a figment. That’s reality.
Had the NCAA found a broadcast partner willing to pay for it, it was prepared to expand the D-1 basketball tourney to 96 schools. That’s not a figment. That’s reality. (So is the fact that many of the same people pushing for that expansion are involved in the process of the next version of D-1’s football postseason.)
It is in the nature of playoffs to grow. That’s because the only logic they follow is to generate more revenue for the sport’s masters.
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Thought we had already decided among most that the football playoff can’t mimic the BBall playoffs. Just because others have expanded FCS is no reason for us not to go for the logical max extention that will eventually occur (in my mind) to satisfy BCS playoff questions to the point that no more extensions would be necessary in the majority fans’s minds. Rattling off what is occurring elsewhere doesn’t reply to my question.
I do not agree that a majority of fans can’t input enough to establish a playoff number that, if attempts are made to expand beyond , would be obvious to most as ludicrous to undertake.
By answering the nebulous conjectures, we may all move the marker to where it will finally rest. We may arrive to the point where we admit that “diminished importance” can’t be quantified and is wording that’s meant to lead away from and dissuade reaching a final number now.
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Your mistake is in assuming that the playoff thought process is about satisfying fans with a playoff size that is logical from a “settling it on the field” perspective.
This is, has been and will always be about calibrating playoff size to maximize postseason revenue without affecting regular season TV revenue. Of course, if they overshoot and miss the sweet spot, there won’t be any way to stuff the genie back in the bottle. That’s why the March Madness model is relevant.
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While I don’t agree with fear of missing “the sweet spot”, but I sure as hell “Thank You” for a reply.
Senator, your thinking and mine on this issue don’t jibe, but at least let’s establish a discourse that each person’s opinion is as good as the other’s on this subject. Using language that’s fearful of what everyone will finally demand (to have all teams in a playoff) is based upon what we think of human nature. Neither of us think that the nature of fans on this blog will demand that nor do we think other BCS conference members will demand that; we just think differently about where the door stop should be placed at this time.
You get my point, anyway. In 3 yrs it will go to 8 teams. Two yrs of uber angst by the Big10, with Delany fighting tooth and nail to get somebody included from the Big 10, will be enough when everyone in the country sees that no Big10 team will be included in the top four teams in the country unless the Polls are manipulated(something the Big 10 coaches know and who shave ranking places to benefit Big 10). The biggest culprit was Tressel(in that conference) and now they have hypocrite Myer in his place. I can’t wait.
Our basic difference is that you think cynically (which in this situation should be the norm for most fans) that money is the one and only factor making the decision(s) here. I am more idealistic and naive (neither being complimentary), but I happen to think everyone who comes on this blog are so and we all have our share of cynicism as well. I prefer to think that idealism and naiveness may carry the day on this issue before all is over and done.
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This is way too much. I’m a firm believer that the body only has so many football games in it. A junior who makes three deep runs will have played an entire other college football season heading into their senior year, all for no compensation beyond a scholarship. This is wrong.
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And I think you are right. More is not always better.
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Good teams get better as the season progresses. Champions typically top out in the Championship Game. I am of the school that the players have the will to play them and will get better and better through 17 games. After college, their first professional year will entertain 16 games. How many games do Championship HS players play? Plus Under Armor, Seniors, etc.?
My remarks are a reply to concern for player welfare only. Using numbers of games as a reason to limit games in a playoff is moot.
If we are really sincere about limiting injury, maybe the game should not be played at all. Bissinger-thinking is a bitch, ain’t it?
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Cojones. I must say after reading your posts. Wittgenstein would be proud.
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More like Buttgenstein if you ask me. Posts pulled out of one’s ass.
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I don’t know why you are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order for us to enjoy you………….
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But once you go conference champion tournament, this is the inevitable result. It’s not just the at-large teams ranked #3 and #4 sitting at home that spend the next decade griping. It’s conference champions ranked #7 and #8 that will be nursing a long-term beef as well.
By 5 p.m. on opening Saturday this coming season, the only people who will remain seriously ticked about last year will be OSU fans. Meanwhile, a 4 team conference tournament plan is going to leave at least 2 and as many as 4 fan-bases livid every year.
And that’s considered progress towards consensus and validation? Yikes.
As for an 8 team tournament with automatic qualifying, it absolutely pressures coaches who have clinched their division to pull back the reins, in addition to magnifying the pool of annual discontents.
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The 8 teams would come from the top 8 bowl games. It would truly be a Bowl Championship Series.
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Wow – that’s just disgusting… Is that really what anyone wants?
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Sadly, yes. “More games is better!!!!11!!1!”
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Take a look at the number of games that HS and college Championship Teams/players play. Right past their team play of the season.
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