Yes, I know college basketball is totally different from college football, except for that whole bit about the same greedy swine running both, but still, be prepared for this in the future of the CFP…
There’s no such thing as too much validation of a head coach’s success, you know.
Get The Picture 
8 is plenty, 8 conference champs in a three week playoff.
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8 is great, but there would be at least 3 teams that would make the playoff that have no business being there because of the conference they play in:
American – Memphis, Cincinnati or UCF
Conference USA – Marshall
Mountain West – Boise
Sun Belt – Ga Southern or Louisiana-Lafayette
MAC – Northern Illinois
Who of the conference champions (Boise (20), Marshall (U), Memphis (U) – highest ranked mid-major champions) would deserve a shot over TCU (I say Baylor is the Big 12 champion in the playoff due to H2H), Mississippi State, and Michigan State? You can’t have this without major conference realignment.
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The Big 12 would have to decide how to pick their champ, leave it up to the conference. I’d have 8 conferences with 12 or 14 schools each eligible for the tournament. Someone smarter than me would have to figure out which 96 or 112 teams would be in the conferences. The ones that got left out (probably a bunch of Sun Belt and MAC type teams) would have to drop down to FCS.
Unless they expand to 16 or more teams there will always be whining about this team or that team than “deserved” to be in. An expansion that large would require a committee or polls or computers or some other subjective way of picking the teams in the playoff. It’s part of sports to look back and say “what if” or “if only”. If a team wants to be in the playoff, it needs to win it’s conference. The conference champions will be decided on the field and the national championship would be decided on the field. Until it’s totally decided on the field, it will always be a “mythical” national championship.
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Here’s my proposal to achieve exactly what you propose:
http://bulldawgillustrated.com/2015/03/01/a-simple-play-off-proposal/
It works but it destroys the conference network model and that’s why something like this will never happen.
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Expand it all you want, it still wouldn’t include 2014-2015 Florida.
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baZINGA
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Turn it into the third grade, everybody get to participate and everybody gets a trophy.
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I bet Gary Patterson and Billy(Eddie Munster) Donavan are Facebook friends. This is what is wrong with brackets and playoffs….the line of exclusion keeps going lower and lower(i.e. bracket creep) but the whining is just easier to deal with by giving the whiners what they want . Six team playoffs are coming sooner than later….than 8 . The people (entities) making the money make mo money with mo games. We are are getting mo games whether we want them or not . They know what is best for us. We will be assimilated
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Though I have to say, I would not be upset with more football games.
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So, as a UGA fan, I’m really excited that we’re going to make the NCAA Basketball tournament this year. But I don’t harbor a single hope that we’re going to win it. That’s not to take away from anything Coach Fox and his team has done, but our Hoop Dawgs are a good, not great team. So while I am excited they’re going to make it, it’s really just a strange act of kabuki. What am I rooting for? To see how far they can make it?
I guess my point is – If the point of a playoff is to determine who the champions are, why are we inviting teams that have no chance of winning a championship? Other than the money, it’s just a strange bit of validation… your team is pretty good. But I already knew that about the Hoop Dawgs.
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Don’t forget it helps the coaches when it’s resume time. His teams have made the payoff x times. The fact that the college basketball playoffs are so over blown has nothing to do with it.
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It’s actually very simple. If you double the number of playoff games, you double the number of commercials that can be sold.
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Cold, man, true, but cold.
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cold………….but true
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I agree. The great majority of the teams in the basketball tournament have absolutely no expectation of winning it. One day, the football postseason will reach a similar point, and that will be a sad day.
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Oops. This was meant to be in reply to Spence above.
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I figured it out.
$ talks. Guess that’s all this is.
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I might be in the minority, but the continued watering down of the tournament by adding even more teams won’t do anything to polish one’s resume. As it stands now, there are 36 at large bids, so as long as you’re one of the top 36 teams in the country, you’re in. If that number increases further to 50+, then making the tournament for any respectable program should be akin to being able to correctly ensure that you have 5 players on the court for the opening tip-off.
As someone stated above, this simply is all about money. More games, more commercials, more revenue. FWIW, I recently cut the cord, so to speak, and no longer have cable (instead relying on the new Sling TV service, Amazon Prime, and the like). Well, TBS and TNT are included with Sling (which both being major broadcasters of the tourney), yet apparently there’s talk of blacking out the NCAA Tourney on both TBS/TNT for Sling TV viewers, due to the fact that we’re allegedly a bunch of cheap creeps who don’t deserve to watch NCAA basketball.
Either that, or the NCAA reckoned that we just don’t contribute enough to the broadcast medium to be deemed supporters of college athletes nationwide.
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Well of course Donovan’s in favor of expanding the field this year. His team isn’t that good this year, but might make a field of 76 or 80, or 128.
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Oh, and while I don’t have any problem playing in the tournament when we don’t have a shot at winning it. To me, it’s about being the best the team can be. If that’s the best in the country, then great. But it doesn’t mean the others shouldn’t be playing. I think that’s what leads to all the DawgVent hatred, the “win it all or else” mentality. Pretty much guarantees you’re going to be pissed off at the end of every season. I watch sports to enjoy them.
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Wow. Please use your own editing on that rambling mess I just left.
TL;DR – I like watching the Dawgs, even if/when we don’t win it all.
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Greedy Swine as in hogs get slaughtered by Antitrust Class Action Lawsuits?!
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Yeah, tell me again how important the CBB regular season is. Sheeeesh.
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