I’ve got a follow up to my posts last week about the inevitability of postseason expansion. Some of the comments I read in response harped on how the regular season is already meaningless for many football teams, so it’s irrelevant to argue that a larger playoff will render college football’s regular season less meaningful.
I say this with a total lack of snark: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Yes, the typical Sun Belt team enters each season with vastly different hopes and goals than Alabama does. And that couldn’t be less relevant to the point I made.
What is relevant is the example set by Louisville’s loss to Houston last week. In the BCS world, of course, that game wouldn’t have had an impact on the championship picture because Petrino’s team would have already played its way out. It was a relevant game in a four-team playoff setting. In a run towards an eight-team playoff, it would have left Louisville gasping for air and hoping for a little help. In a sixteen-team playoff world, it wouldn’t have had the slightest impact on Louisville’s playoff hopes.
When I talk about playoff expansion devaluing the regular season, that’s exactly what I mean. Troy entering the top 25 isn’t.
The reason this matters to me and should matter to you is because of one simple matter. There is less parity in college football than in any other major organized team sport in America. The professional leagues have drafts and salary caps that serve to restrain talent accumulation. Men’s collegiate basketball teams are relatively small in size; that, plus the one-and-done rule serve to spread the talent around, although not to the extent you see in the pros (because there are a lot more college basketball teams than NBA squads).
But college football, with its huge resources gap between the haves and have-nots, its recruiting wars and its 85-scholarship rosters, is structured in a completely different way from the rest. The absence of parity is a big deal. That’s why we don’t care about a MAC team’s chances to win the national title. It’s a waste of time to be concerned. It’s why college football, more than any other organized sport, should be focused on a playoff format that is constructed to deliver its very best teams, and those teams only, in a national playoff setting. It’s also why comparing the size of CFB’s postseason field relative to the total number of participating teams to those in other sports is a complete red herring.
The reality is in any given college football season there are not very many teams worthy of playing for the national championship. Outside of 2007, I can’t point to a year in the BCS era where there were more than five or six who legitimately deserved to be included in the discussion, and in many of those years, it was a stretch to get past four, or even to four.
That’s why playoff expansion shouldn’t be welcomed. In that regard, college football isn’t on a level playing field and hasn’t ever been. All the brackets and Cinderellas of the world won’t change that, either.
If you’re motivated by a desire to see more teams have a chance to win it all, expanding the playoffs isn’t the answer. Sharply reducing the number of scholarships a D-1 football program can offer is. The irony is that when postseason expansion really gets rolling and college football teams face a sixteen or seventeen-game season on a routine basis, you’ll hear coaches demanding larger scholarship limits. The more things change…
Get The Picture 
I agree with what you’re saying. What frustrates me is the inability for media and the general population to take a step back and really ask the question “Do we really need to crown a national champion?”.
I think if most people are honest with themselves they would arrive at the conclusion that it’s really not that big of a deal. I truly believe if we still had a traditional 1 vs 2 in a fiesta bowl, all the joy of winning that bowl game would equal the joy of an ESPN analyst saying “Alabama is the best team in the nation this year”.
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If the goal isn’t to see your team win a championship then why would you even pay attention? If the goal isn’t to win a title then why are so many coaches fired every season? Why even have the discussion? Of course you need to crown a champion, that is literally why every team takes the field every season and why every coach spends so much time away from their families recruiting. I consider myself a fairly thoughtful fan. but I don’t see how anyone with an interest could logically arrive at the conclusion that crowing a champion isn’t necessary.
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The logical conclusion to your position is that one team succeeds each year and 127 teams waste their time. Most people disagree with that thought process.
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It seemed like many here subscribed to that belief over the past few years. Ricky Bobby syndrome.
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Exactly. Who’s retarded now?
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Ironically, I believe you answered your own question.
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Who said they wasted their time? They didn’t reach the ultimate goal, but that doesn’t mean they wasted their time pursuing it. Who disagrees with that? That’s how all sports leagues in this country work. There is a champion and everyone else either doesn’t make the post season or ends the season with a loss in the playoffs. Please explain to me what I’m missing? What other reason do schools field football teams of the goal isn’t a championship?
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There are obviously other reasons. Out of the 128 FBS teams, how many would you say have a realistic shot of a national championship? 20? 30? If the number is 30, then 98 teams are fielded each year with no real shot of a championship. You would say that they did that for no reason? That seems ridiculous.
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I didn’t say that. You said it for me. Every school that fields a team has a shot at a title no matter what conference. Obviously if you’re outside of the P5 your chance is limited, but that’s what every team wants. Period. Even if the goal isn’t to win it all this season, every program hopes to build toward that. Even if it just means winning the division this season, it trying to work your way into a P5 conference. A championship is the ultimate goal of every football team. End of discussion. Slams gavel.
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You actually think MTSU (and the scores of teams like them) is working towards a national title every year? Dude.
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Not every year per se, but that’s the ultimate goal. Which is why Houston is trying to join the Big 12. It’s why TCU joined the Big 12, and why Boise State wanted to. It’s why Utah joined the Pac-12. Ultimately it’s about money, but the hope of a title one day (maybe not this year or the next, but one day) is what brings fan interest which results in ticket gates and tv contracts with expanded conferences. Dude.
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Gavels are slamming themselves at this point.
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Agree 100% — the obsession with the national championship is hurting the sport we know and love. But it’s driven by powerful forces: the media’s desire to bring in the casual fan (and by ADs’ desire to bring in as much $ as possible from the media).
I’m a Michigan guy and I used to know what a good season would be: beating Ohio State and going to the Rose Bowl. Then depending where the writers put you in the poll you’ve got something to gloat or complain about. But now the structure of the sport is all screwed up so I don’t even know what the Rose Bowl is. And I’m supposed to give a crap about Louisville? Count me out.
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I agree with you, 92, and respectfully disagree with CB.
I care about UGA’s games with every fiber of my being. My goals revolve around the game at hand. Last Saturday it was to beat UL-L. Now it is to beat Tech.
Whether Clemson beat Wake Forest or Ohio State beat MSU does not affect my interest in UGA’s game.
I have noted it before. Our 2002 team did not play for a BCS championship because Ohio State completed a 4th and 14 pass late in the 4th quarter over some Big Ten team whose identity I forgot. Should I think less of our 2002 team because of OSU’s performance? Likewise, UF got to the BCS game in 2006 only because UCLA blocked an UCS extra point.
Should UF fans feel less because USC’s upset loss opened the door?
The playoffs have caused me to have less passion, not more. I have not watched an entire playoff game yet.
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The day I’m legitimately interested in a ULL game is the day I hang it up. That game is an insult to fans. I understand you want as many wins as you can get, but if the school expects me to wake up at the crack of dawn, and spend my hard earned money for a noon kickoff with a Sunbelt team then they have sorely missed their mark.
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You can’t be serious. Do we need to crown a national champion? Do we really need an SEC champion? Do we really need an SEC east champion? Does it really matter who wins any individual game? Why bother playing the game when we could all have a picnic on Saturday afternoons.
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Agree..
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He was serious, and I agree with it.
Why aren’t you upset that no national champion is crowned in high school football? Why do they bother to play the games?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_School_Football_National_Championship
It looks like there has been a high school national champion named every year since 1910. How can you agree that there shouldn’t be a national champion? I can’t understand why you would think this…
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But that championship is based on, HORROR OF HORRORS!!!1!1!1!, a poll. Of course, that renders it invalid.
Given that there are more than 14k high school football teams, I’m thinking a 2,048 team playoff is the only fair way to crown an official champion. What’s another 10 playoff games after the season? It makes the regular season MEAN more, amirite?
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I never had any problems with the polls. I thought the BCS worked fine and the 4 team playoff is Ok. The Senator is right that only a few teams each year deserve a shot at the NC. This year it is Alabama and whoever wins the Big 10.
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The SEC and SEC champion is completely different, and, completely off topic of what the senator wrote about.
In fact, the champion of the SEC is the only title that matters. Period.
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I agree with you 100% Senator. I watch every single UGA football game I can. But I never watch basketball until the tourney. March Madness has it’s own special greatness, but it has rendered the regular season un-watchable. And then I tune in and have to learn the players’ names.
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I have no desire to see the playoff go to any size that possibly includes wild cards. Your post hits the nail on the head. As a matter of fact, the reason we have 4 is that a wild card won the national championship in 2011 by beating its conference champion it lost to in the regular season.
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Bama as a wildcard in 2011 doesn’t exactly compare to wildcards in other sports. It’s not like they were some long shot outsider who nobody thought had a chance.
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They weren’t their division champion and, therefore, not their conference champion. The selection of Bama rendered the regular season match-up with LSU and the SEC championship game meaningless.
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Yes, everyone knows that, but what you aren’t realizing is that you’re using arbitrary terminology dictated to you by those that are in charge of college football. I don’t care about conference or division champion titles. Think outside the box and decide what those titles really mean. If Florida loses to FSU and beats Bama on some sort of fluke this year are they really deserving of the conference title? No. They just won that extra game in Atlanta that the SEC has convinced everyone has some magical significance. 2011 is one of the few years that the BCS actually gave us the best two teams in the championship game, and ironically is the reason they blew the system up.
We don’t need an SECCG game to tell us that Bama is the best team in the conference, and we didn’t need one last year. Most years the game is completely unnecessary, and only serves as a potential spoiler. Case and point, history will tell you that LSU was the best team in the SEC in 2011 and Georgia (bc they won the gauntlet SEC East) was second despite the fact that Bama was clearly the best team and won the national championship. Makes no sense.
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Exactly. Conference playoffs are arbitrary and mean nothing. National playoffs are decisive and mean everything. QED
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I can tell by your comment handle that explaining the obvious difference would be a waste of my time.
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It would. But not for the reason you think.
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Lack of comprehension on your part.
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Burn!1!!!
Come on, man. I was agreeing with you. Conference playoffs in December are meaningless. National playoffs in January are important. Slam the gavel again!
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If so I apologize. Seemed like sarcasm
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If you can grasp that concept.
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No process, current or imagined, will ever decide who the best team is. Once you realize that point, having a true champion, earned through an open process, is a great culmination to a season. It really makes every game truly mean something for a change and that enhances the regular season. The current process has improved things over the past, but still doesn’t give everyone in D1 a level shot that cannot be taken away. That needs to be fixed to insure a fair playoff, and eight is the right fix for many reasons, imo.
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Mac, if everything you say in your first few sentences is true, then why does the playoff need to be capped at eight?
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Logistics if nothing else
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Another overrated argument. FCS plays more rounds. So does men’s bball. If they’re worried about the length of the season, they can always lop out a regular season game, or conference championship games.
Money will always trump logistics. Stop pretending the guys who run the sport think like fans. They don’t.
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If I count correctly there are eleven 1-A conferences including the Independents as one. If you seeded the teams that won their conference, based on a defined set of statistics (total points scored, total points margin of victory, average shoe size of special teams, whatever) and gave #1 seed a bye, you have effectively a 10 team playoff. The problem with it is that there will be a second bye week for someone. Where do you assign it?
At least this way the playoff will be limited to conference champions, providing a stopping point for the expansion. Make each playoff game a bowl.
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If you’re putting not P5 champs in then you’ve lost everyone. There might be one team per year that can actually compete so what’s the point in letting all conferences in? If everyone gets a team in then there is no point in Georgia being in the SEC. Let’s just go join the Sunbelt, win it every year and get that automatic bid.
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I must not understand what P5 means. How would P5 conference champs not get in if the requisite was a conference championship?
To your final point, competition and revenue.
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I’m saying that non P5 or Group of 5 champions (Sunbelt, American, CUSA, Mountain West, MAC) don’t deserve a spot.
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You’ll get a lot more revenue if you’re giving yourself a shot to win a title, and nobody really cares about competition. They care about the easiest path to a title. Your model basically states that the MAC champion deserves a shot at a title more than the second place team in the Big 10 or SEC. It would never fly.
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A big time FBS college football program and its needs for travel etc is much different than the FCS teams…surely you know this. Check their attendance etc and get back to me on this.
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FBS also has more money available to make it happen and thagames would generate more money because attendance would be higher so that’s not a very good argument.
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also tv deals..
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Humor me. With the 4 team playoff as it stands: UA beats UT in regular season play, then beat UT again in the SECCG. It is UT’s only losses. SEC#1 and #2 go to playoffs. They could actually face each other for a third time in the NCG?
In the 11 team model a conference championship is required for national championship play, so yes the MAC champion gets the shot over a #2 team even if said #2 has a better record. Yes, this could mean An 9-4 MAC team gets a berth over a 11-2 SEC team. (What a gargantuan shit storm that would be, and fun)
I don’t think competition would be an issue, more that one highly ranked and touted P5 team has gotten kicked in the nuts by a non power FBS opponent. And there is always the opportunity for the beloved Cinderella.
I am assuming most FBS programs garner the majority of their revenue with regular season attendance and television. Bowls and playoffs are gravy. With an 11 game playoff TV Networks reach a larger viewership geographically, more people right? More people more viewers more money, more evenly spread among FBS conferences. And it stops playoff expansion.
Pure genius, I tells Ya’.
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Group of 5 schools won’t bring more people then second place P5 schools. They don’t have the following, so your revenue would really suffer.
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You sure? Championships create fandom out of thin air.
Under the scenario above, I would be pissed if I were an undefeated G5 school that was passed by, while UT got essentially 3 chances at the Natty.
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Yeah, you and all 50 of your fans would be pissed, but nobody else in the country would care. Just like they don’t care now.
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Exactly PTC. Eight is the smallest, and largest, number of teams that will work logistically and not both blow up the season while accommodating the large conference champions and the best of the rest (non-power 5 and independents). Everyone has a shot at the beginning of the season, and only the elite of that year get an invite. Done, and done. (Assumes you can’t tolerate seeding two byes, which I could not, and go with six. Seeding two teams is too just big of an edge, and would have to be 100% subjective. Just not worth the uproar.)
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This is a fine example of the logical fallacy called “begging the question.” Eight teams is the perfect playoff for college football because of reasons. All arguments to the contrary are invalid. I admire the certainty.
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You wouldn’t know a fine example it it slapped you in your idiotic head, A-H. And this isn’t the only comment of yours that shows a lack of a working brain. It was an opinion, A-H. Everyone knows that, so I don’t feel compelled to state that in every comment. I also don’t use the word “allegedly” often either, especially when evidence is crystal clear and doesn’t need qualification (as in my 2nd sentence.) Don’t like my opinion? Big deal, state your own and defend it…if you can. Otherwise, just move on along. As usual, you added nothing, just a little pest (are you a yellow jacket buzzing through?)
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Don’t get all butthurt about it. Obviously I recognize your argument as opinion. I wouldn’t be vacuous enough to believe that begging the question settled any matters of fact.
It’s ironic that you invite me to make a case for my opinion when you have never done the same. Should we have duelling examples of begging the question? 8 is perfect, no 4 is? Why? Just because. Do you believe you’ve added anything in that case? Of course not.
If you’re really interested, my belief is similar to Bluto’s. Playoffs expand. 4 will become 8. 8 will become 16. 16 will become 24. And so on, until ESPN stops paying. Your belief that expansion will stop at 8, just because you insist it must, is adorable. But it’s just logical fallacy.
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It’s simply the belief that Jim Delany thinks just like a fan, when all the evidence suggests otherwise. Why anyone would think a guy who let Rutgers join the Big Ten is going to be on the side of the angels when it comes to playoff expansion is beyond me.
It’s the same kind of thinking that leads to the insistence that somebody is going to make Notre Dame join a conference just because, when the Irish have that fat national TV contract and a national following that’s unmatched by few other programs.
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I’d be interested to hear all about your ideal college football system. I’m sure your ideas wouldn’t be really easy to rip to shreds.
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I tend to agree, but couldn’t you do the same thing with 6 teams and two byes?
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I think our CFP committee overlords made it painfully obvious after upset Saturday that they will install whomever they wish. Lose to an unranked team late in the season? No problem. You may not even move down a single notch. Or hey, if we do move you down a notch or two it won’t necessarily knock you out of the top four. We will be moving to an eight team format way sooner than later so that sort of nakedly obvious manipulation needn’t happen again. Once we’re at eight, sixteen will only be a couple of years behind. I’m already starting the transition to gardening on weekends. And I like curling. Curling looks fun. I think I could be a sweeper.
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I still haven’t watched a single installment of the release of the committee’s top 25 in the last 3 seasons. The obsession with the playoff is sucking the air out of the room that is the regular season.
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I’ve never watched an installment of rankings for the same reason I don’t watch the NFL draft. The results will be posted online to be reviewed at your leisure.
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I disagree that Louisville was of much relevance this year. Clemson had the tie breaker meaning L’ville needed help to get back in. yes the AP may have had them in the top 4, playoff selection committee had them just outside the playoff cut but without the conf championship the committee likely drops them out even below 2 loss Big10 and PAC10 champs.
Further I even more disagree with reducing scholarships further. Majority of the teams will fall more into mediocrity creating games that are not interesting sure they maybe getting in the play off but I read comments on here on how people liked watching football perfection in Bama. On the flip side of the mediocrity across most of the football landscape due to a push towards parity has witnessed the rise of a juggernaut which has the resources and knowledge to exploit every rule and possible advantage to dominate. The racing world has experienced this regularly, NASCAR with the Car of Tomorrow and Hendrick Racing, IRL and Penske.
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Wasn’t the 4-Team Playoff put in for a 12 year period? If so, we have a long way to go down that road.
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Contracts can always be changed. Just ask Mike Slive and ESPN.
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Yea, I wondered how “cut in stone ” that was.
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I don’t see how anyone could say that the regular season is meaningless. Like after we beat Auburn, all the talking heads were saying the Iron Bowl doesn’t matter anymore. Although it no longer has an impact on who represents the West in the SECCG, that game still matters to a lot of people. And even though UGA-GA Tech doesn’t impact the playoff picture, that doesn’t make it meaningless.
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Hmmm… Arent more UGA games (and CFB games in general) a good thing for us fans?? I hate the first Saturday after the football season has ended before bowl games…
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As with virtually everything in life, there are trade-offs. In order to change the byzantine structure of bowl and conference ties ins, we created the bowl coalition, which evolved to BCS and eventually CFP.
Personally, I am in favor of an 12 team playoff. Grant byes to the top 4 and have the other 8 play down to 4 for a 4 week play off. If 12 seems to many, make it 8 and eliminate the bye week. That said, one has to figure out a better way than this committee does in figuring out who is really a good team. I am happy the committee is actually employing advanced stats, but advanced stats are only valuable in they are placed in context. Averaging 5 yards per carry as a RB or a high passer rating means more in the SEC than it does the Big 12.
Having a larger playoff increases the odds that the teams that “are playing best” at the end of the regular season win the title. Further, it keeps a team who has lost a couple of times in contention to win it all. In fact for that team, EVERY game is a play off game from that point forward. Thus, I don’t think it totally devalues the early games. I think rivalries matter in the sport, and we all keep close track of our record on such, which is another reason that I don’t think the season will be devalued.
That said, any playoff expansion that does not account for difficulty of conference is going to hurt the SEC. That said, the basketball committee seems to do a MUCH better job at actually understanding quality teams.
The way to solve the problem is to force conference to play some type of rotation of inter conference match-ups. have the big ten and SEC square off in late September/early October. if the one conference goes, 10-4 or 9-5 in those 14 games…take note of it. favor the team that goes 9-3 in the SEC over a two loss team from the big 10.
As for this season, I am not sure Louisville is in the top 8 of the country for the simple reason that they basically have one quality win and loss and a whole bunch of ACC underbelly. More broadly, I can make a pretty good case that the Big 10 has propped up its better in teams in ways that they both look highly vulnerable, and that is not just recency bias. Michigan’s September schedule was atrocious. It is getting credit for beating a “top 10” Colorado team that has emerged as ranked from the cess pool that is the Pac 10. It caught Penn State in a manner similar to USC and UT caught us in 2007. Does Wisconsin’s win over a Les Miles’ LSU team really look all that impressive right now? The bottom of the Big 10 (Illinois, Purdue, Maryland, and Rutgers) make Mizzou look like national championship contenders. Not one of those teams has played a single competitive game against any team of quality.
That is not to suggest the SEC is loaded with good teams. By SEC standards, there is one good team with an insane amount of talent and a bunch of other teams that collective have superior talent to ANY other conferences (next 13 teams or 11 or 9). That said, every one of those SEC teams not named Bama has significant flaws of one sort or another.
Add it up, and you have talking heads pontificating about West Michigan as playoff contender in such a scenario, which is ranked ahead of a LOT of unranked SEC teams, and would get destroyed by an SEC schedule.
Ultimately, 2016 is a REALLY bad year in college football. As great as Bama is, I don’t really know how good they are offensively. they have yet to face a complete team that could expose the Hurts’ limitations as a passer and score points on the Bama defense that forces Bama into situations where a mistake or two could cost them the game. I don’t think OSU or Michigan are anything close to special. Michigan state is AWFUL, and yet it played both teams very well. The rest of their schedules only had 2-3 games against teams that could reasonably beat them…and they each failed once. That is so much different from our league. Recall the week before the Ole Miss team that destroyed us had Bama down big! That team, which has eventually quit, got killed by Vandy. That does NOT happen in any other league.
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Why does a team who lost a couple of games deserve a shot at the National Title? And, why are you valuing the end of the season more than the beginning of the season?
I like that the committee looks at the entire resume and never understood why losing a game at the end was worse than losing to the same team at the beginning of the season. For me, who you lose to/win against should matter more than when you lost/won.
Also, you have a HUGE SEC bias. The SEC is not head and shoulders above the other conferences this year. I would say Big Ten, PAC 12, ACC, and SEC are all pretty close this year.
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Name a good team in the ACC outside of Clemson and Louisville. We beat the 4th best team in the conference, ran the ball with ease, and have not run that well since. We are somewhere between the 4th and 8th best team in the SEC (is it stretch to think we could have beaten UT or could beat Arkansas or A&M?). The Pac 10 is an absolute dumpster fire as is the Big 12. That leaves the vaunted Big 10 lead by the two most overrated teams in the country.
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The SEC in conspiracy with the NCAA started diluting the regular season a long time ago with conference expansion and conference championship games. Enjoy UGA/Auburn and Alabama/Tenn while you can.
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“In a run towards an eight-team playoff, it would have left Louisville gasping for air and hoping for a little help. In a sixteen-team playoff world, it wouldn’t have had the slightest impact on Louisville’s playoff hopes.”
We may actually be in agreement here. I’m tentatively for an 8 team playoff, but only if the first round were played at home stadiums, if not then I think 6 is the magic number because the 7th team really doesn’t have much of a gripe. Plus, you get 5 conference champs plus an at large and all the big boys are happy.
Given the above statement would you hypothetically be in favor of a 6-8 team playoff if there were some sort of guarantee that it wouldn’t expand further? If so, does that mean that your deep opposition to expansion past 4 teams stems from the NCAA’s track record of expanding everything as far as tv money will allow them to stretch it? If both of the aforementioned are true, then why do you think the powers that be seem so determined (at least publicly) to keep it at 4 teams, at least for the time being?
Cinderellas are fine in CBB, but I have 0 interest in seeing them in a CFB playoff.
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You lost me at “guarantee”. 😉
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Let’s say you’re in charge. How many teams are in your playoff? Or are we headed back to the 80’s when the newspapers crowned the champs?
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If I’m in charge, it’s one of two scenarios:
a) Eight ten-team conferences all playing round robin schedules to determine champion. Regular season champs meet in national quarterfinals and go from there; or
b) Four sixteen-team, two-division conferences and first round of playoffs are conference championships.
Either way, you don’t extend the season much, the regular season remains vital (with 9 conference games!) and you can put the selection committee out to pasture. That’s winning in my book.
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And here I’ve been thinking we had opposing views this whole time. I’m on board with all of that. Especially the 9 game conference schedule. I think I prefer option a) as it leaves open the possibility for first round home games.
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If you go option b, I think you might have to go with ten-game conference scheduling… not that there’s anything wrong with that. 😉
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Anything that will eliminate annual games against FCS and Sunbelt opponents. I’m all for it. In the current format it doesn’t even feel like A&M is in the same conference as us.
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If you go to 10-team conferences, it won’t feel that way either. 😉
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Right, I was thinking 10 game schedule with current 14 team conference. Details deviled me. I would also be cool with not being associated with A&M or Mizzou. I think one of the main selling points of college football has always been regional pride. Texas and Mizzou are watering us down.
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I like this or expanding to six team playoff with the five Power 5 champs getting in plus one wild card that comes from the best/highest ranked non-conference champ from the Power 5, highest ranked Independent, or Group of 5 school.
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If you leave a subjective element in the selection of the playoff field, you’re pretty much guaranteeing eventual expansion.
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Would bringing back the computers to select the participants eliminate the problem or make it worse?
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If you go to a purely objective format, it’s a moot question.
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If only an upheaval of that magnitude were in the cards.
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Really, the trick is to do away with the Big 12. The problem w/ the four 16-team leagues is that it’s only 64 at the table, and the fly in the ointment is, again, Notre Dame. Right now, there are 64 Power 5 teams + Notre Dame. And, we have to wonder if we’re foregoing a few teams that MIGHT deserve a shot. Are there 7 ‘other’ teams that maybe should get into the mix to make four 18-team leagues? 10 game league schedule? I’m not sure that all works.
It’s why I believe a more likely scenario is FIVE 14-team leagues, w/ a 6-team playoff and 1 at-large, leaving the window open for ND, A group of 5 undefeated, or someone like OSU this year. Very rarely are we going to have a difficult time picking that at-large. And that screws w/ the conferences and ND less.
Go to 9 games and everyone determine their champion the same. The ACC, SEC, and Big 10 are set. That leaves the Pac-12 and Big-12 to add 2 and 4 teams respectively.
Boise St. & BYU to the Pac-12
Houston, SMU, Colorado St. & Central Florida to the Big 12.
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ND is no fly in the ointment at all, they either join a conference or sit on the outside pretending they are relevant. Tired of everyone bending over for them and their pompous opinion of themselves. There day of being “king” in their own mind was when they made their own 10 game schedule and sat at home not playing any bowl games at all. Add the number of northern catholic sportswriters living in cities that didn’t even play major football and you got them declared “the best” way too many times. Take a look at the ND bowl results since they started playing in them.
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I like the regular season…I like playoffs too…not sure why you can’t have both. More big games is better to me. Hopefully Kirby can get us to the point where our team is involved more often.
8 teams with a first round home game sounds about right…
And be careful on eliminating the games with the smaller schools, they are good for our sport too and many rely on that big check or two a year to make it work.
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Just thinking it will eventually go to 16, just too much money involved. I have no beef with 16. I like the idea of more inter sectional games and hopefully, playoffs would provide that. With what the FCS and the other divisions do right now, 16 would be easy. And bonus, there might just be some big upsets. I do not get too concerned about the too much time away from school, cause that is a joke anyway.
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And this does not have a thing to do with the current discussion, but I just irritated —-watching a team drive 85 yards, get down to the 2, and kick a field goal for 3 points. Some guy then kicks a 52 yard field goal and gets 3 points. A graduated point scale for field goals. Now that would change the way some coaches coach. A needless rant, not having a damn thing to do with any of this discussion, is over.
Now back to your current broadcasting.
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