When I say that an extended playoff has the consequence of watering down having a meaningful regular season, this is what I’m talking about.
Once again, the college basketball regular season has been rendered meaningless by the much-coveted “upsets” and “bracket busters.” Those things are great for TV and for your office gambling pool, but they don’t make for much quality basketball in weeks 2 and 3 of the NCAA tournament.
Teams that were dominant over a four-month stretch — Virginia, Arizona, Michigan State, Xavier … poof, gone. Defending national champion North Carolina, out in the second round and finishing in 32nd place.
Left in their place are upstarts like Loyola-Chicago, Nevada, Florida State and Clemson (yeah, Loyola won a national championship that one time … during the Kennedy administration). Do you really want to see a college basketball Final Four of Nevada, Florida State, West Virginia and Clemson? (That’s one possibility).
The equivalent in college football would be Boise State, N.C. State, Oklahoma State and Georgia Tech. Would that get you fired up for the CFP semifinals?
Single-elimination tournaments are a monumentally stupid way of determining a national champion. And, no, that’s not close to what we have now in college football.
Yes, it’s possible for the best team in college football to lose before the national championship game. That was probably the case with Alabama in 2014, and might have been the case with Clemson this past year.
But at least in those instances, you knew those teams lost to a quality opponent … not somebody who managed to string together 40 decent minutes and hit a shot that bounced off the rim, off the glass and went in. (Sorry, Tennessee fans).
But stretch the college football playoffs to eight, twelve or whatever and you’ll be there soon enough. With the exception of the NFL, the pros don’t make that mistake with single-elimination games, but then, they have a lot more time to fool with extended playoff series than college basketball and football do.
Generally speaking, a postseason exists not because it’s the ideal way to crown the best team, but because it makes money. I get that, and there’s no question that March Madness is wildly successful, commercially speaking. But it sure sucks to watch a team excel for more than thirty games against a tough regular season schedule only to see that turn to ashes because it suffered through an off-night against a hot mediocrity… er, Cinderella.
I know many of you think the more playoff, the merrier. So be it. I just see expansion being another wrong turn made by people who seem bound and determined to abandon every aspect of college football that’s made it uniquely attractive to so many of us.
Get The Picture 
Amen. Please no CFP expansion
LikeLike
No expansion and get rid of that damn committee and go back to a BCS like formula to select the teams.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Amen.
LikeLike
Hells yeah! In fact, screw playing the games on the field at all! Just start with the AP poll in the first week and call it good right then.
LikeLike
Not sure what your comment is supposed to mean, but a BCS like formula that uses the polls and the computer rankings as input is a better method for selecting the teams. Sure, the polls have bias in them from the preseason rankings, but the polls shake out pretty quickly into the season once games are played. Also, because there are more participants in the polls, there is less risk of bias compared to 13(?) people sitting in a hotel meeting room in Grapevine, Texas. The computer rankings offset the subjectivity of the human polls.
LikeLike
This is the very reason I stopped caring about college basketball. First I stopped paying a ton of attention to the regular season, then I just checked out on the sport entirely and just don’t care about it.
There’s no reason to expand the playoffs in college football, but they will if they can get a bunch more money for 6 teams with two play-in games and two byes or 8 teams.
LikeLike
Well said.
LikeLike
I wholeheartedly agree. 4 is enough, especially if you think of the players.
LikeLike
Agree, 15 games is too much wear and tear plus 4 weeks of camp. I truly believe, as much as I love the games, that 12 is reasonable and 13 a max for a college body. They need more off season as well IMO.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Leave football alone, March Madness is GREAT!
LikeLike
Agree leave football alone.
NCAA March Madness needs to be shrunk from 64 teams. The regular season is devalued, and the tournament is overgrown. I hope ratings plummet, I don’t want to parity where historically mediocre programs get a few upsets to ruin a tournament as has happened this year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agree, No complaints here…
LikeLike
Shocker, a UVA grad doesn’t like the tourney.
LikeLike
If you think my misgivings about a 64-team tournament surfaced last week, you haven’t been reading this blog very long.
LikeLiked by 2 people
🙂
LikeLike
The timing is strange….grapes gone sour?
LikeLike
Sister Jean: how a 98-year-old nun became the hottest property in basketball
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/mar/20/sister-jean-loyola-chicago-ncaa-tournament-nun#img-1
LikeLike
The DC area had a 99 year-old nun prognasticator back in the 80’s. She was great.
TV nun football pundit makes final touchdown | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/13/jjulianborger
LikeLike
Time to reward conference champions. Why should a team that didn’t win their conference be able to play for the national title? With 6 teams in the playoff, 5 conference champions from the P5 and 1 team from everyone else, we get a decent playoff but the regular season still matters a LOT. 8 teams would water it down a little, but would allow teams that didn’t win a title into the format. IMO, conference titles should be required to be in the playoffs.
LikeLike
Because it’s one of the four best in the country.
LikeLike
The reason is that not all conferences are equal. If 2 undefeated teams play for the SEC championship and one loses in OT should they be left out because an 8-4 Tech team, that lost by 24 points to UGA, won the ACC before 18,000 fans?
Sometimes conference championships don’t go to very good teams. The sec has been very lucky in that there have been very few major upsets in the SECCG. However, there have been several very questionable divisional champs that got a shot.
LikeLike
Agreed. The SECCG could give you a result no different than a March Madness upset. If you coupled the random years in which a divisional champ has 3 conference losses, throw in 2 non-conf losses on top of that and you have a 5 loss team playing for a shot at the playoffs ? No way.
The answer the UCF’s of the world give are to “Do Away with Conference Championship games” or “shorten the regular season” are coming from a world where home games and conference championships aren’t major revenue drivers. We shouldn’t have to compromise our traditions and finances just to please the drive-byes that want what they perceive as a Grand(er) Finale. I’m terribly sorry that they play Thursday night games in empty stadiums that don’t get their blood pumping but that’s not our fault.
LikeLike
Why should a team that won the MWC not get the same credit that a team that wins the PAC? If your argument is that winning your conference should be a qualifier, why don’t the “Group of 5” winners get in?
Before you answer “because they aren’t as strong of conferences as the power 5,” recognize that it effectively nullifies your argument for conference champions.
LikeLike
So, does March Madness become a double elimination tournament and turn into March and April Madness? Would anybody watch that?
LikeLike
We need four “Power” conferences, not five, and all need a title matchup. The eight teams in that schema are your final eight. Your conference champs are your final four. The end. No extra games over what the contenders are playing now. And for the love of all that’s holy, no damn “bye weeks.” This is football.
It’ll never happen. But it’s the solution.
LikeLike
Completely disagree. That’s just creating the “NFL-lite” model and a future movement for “parity” among the teams. The romance of college football involves a lot of items and evolves over time. Rushing to “fix” today’s problems will kill the beauty of these traditions. Let’s just have more inter-conference Power 5 regular season games. Give the major bowls their marquee matchups on New Year’s Day. If Boise St. and UCF want to run the table…hooray. Give them a nice bowl game. I really don’t need a MNC. Imagine if last year stopped after the Rose Bowl victory for UGA. I’d always rather wonder what would have happened a week later in Atlanta than to have forced the issue. And Danny White wouldn’t look like such the fool, which would make it all the more fun for 3 or 4 teams crowing about their seasons instead of just Bama being crowned through a process that is so far from fair and perfect it still rings hollow, no?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed.
LikeLike
That’s blowing up the whole world of college football to fix one problem that has better solutions. And you would have a “Tournament of Champions” instead of the “College Football Playoffs”, which now matches the best four regardless of championship status.
. And which conference are you going to get rid of? Or maybe you get rid of all of them an just put four new ones together? That would be a hell of deal..to dissolve the SEC or the ACC and split the teams up into new conferences. What about the other sports programs ?
This would be akin to using a cannon to kill a mouse.
LikeLike
Preach on.
LikeLike
I like the 4 best team model. Not 4 most deserving. Seems like the grownup way to handle it. Keep the regular season relevant.
LikeLike
Preach on , Brother Bluto! I like it the way it is at four teams and I agree with selecting the BEST four teams. That may mean having a team in the playoff who didn’t win a conference. So be it if they are on of the four best teams. I do think if it is close between a non-conference champ and a conference champion the champion should get the nod.
LikeLike
Yes. I agree also. The best four teams, even if they’re ALL in one conference (not that they’ll ever be, but if we could get a four team SEC playoff one year, just think of the heads that would explode up-north and on ESPN. LMAO)
If we’re going to have a playoff between the best teams, we (duh) have to put the best teams in it.
If, someday, that leaves out a bunch of dreamers in say, central Florida, too bad.
LikeLike
The truth is that no upstart has won the whole NCAA tournament since NC State in 1983…just look at the list of champions since then. The lower seeds win a few early games and then they’re exposed. So what? Obviously the teams that lose to them were susceptible in some way, and that’s totally ok.
But what is really ridiculous— downright comical–that you would come up with a reason to NOT ENJOY upsets like UMBC beating Virginia. If that isn’t a sign of either decrepitude or elitism, it’s surely a sign of something unholy that has truly inhibited your ability to enjoy sports.
Sad. But I guess I have to give you props for not following the conventional wisdom, at least.
LikeLike
Jeez, man. Overreact much?
I don’t dislike March Madness. I’m just not emotionally involved with it the way I am with college football.
And the thing is, forty-plus years ago, I was more passionate about CBB than I was about CFB. Part of my decision-making about where to go to college was based on watching live ACC basketball. The steady expansion of the NCAA tourney has been matched by the steady decline in my interest in the sport.
If your measure of a great tournament is the Cinderella factor, have at it. College football doesn’t need that, IMO.
LikeLike
UGA’s Rose Bowl win was made all the more great in that it was over an iconic program like OU with a Heisman QB. It wasn’t surviving OT against a mid major UCF.
An upset in a tournament can be fun, this March Madness has been ruined by parity rules creating no great team and then flooding an over expanded tournament marketing upsets as excitement when it really only proves none of the teams deserve a national title.
LikeLike
No, it’s not remotely the single factor. It’s a very good factor, that’s the point, that the vast majority of sports fans appreciate in seeing the games actually played out on the field/court instead of some asshat ADs sitting in a room deciding which four get in. And again, rarely do these low-seeded teams actually make it even to the final four, so you can’t suggest that somehow the “name brand” teams are suffering. LOL.
No, I don’t think it;s an overreaction to say that the timing of your post implies a lack of enthusiasm for the whole reason most people follow sports to begin with–the unpredictability of actual competition. Honestly I don’t think that’s true for you, but I do think you’ve just held this position so long it’s become academic.
LikeLike
Why do I need to see Cinderella get a chance to pull an upset in the college football playoff? Why does a team who isn’t one of the four best teams in a given season deserve that opportunity? Are you saying the Asshat Committee has made egregious errors with the four teams each year? If Bama would have been left out my answer would have been to them you shouldn’t have lost to Auburn. My answer to tOSU is you should not have lost to Oklahoma at home and been curb stomped by Iowa.
I like that it is hard to make in the four team playoff. Will there be arguments over the #4 and #5? Yes. So what? I would rather have that than some 3 loss team pulling an upset in a conference championship game to get in the playoff or letting a UCF who didn’t play a schedule worth a flip have a shot at pulling an upset. They got that with Auburn in the bowl game.
LikeLike
Agreed further tOSU should not have been blown out by Iowa. If you can’t survive a pink locker room you should not be in the playoff.
LikeLike
Please point out to me where I said it was the single factor.
I don’t understand your observation about “the unpredictability of actual competition”. Are you saying that can only be truly appreciated by including Cinderellas in the event? Because I sure thought the Rose Bowl and national title game were both unpredictable and competitive.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I think this debate involves asking if the Cinderella factor outweighs the quality of participants factor in evaluating a process that leads towards naming a champion. I understand that for many, it does. For me, it’s not the case.
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make in your last sentence, by the way.
LikeLike
“If your measure of a great tournament is the Cinderella factor, have at it.”
What else is that supposed to mean?
LikeLike
Um… that it’s important to you? Don’t see the word “sole” anywhere in there. Important isn’t the same as sole.
LikeLike
LOL at your parsing that. Get out of here. 🙂
LikeLike
It’s not parsing. What we have here is failure to communicate.
LikeLike
Also, I think we can assert that competition features degrees of predictability. Georgia leading Alabama at the end of the third quarter is a lot less predictable, I think, than UMBC beating Virginia, or any number of the 15 seeds that won in the last few years. Lehigh over Duke, for example.
I mean, ultimately if you were a fan of anything other than an elite football school I doubt you’d be caught dead with this opinion, so it’s more likely a matter of just not wanting the unpredictability of seeing a season “turn to ashes because it suffered through an off-night against a hot mediocrity…er, Cinderella.” In other words, the risk of losing.
It doesn’t make any sense to me, personally, that a person who enjoys sports would not want to see the this radical unpredictability, at least on occasion. But that’s just me, I guess.
LikeLike
That’s not what I’m saying. I enjoyed Georgia Southern beating Florida and Appy State beating Michigan as much as anybody.
What I am saying is that I think the Cinderella factor dilutes the purpose of a postseason to determine which teams proved themselves to be elite during the course of the regular season. I recognize that there are plenty of folks, like you, who see that as a feature, not a bug.
I really don’t understand your psychoanalysis here. It’s real simple to me. I was a huge college basketball fan once, but the NCAA tourney has stripped the regular season of any meaning beyond being a seeding mechanism. I would hate to see the same thing happen to college football. That doesn’t strike me as being an academic consideration, or because I’m the fan of an elite football program. It’s because I’m passionate about the sport.
LikeLike
“What I am saying is that I think the Cinderella factor dilutes the purpose of a postseason to determine which teams proved themselves to be elite during the course of the regular season.”
And what you are missing in saying this (so many times that I suspect you don’t think about it any more), is that there are multitudes of styles of play in CBB and CFB and there’s no possible way they can all play each other; and ultimately those factors constitute their primary appeal over the pros. And that seeing how a team who has to play the game a different way to compensate for the players they can get, or a cross-country matchup that would otherwise never happen (remember, it’s the playoff concept that got you to Pasadena); or who has a coach who’s incredibly creative; or whose 18-20-year-olds didn’t get enough sleep the night before; results in risk that the traditional power can actually lose to an otherwise Bad News Bears bunch of misfits once in a while. And that even when they don’t, it’s appealing to see the game.
In short, your consistent desire to keep the playoff small results in playoffs that actually negate the radical unbalanced competition that CFB & CBB are…and make it more like the NFL you claim not to like.
Thanks for the debate. It has been fun. 🙂
LikeLike
I get your small sample size argument, but even an expanded playoff only does so much in that regard.
I went to the Rose Bowl because seeing Georgia in that setting was a bucket list item for me, playoff or no playoff.
Really? College football has never found itself in a situation similar to one where a five-loss NY Giants team upset an undefeated Patriots squad. That’s what I don’t like.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m shocked. Shocked, I say, that gastr1 doesn’t understand what makes CFB legendary. What makes it superior to the NFL. He must have been weaned in the Northeast.
LikeLike
Wasn’t really comparing it to the NFL, amigo. But I do think more playoff than four wouldn’t kill the appeal of CFB…if that somehow makes me Northeastern, so be it, I guess.
LikeLike
Right, gastri. And when it eventually evens out as a fair contest of the top 8 teams to decide the NC, many here will disavow their like for CFB because they are being led in that direction by Bluto. Notice that Bluto never keeps his opinion serious concerning only 8 teams, he has to add to his reasoning (?) by rolling the numbers up as a scare factor
Instead of comparing it to BB (using a facetious and subjective argument ), opinions should be projected toward what is competitively fair in football in deciding the NC or just drop the Playoff .moniker and call it Choose Four.
LikeLike
The same people who call the shots on college basketball run college football. What’s facetious or subjective about that?
Once more: how large is the playoff field for 1-AA football now?
LikeLike
And still, no one but fans of each school cares one bit.
LikeLike
I’ll give you this: at least you have stopped the “slippery slope” scare tactics you used after two and then four teams were experimented with before approaching a true playoff number that’s been there all along.
LikeLike
WTF is “a true playoff number”?
Point me to a single major American sport’s postseason that hasn’t grown over time. When you finish that exercise in futility, find me such a sport with only eight teams in its playoff now.
LikeLike
These proponents of expanded playoffs, in my opinion, are the same people that love the NBA. While we’re at it, lets make all American sports homogenous. I despised the playoff expansion in MLB for the same reason I do in CFB. But, hey, who cares about tradition. Lets just tune in to the same thing.
LikeLike
Sorry to nitpick, but that NC State championship wasn’t as big of an upset as is remembered. They were a 6 seed and had won the ACC tournament. 2014 UConn was a 7 seed and 85 Villanova was an 8.
LikeLike
Yeah – that ’85 Villanova team is tops for me in dumb luck taking down the better team. They shot something like 80% from the field against Georgetown in the title game.
LikeLike
I do not know how you define “upstart,” but I know UConn finished 9th in its conference in the regular season, then got hot in the conference tournament and NCAA tournament and won the 2011 NCAA championship.
Ninth place in the conference and first on the trophy.
LikeLike
More distortion with hyperbole/scare tactics to divert legitimate discussion. One more step can not only improve the playoff, it can make the regular season mean so much more and increase fan interest. And while more money will come from an 8 team playoff, it isn’t the best reason for getting this thing right. You know damn well there is no chance of expansion in CFB to the silly level March Madness has reached with basketball. Let’s let the regular season and conference championships mean more, expand to eight as soon as possible. Also maybe consider firing those who decided on 4 when they had a chance to get D1 CFB a really great playoff.
LikeLike
I always enjoy how you assert your opinion on this topic as fact.
And as far as “You know damn well there is no chance of expansion in CFB to the silly level March Madness has reached with basketball” goes, remind me again — how big is the Division 1-AA football playoff now? I’ll hang up and listen for your answer.
LikeLike
Maybe his definition of hyperbole is a 24 team tournament.
LikeLike
Burn….lol
LikeLike
No, it is my opinion. At least I don’t talk about something as totally off track as you do, every single time this comes up. I have heard of no one, not one single person other than you, who talks about a CFB playoff like March Madness, or one where a 5 loss team is included. Do people in your circle actually discuss this subject and ridicule it because they think someone is proposing that? It spins the conversation off subject, but that must be the point. Craziness, just look at the discussion.
Eight of 130 is hardly opening the floodgates. It is hardly comparable to March Madness, or the NBA, or the NHL, or the NFL. So keep it real or you end up talking about Cinderella and other childish stuff. And what is wrong with winning the conference being worthy of admission? I would like that being the primary objective again.
The 1AA discussion is another scare tactic as well. All 130 teams will not give up 2 or three games of the regular season to squeeze in extra playoff games. You are dealing with 3rd World finances being compared to serious dollars and major contracts. And, as I have stated before, logistically, one more round is all that will work with D1 fan bases and scheduling so 8 is as far as it goes. This isn’t about 1500 students, and a hundred parents driving to Chattanooga or Frisco during winter break on a weeks notice. Airlines, charted planes, hotel rooms for tens of thousands of fans of both schools are a whole different animal. But you know all of that too.
There are other subjects I disagree with you on strongly, but this is the only one you seem to have given little thought to based on the commentary you put forth. Some posts and commentary are at the collegiate level, and on point; this type of expression is closer to K-6, but very effective at destroying non-existent theories. You can take credit for absolutely no one left standing that wants a 64 team playoff and ruining CFB. Nice job, there may have been twenty-three 12 year olds who felt that way.
LikeLike
There is so much misdirection going on in your response that I honestly can’t keep up. But let me respond specifically to one aspect of your screed:
The logistics are managed now in the basketball tourney; we’re just talking about bigger numbers. Some of that can be dealt with by playing early rounds at home sites for the higher seeded teams, a la the NFL. With regard to families, there’s already a move towards the NCAA picking up the costs. It’s not like they can’t afford it.
As for the rest of us, who are you kidding? College football is moving towards a national orientation and away from its regional roots. TV is king; if the money is enough, the conferences won’t have a problem giving up their championship games and even a regular season game. They’ll corporatize the crowds at the late round playoff sites and never look back. Your conceit that an eight-team tourney is an absolute stopping point because of forces beyond CFB’s control is nothing but wishful thinking. You are certainly entitled to insisting on it, but that doesn’t make it reality.
The point I raise with examples like the pros and 1-AA playoffs is that every professional postseason — I use professional in the sense that the organizers are paid for their product — is driven by money. To pretend that college football, which is run by the same folks who have had no problem whoring out college basketball’s postseason for the past four decades, is somehow immune to that, is nothing more than the childish fancy you accuse me of indulging in.
When you can come up with a valid argument that takes into account how money drives things, maybe I can take you seriously. Right now, to pretend that the same people who, for example, decide that a tournament for a conference that plays a round-robin schedule is a necessity, will somehow be brought up short by your righteous indignation when it comes time to take more of ESPN’s money, beggars my imagination.
College football playoffs will stop expanding for exactly the same reason March Madness has, because nobody will be willing to pay the freight for another round of games. You can stomp your feet all you like insisting otherwise, but your personal preferences are completely irrelevant to the folks calling the shots.
LikeLike
Still nothing but some name calling from you as you stand on the other side of the fence. BTW, the NCAA does not run the post season for D1 football, I don’t see that changing.
LikeLike
I’m sorry, Mac. I didn’t realize that name calling, as you put it, is solely reserved for your rhetorical benefit.
If you want to hide behind the fiction that the NCAA is totally separate from the schools who make up its membership, knock yourself out.
LikeLike
Mac, your first sentence is dead on and I expressed the same sentiment above before reading down. That comment would have been better here. Every time the Senator brings this up trying to convince others not to be fans of 8 teams, I usually skip over it, but his repetition using more and more teams past 8 teams (the number that it should have been from the first use of the word “Playoff”) just gets more screwy.
Pounding those of differing OPINION using a facetious platform seems to be his modus operandi on this one subject.
LikeLike
You do realize how many teams make the playoffs in FCS, right?
I disagree one more step to eight teams is a good thing. I don’t want some mediocre team that happened to pull an upset in its conference championship game in the playoffs. I like that it is hard to make the four team set up. It increases the odds all the teams involved are deserving to play for a national title. I don’t want 1996 Texas, who was 8-5 and upset Nebraska, getting in just because they won the conference title game. The four team format makes you have a great season to qualify.
LikeLike
The last two years of the “Playoff” selection didn’t convince you that there were 8 teams deserving of competition for the NC? On what planet have you been living?
This strawman use of the FCS tournament has nothing to do with the selection of teams deserving to vie for the NC each year, it’s just another excuse to compare with BB instead of discussing the merits of 8 teams and no more.
Why did we go from Select Two to Select Four? That reasoning applies to 8 teams and no more to decide a true NC. The top 8 teams should have been selected from the polls for those early years instead of steadily progressing to a number that represents a playoff.
LikeLike
No, the 2016 and 2017 seasons did not convince me that those 3 loss 7th and 8th ranked teams were deserving of competition for the N.C.
LikeLike
So you really find 8 as too inclusive, and compromising? It is 6% of the total 130. How many seasons do “pretenders” get into the Top 10 in the nation? Even at UGA, that is quite the accomplishment, one that doesn’t happen often; and when it does it is a damn good team…..not a fluke. While I respect the right to a reasonable position at a different number, and yours seems that, I feel you are underestimating how exclusive a club this remains.
And, you insure a conference champion doesn’t get left out of representing their region. We simply do not have enough interaction to eliminate conferences based on polls/committees votes. Plus, there is less chance of a “fluke” winner when they have to win three consecutive games against top competition, not two, so the idea of an unworthy winner may actually be lessened, imo.
PS—Thanks for not bringing up irrelevant arguments about us going to a 32/64 style playoff as a reason for not discussing 8 versus 4.
LikeLike
“Let’s let the regular season and conference championships mean more”
If at eight, Wisconsin and Auburn would have both been included last season after losing their conference championship games. And please don’t bring up a disinterested Auburn team that lost to UCF as a reason they should have not been in the top eight. They beat both Bama and UGA, and two of their best players sat out of the Sugar Bowl.
LikeLike
The regular season is devalued because when a team loses 2 games then the season is over, by week 3 there’s nothing left to play for. Conference championship s won’t mean anything.
LikeLike
This argument makes no sense. The regular season is already single-elimination; tOSU had a “fluky” regular season loss where they got outplayed by an obviously inferior Iowa and it kept them out if the CFP. The whole argument against devaluaing the regular season is that if you make one mistake in one game it could cost you the season. Why is that principle different in the postseason?
Honestly I’m scratching my head on this one.
LikeLike
Tell that to Nick Saban.
Hope that helps with the head scratching.
LikeLike
Are you trolling right now? What is your actual point? Are you now arguing that Bama should have gotten in despite not winning their conference?
LikeLike
No troll intended. They were one of the four best teams in the country, IMO.
LikeLike
Okay, but your logic here is wonky. Regular season is good because every game matters; playoff is bad because every game matters.
LikeLike
Oy. That’s not my logic.
LikeLike
Better reread your post, then.
LikeLike
That’s what I was going to advise you to do. There are also plenty of other posts here at the blog about the subject. Perhaps you should spend some time reading them instead of jumping to incorrect conclusions.
LikeLike
I’ve been reading this blog since 2007; I always thought you were arguing for teams resumes under the current system (short regular season, conference championships) determining their eligibility for titles. Here, the point seems to be that the best “looking” teams (like Bama 2018) deserve titles, and losses to “obviously inferior” teams are a bad way to disqualify teams that are obviously “deserving” based on some kind of subjective judgment. How am I misreading you?
LikeLike
First of all, thank you for sticking with me so long. 😉
To answer you question, I think you have to start with asking what the purpose of the regular season is. CFB is unique at this point in that it still plays the most important role in the process leading to a national championship. IMO, that is how it should be.
Your point that the process is subjective is something I do not argue with. That being said, I don’t see how an expanded playoff makes that better.
An expanded playoff accomplishes two things: one, it makes more money for the organizers and, two, it makes it less likely that the best teams are all in play in the semis and the final.
LikeLike
In a playoff every game matters less which increases exponentially as the playoff expands.
LikeLike
The discussion is concerning what that number is, not about projecting Armageddon by moving the peg to where it should have been all along – 8 teams.
LikeLike
The number in March Madness destroyed the regular season.
LikeLike
8 will greatly diminish the regular season in Football.
LikeLike
Exactly, more excitement extending throughout the season, every game meaning something for more teams, and conference championships become more significant again. Not to mention, it minimizes the committee’s vote and insures a team cannot get screwed our of their dream.
LikeLike
I was on a group text with some buddies the final weekend of the regular season. A tennessee fan (with no agenda obviously) texted how he loves that the Iron Bowl is “basically for the national championship” so many years.
Obviously, that text did not age well and we only have a 4 team playoff. Expand it to 8 and that game carries even less weight.
LikeLike
Except that tOSU had two regular season losses.
LikeLike
That, and getting run out of their own stadium by Oklahoma kept them out of the playoff. Pesky facts are pesky.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well according to Wikipedia:
When Division I-AA was formed for football in 1978, the playoffs included just four teams, doubling to eight teams in its fourth season of 1981. In 1982, the I-AA playoffs were expanded to 12 teams, with each of the top four seeds receiving a first-round bye and a home game in the quarterfinals. In its ninth season of 1986, the playoffs expanded to a 16-team format, requiring four post-season victories to win the title.
LikeLike
BUT WAIT! There’s more! When you order now you will get EIGHT additional teams for FREE! The Top 8 seeds get byes and you get more football ACTION with the new and improved 24 team playoff!
LikeLike
Now I feel bad, just praised you for not being silly in your position. At least yours was done in a joking way, the Senator actually uses this as if it is a possibility. Or actually, to prevent a likely better alternative from getting any serious discussion. That leads to the wild, irrelevant comments about 24/32/64.
LikeLike
Mac, it’s really going to be fun hearing you warn schools not to expand upon the perfection of eight in a few years.
LikeLike
Virginia losing by 20 to a 16 seed should eliminate them as one of the best teams in the country. Its like Ohio State losing by 3 touchdowns to Iowa. The tournament is the best way for a college BBall national championship.
LikeLike
I think I’m with the majority here in saying that the CFB playoff is just fine at 4 teams. Expansion moves us farther away from many things we love about college football.
The argument regarding upsets of college basketball blue bloods misses the mark, however. The recent (last 5-10 years) increase in sub-10 seeds making it through the first weekend, and occasionally crashing the elite eight or final four party, does not appear to be a function of the expansion of the NCAA field. Let’s use the Senator’s own timeline – the last 40 years. The tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 – 33 years ago. Yet the increase in true upsets did not hit for the first 20 or 25 years of the 64 team tournament. So there is no apparent cause and effect between expanding to 64 teams and more highly ranked teams losing. (If someone wants to argue that 64 to 68 meaningfully modified the tournament, we can have that discussion another day.)
What has changed over the last 10 years? One-and-done and additional early exodus to the NBA. Yes, there were a handful of truly elite players that went straight to the NBA before the one-and-done rule. But the overall number of players that leaves in fewer than 3 years after HS has dramatically expanded. The result is that the best teams, the teams that successfully recruit the most elite players, are not as good as they were 20-30 years ago. The average top-10 college basketball team today has less playing experience, and much less time playing together. As a result, the best are just not as good. The best have come back to the pack, allowing the good but not great teams (especially those with experienced players) to compete more effectively in a single elimination tournament. In my opinion, that’s the most likely cause of what we are seeing.
I’m down with your ultimate conclusion, Senator, but I do not think that comparisons to basketball are anywhere close to your best argument. (Along the same lines, I believe that anyone who argues “March Madness is awesome” as a reason for CFB playoff expansion either cannot or will not acknowledge that the two sports are not the same.)
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is one of the reasons baseball does for me. The Braves of the 90s were built for a 162 game season Not those stupid playoffs.
Why not have every team in D1 play March Madness in an opening season tourney like the FA cup with lower seeds playing first, then working their way to the higher seeds, but play the regular season alongside it.
So you’d have March madness extended throughout the year but still have a regular season that was driven by your conference members
LikeLike
Careful mentioning soccer on here! Doubt many here will know or even care what the FA Cup is. #YNWA
LikeLike
I really enjoy March Madness. If the cfb playoff expanded, and say, UCF beats an awburn and advances to another game, I’m not sure I have a problem with that. Citing Cinderella’s like Loyola or UMBC is an implausibly extreme example. They are entertaining for a moment, but neither will be in the championship game. If UVA or UNC were truly great teams they’d have won and advanced.
One thing I’ve noticed about March Madness is the ncaa doesn’t seem to give a hoot about imposing on the NBA schedule. Whereas with the cfb bowls and playoff, the ncaa seems scared to death of going up against the nfl schedule. And yes, I’ll keep complaining about the Monday night championship game until somebody comes to their senses and changes it to primetime on a weekend.
LikeLike
It’s apples and oranges. The CFP is perfect as it is, all 4 teams are deserving, and have a shot at winning. March Madness is completely different. So some midmajors wreck the party? Big deal. If you want to make the regular season meaningful in basketball, go back to the early 70s rule where each conference gets one team…except that the ACC chose to award its bid to the tournament victor, not the regular season champ. It made money, it created drama, it got ratings. So, everyone else hopped on the conference tournament bandwagon, the NCAA decided to expand, partly to give regular season champs a second chance if they pulled a Maryland and lost in the conference final after going undefeated, or something.
Is Loyola/Chicago great tv? Who cares? Are we letting ratings determine who we let in? Single elimination tournaments are high stakes/high pressure. Does the best team (if they played a best of 7) always win? Nope, but that is what makes it interesting. If you want to say two bids per conference, so all the champs get in, watch the hollering start.
Me, I love drama. I love underdog stories. I love seeing a bunch of guys who look like they rolled in from a YMCA take down a top 3 seed out of nowhere. If you just want chalk, limit it to 4 teams, just like football. Or make them play best of 7, like the NBA. 64 teams is probably too many, but if you are a top seed and you cant take out a 15 or a 16, c’est le guerre. Stinks if you are a fan of the top team, but life ain’t always fair. Adding teams to the CFP? Bad idea. Eliminate Cinderella from March Madness? Also a bad idea. YMMV.
LikeLike
Yes. This.
LikeLike
Has anyone pointed out that there is a fundamental difference between football and basketball? I think that needs to be taken into account. I don’t have any real analysis to back this up, but I would theorize that an upset in a meaningful, win or go home, college basketball tournament is much more probable occurrence than it would be in football. Bigger, stronger faster can only help so much if the underdog team gets hot and starts drilling threes and getting to the free throw line. Think about it, there are upsets in the tournament every year, but I’m not sure if there is a real correlation to Boise State or UCF winning BCS and NY6 bowls respectively. Mainly because the winner of those games didn’t move on with a chance at a title.
I for one agree that 68 teams in a single elimination basketball tournament is stupid. I barely watch the tournament anymore, and the only reason I enjoyed watching UMBC upset Virginia is because my buddy predicted it back in January and I picked it in my bracket (that I fill out dutifully every year on the off chance that I win a lot money). I would much rather see the field chopped in half (and probably half again), and see Duke vs Mich St in a three game series. The one game baseball playoff is also really stupid, but I digress.
I conclude that this probably only becomes an issue in football if we get into the double digits with regard to playoff team entry. 6-8 teams doesn’t feel like a big enough leap to cause an issue.
LikeLike
Senator, can you handle one more AMEN!!!!
LikeLike
Keep it at four. Georgia does not get to play in the Rose or title game under the previous systems. Right?
LikeLike
Maybe… maybe not, it would be interesting to see if OU or UGA played Clemson under the BCS.
Prior to the BCS I could see UGA going to the Sugar and playing OU with Bama playing Clemson in the Orange. UGA wins a national title with the SEC championship being the tie breaker for voters. Granted the AP going to Bama for a split title would not surprise me.
LikeLike
According to one site, it would have been Clemson & Georgia in a BCS championship game based on the formula.
https://fansided.com/2017/12/03/college-football-playoff-rankings-bcs-standings/
LikeLike
In the bring on 12 or 16 team playoff category crowd. So it ruins football the way some folks like it. So be it. Oh yeah and I like the one and done in BB. again so be it.
LikeLike
Not only am I opposed to expansion to 8 teams, I’d like to go back to the pre-Coalition bowl system.
What’s wrong with arguing over who the best team is in a given year? The subjectiveness of it all is a big reason college football is so much fun for me. It is certainly what makes it unique from every other sport.
I’ve never understood why we can’t at least take a step back and ask ourselves whether the most maddening thing about college football may also be its greatest asset. If we love one sport so much more than any other, and if that sport also has, or did have, a method of selecting a champion unlike any other sport, then it’s at least worth considering whether the lack of a “true playoff” is a huge part of what makes the game so appealing in the first place.
LikeLike
Someone gets it
LikeLike
It’s not a bug; it’s a feature! I agree. Pluralism! Democracy! None of this un-American sports aristocracy picking their pals to play post season games. Play your schedule and make your case.
LikeLike
Or, hell, don’t play it and make your case! This objectivity, this settling things once and for all on the field business, will not stand, man!
LikeLike
We are in 100% TOTAL agreement. Call the press ! !
LikeLike
I do have one small caveat. As much as I hate UCF and their tactics, there is a case to be made for a SLIGHT expansion of the playoff as a mechanism to help those long suffering teams on the outside-looking-in to grow their brand. I hate to couple UCF in there because they are such an annoying modern day upstart. And they’re Floridians.
I’m thinking of the cincinnatis, houstons, memphises of the world (disclosure: i’m from Memphis)…….teams that have been around forever and were just not as lucky as their old counterpart Louisville. Access to a path towards a championship has done wonders for that program. I think these are examples of programs that are arguably held back by that lack of access. With a place at the table, these programs could begin to generate the self feeding momentum that comes with the opportunity—better players, more fans, more revenue and so on.
LikeLike
In all due respect, the dilution of the regular season of college basketball has very little to do with the size of the tournament.
It has been at 64/68 teams since 1985. You could probably argue that had the tourney not expanded to 64 teams in ’85, Georgetown probably would have repeated as NC but instead lost to an 8 seeded Villanova team that the Hoyas beat 2 times during the season. That team was the lowest seeded team to win the tournament.
The reason the tourney expanded in the first place was AD’s and Coaches believed that teams should be rewarded for having really good regular seasons. There had been lots of teams denied chances in the NCAA tournament because they didn’t make it through the conference tournament and lost to lower seeds. Also, it made sense to add teams to eliminate byes and play-in games. The only reason there are play in games now is to make certain that ALL conferences receive automatic bids.
When teams were required to win a conference title (reg. season or tournament), there was a belief that some of the strongest teams in the country were left out. Wooden’s first NCAA championship at UCLA required entered the tourney in the Sweet 16.
College basketball’s regular season is diluted not because of the size of the tournament but because the regular season schedule is bloated. Villanova’s ’85 team finished the regular season with an 18-9 record and was 25-10 after the 7 total conference and NCAA tournament games. 35 games total for the whole season. Their first game was on 11/24.
Villanova’s 2016 championship team had a regular season record of 27-4, 31 games before tournaments. They played 8 Big East/NCAA tourney games to finish 35-5. They played 5 more games total (only 1 tourney game) and their season started on 11/8.
LikeLike
LMAO.
The reason the NCAA expanded is because it wanted to put the NIT out of business. It wound up having to settle an antitrust suit by buying the NIT.
Playoff expansion is about money. Always has been and always will be.
LikeLike
Correct its all aboutbtge Benjamins, but when was the last time the NFL playoffs expanded? Or the NCAA men’s basketball tourney (excluding play-in games) or the College World Series? Most of us believe 4 CFB teams is plenty, but just like almost every other sport on the planet, the critria to make the playoffs needs to be established before the season starts. Until that ever happens, we will just keep ponying up and expansion will just be inevitable. Sux to have your championship hopes in the hands of the “ratings puppets.” Oh and good luck to the small schools, trying to keep up with the Joneses, cause they will likely get bumped out due to brand/logo creep.
LikeLike
The reason the NCAA basketball tourney didn’t expand to 96 teams recently was because the schools couldn’t find a broadcast partner willing to finance the opportunity.
LikeLike