Nessler said something needs to be done with the CFP in terms of conference championship games, citing an assumption No. 3 Notre Dame’s inclusion into the Final without a conference title game.
“Either get rid of them,” he said of the conference title games, “or they need – as a committee – to say they don’t matter at all. It’s one or the other. You can’t have it both ways and they have had it both ways.”
That last sentence ought to become the official motto of the selection committee. The problem for us is that while most people are like Brad Nessler and see being… um, let’s say dual-sided as a bug, the folks running the sport see it as a feature. There are dangers in consistency that are best avoided if your real goal is spreading the wealth among the wealthy.
In this specific case, make a conference championship a necessary ticket to ride and you automatically exclude independents like Notre Dame, a program that has a national brand that commands a lot of attention and financial consideration. Flat out deny conference championships as a qualifier and you make it much more likely that a top heavy conference — you know the one I’m talking about — has an improved chance of crashing the semis with two programs.
The P5 commissioners don’t want to be locked in either way, so they structure the committee in a way that lets subjectivity control the results far more than was the case under the BCS. It’s also how you have the absurdity of ADs from Ohio State and Oklahoma sitting in judgment even as their football teams vie for a spot in the CFP semis.
Oh, right, I forgot. Everybody checks their hats at the door. Problem solved.
Get The Picture 
Notre Dame should be playing Clemson for ACC championship this weekend. They must become a full member.
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They must? Why?
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Unnecessarily snarky (no surprise there). Of course, no one must do anything, including playing football, so now we have that cleared up.
On to his very valid point, there is no reason at this point for ND to be given any special consideration regarding the playoffs. Despite their popularity, the show will go one even of they went back to their “no post season” position of their past. Nada will be impacted to any significant degree.
The case for them playing in this specific title game is both Clemson and the Domers are benefiting from the same ACC conference weakness. Of the current Committee rankings of the Top 4, the two with the easiest past to their current position are ND and Clemson. And now on Championship Saturday one sides home by the fire, and the other faces a rather toothless Pitt team. One is a full fledged member of the weak ACC, the other a half ass member, but a beneficiary nevertheless. If you really wanted to know who is the best in the ACC, they should meet. ND is like a friend with benefits, but none of the responsibility. The expectation they should be playing deserves more conversation by the talking heads, a lot more.
So many are discussing the SEC getting two spots, where is the public outcry of the ACC essentially getting two spots with very little competition due to a terrible conference weakness.
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Most folks have no clue that ND plays 5 ACC football games a year. That’s my take.
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Nice description of the situation.
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It always comes down to money. “Money, Money, Money…Maaaaa-ney! “(the O’Jays version)
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With tongue in cheek: “Wooden consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”
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College football is a sport where everybody used to get to make their case for who is best and why. Now, in the name of tv money, we have outsourced all that fun to a committee of insiders. With all due respect to the illustrious committee, bickering about this stuff is our job, not yours. Give me back the bowls.
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+100
I wish we could stuff that genie back in the bottle.
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I don’t want to go back to the Jeff Schulzes of the world deciding the national champ on January 10th. No thanks.
But your point is valid and applies to the “just go to 8 crowd.” What if we all (the proponents included) hate all the unintended consequences and want to go back to 4? Good luck with that genie.
I don’t know what people want other than more mulligans for suspect teams. If Las Vegas is right, we’re going to see 3 undefeated teams battling it out with the only question being who should be 4th among the imperfect bunch. Sounds pretty reasonable and efficient.
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I get your point. But journalists only “pick” champions because of their platform. Nobody has to agree. It’s the nature of the sport to be open-ended. Too many and too few games means too little data in most years. A playoff produces a champion because that’s what playoffs do. But is that system more legitimate or better than the previous two systems? ESPN thinks so. I don’t.
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I would argue it is legitimate because right now there are exactly three teams that have not been branded with the single most OBJECTIVE indicator that said team is NOT the best (that being a loss). All three of those teams are probably going to be included in the final showdown we call the playoff. And assuming these vegas odds play out (no upsets this weekend), we’re going to actually add a 4th team for good measure–the 1 team most deserving of a mulligan.
I don’t know how that’s not superior to what happened in the 90s when we sat there and wished we could have seen the Sugar Bowl winner and the Rose Bowl winner duke it out. Now we can and do.
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In further reply, maybe we need to do like the commie kickball crowd and give two champions: a regular season champ and a playoff champ. Both matter equally. What we must not do (and what we are slow motion doing) is sacrifice the best regular season in all of sport for a playoff monster that eats fun and poops money.
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For whatever it’s worth, soccer is actually the most free-market based pro athletic activity on the planet. Much more so than the NFL. And the variety of trophies awarded are not regular season and playoff varieties but separate competitions that occur concurrently throughout the season.
But I am skeptical like you about where all the Greed from CFB playoffs will lead.
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You saying Georgia doesn’t get to make its case?
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I have said for a long time that the BCS was a mistake. We had the greatest system of determining a Champion in the history of the sport: Bowl ‘n’ Poll. This was especially true before automatic Conference tie-ins. The Bowls could spend money to put together the best games possible in a semi-open market. So what if there was a split Championship? It gave us something to argue about in the offseason. We still get to discuss things like “how badly would Nebraska have beaten Michigan in 1997?”. or “WTF 1984?”. Now we have to argue about things like “Tyler Simmons was on-side”.
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Here’s a thought: 8-game playoff, after all the conference champs have been crowned! Every P5 champ is in the 8-game playoff, along with 3 wildcard selections (that committee still needs a purpose, amirite?)
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Use a BCS type of formula for an 8-team playoff. 5 champions + 3 most highly ranked wildcards (although I detest wildcards).
The problem with the 8-team scenario is that the first round games would be right in the middle of final exams for the fall semester. This is the primary reason the playoff is going to stay at 4.
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Agree in the timing..4 is just right, IYAM
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I think 4 is the right number as well.
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5 loss Pitt in a playoff ? Hell no thanks
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But they almost beat ND…much like Vandy. 🙂
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Why didn’t we get someone on that committee?
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I’m not sure GM falling on his proverbial sword for the good of the many would really help our case, but I get your point.
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GM works for Kirby now. If he screws that up, he’s gone.
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🙂
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I agree that the subjectivity is a feature, not a bug. If objectivity had been the goal, they would’ve simply expanded the field from 2 to 4 while keeping the BCS ranking system. Not that people didn’t still debate the BCS rankings either, but at least then there was a sense of “don’t look at me, blame the formula!”. The selection committee approach ensures that college football fans talk (bitch?) about the rankings ad nauseam in every possible medium, and as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
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I would say to qualify for consideration you must play for your conferences title. That way if the two top teams were from the same conference they could still get it. But those that do not play for a conference can not.
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I see the appeal of that rule, but it ignores the traditions of the sport. ND, much as we may complain, matters to this sport and has a proud tradition of independence. Conference championship games, on the other hand, are far newer.
Any playoff will always grab the focus of the season, and the solution to problems with they playoff will always be “more playoff.” But the best part is the season! The championship is the desert, not the meal.
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You post some good stuff, Yurd, but that blow-off of ND’s privilege is some weak sauce. That the Irishs’ name gives some people goosebumps and the warm fuzzies should not get them preference into the playoffs.
“That’s the way it is” is passive and never moves the situation forward.
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Thanks! I think one of the highest compliment we can pay each other is an honest disagreement.
And I get that it’s weird to have different rules for different teams. But I think there is a lot of wisdom in tradition. I don’t want ND to give up playing Navy and USC so it can play Wake and Duke and Tech. No playoff is worth that to me.
Most championships are designed by a league. Not CFB. The playoff has to take the end of the season as it is—a season designed by individual conferences and teams. It’s a duct tape solution. If a better playoff means changing the regular season, count me out. Just my take.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but they would still have 2 or 3 non conference games so they could play Navy and USC.
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That is why I like the rule. It would make the season mean more because a team would have to reach their Conference championship to have an opportunity at anything additional. Notre Dame matters no more or less than the other top 25 to 50 programs in the Country. The only reason they are not in a conference in football like they are in the other sports is the TV money. Time for them to choose I say.
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The more I think an 8 team playoff with conference championships abolished, the more I like the idea. Ex. UGA playing OU in Athens this Saturday as one of 4 on campus games.
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Then why be in a conference? With this thought college football’s regular season is one step closer to the same level of relevance of college basketball’s regular season.
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Yep, all we need is four national divisions. We can set the schedule each off season based on records from the previous season. Play a 12 game season, then playoffs, including wildcards. It’ll be great! Just like the NFL!
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All of this was driven by the desire to make CFB a more “national” sport or to make it relevant in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco … see what that did for NASCAR.
I have a friend who is a big college football fan and just moved a year or so ago to San Francisco. He can’t believe how little the people out there care about it.
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I am very curious as to the attendance at this years National Title game in Santa Clara…who thought that was a good idea? Oh yeah, the bankers.
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The face on tickets this year is $775 I believe. It is going to be interesting to see if the seats are full given the lack of interest in CFB in NorCal.
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If Notre Dame makes it, it will be full.
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Either Clemson or Georgia is going to firebomb them in the semifinal.
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Agree, ND is gone, big time, I don’t care who they play.
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Dallas will be full, I’ll give you that.
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We don’t have enough seats for an UGA-OK game played in Athens.
Tickets would be $5000.00 each.
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think about an 8 team ….
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I think talk about ND having to join a conference to have a Championship game is ridiculous. And especially coming from Big Ten and SEC fans. Bama has twice failed to win their own division, skipped the championship game and wound up winning the whole thing. Two years ago, Ohio State did not play in the conference championship game and they also made it. Zero credibility.
I get the desire to have them in. I see both sides. But because of their natural tradition as an independent, they have historical rivalries with USC, Stanford, Michigan State and to some degree with Michigan. They also have a rivalry with Navy that they cannot give up. We moan all the time about the great rivalry games that have been lost, like A&M-Texas, Nebraska-OU and others. As Dawg fans we don’t want to see our games with Auburn and Florida messed with, but in some cases conferences have dictated the end to games like that. Don’t blame ND for wanting to preserve their regular season traditions. By the way, they also don’t play FCS teams.
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Very very well said.
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I just don’t get the ND hate this year. It isn’t their fault that Stanford, Va Tech, FSU, and USC are bad this year. Any other year playing Mich and the aforementioned teams is tougher than any schedule 90% of teams would play. While they don’t get that 13th game, they also didn’t get a bye in late November against Citadel/UMass.
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And I just don’t get the ND apologies.
If Auburn or Florida opted out of the SEC and were sitting in ND’s place would you feel like they should get in the playoffs while sitting at home getting healthy this weekend when everyone else was fighting a war?
Hell no, you wouldn’t. And the only thing different would be the name of the team.
I don’t G-A-S about tradition.
I don’t hate ND. In fact, after playing them last year, I think a lot of us even like them…. a little.
But they should have to play a game this weekend like everyone else.
They might even lose it…thus giving another team an EARNED opportunity
It’s basically getting a bye week before a huge game.
Maybe the solution is to name the four playoff teams the week before the conference championship games.
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Tell me who an independent Auburn and UF played that year and then I will perhaps be able to answer your question. Again, ND is a pretty good faith scheduler. They are fortunate this year that many traditional powers on their schedule stink. My guess is if you had a normal USC, Stan, Va Tech or FSU this year you would see them with at least 2 losses.
Honestly the school really getting away with it this year is Clemson. Their schedule is hot garbage, but hey they play this week against a hot garbage Pitt.
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I sort of feel you, but the point still stands that alabama (twice) and ohio state have been in the same boat of not even qualifying for their championship game. Yea there is the wear and tear, but I’m hard pressed to believe that there’s any sort of wear and tear advantage a 6 week rested team has over a 5 week rested team. Even if Tua totaled his knee this weekend, that bad luck doesn’t also mean Notre Dame’s QB would total his knee if they also played a game.
Really, the better metric is to count the number of Power 5 games on a team’s schedule.
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It’s simple. Under what I proposed they would not have qualified for the Playoff. It greatly increases the importance of the regular season.
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The bad? ND’s inclusion will likely cost UGA a berth if they lose to Bama.
The good? Whoever ND draws, they are highly likely to get their asses handed to them, again.
One of my favorite memories of that season? My 10 year old son asking me “Which one is Mante Teo” and me replying “That’s his foot sticking out from under Barrett Jones”
Over hyped media darlings. I hope UGA gets to play them in the first round.
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To hell with ND. They should never lose a game. They have their own major TV deal which gives them a tremendous advantage. Why would they join the ACC (or any conference) and give up that national TV head start
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I get it, UGA had basically 3 bye weeks this year. That’s rare I know, but it is what is is this year.
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Abolishing conference championship games is going to be a tough sell
1.It’s an economic windfall to the State of Ga. and esp. to Atlanta. To the SEC, to Television. (just speaking SEC here).
2. How would conference championships be determined?
3. Regardless of how it’s determined, there will still be a conference champion. So we’ll still have the same considerations..”Well, they didn’t win their conference” will still be a factor.
4. A good thing would be an expanded conference schedule (I would hope) and less cupcakes on the schedule.
Solution..require ND to play the top rated power five non-playoff bound team before they can get in. This would be great for everyone. For instance it would have them playing Florida this weekend.
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But would UF want that game?
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Yes. For the money, the prestige, recruiting, an opportunity to move up in the poles and for the jorts and peroxide set to clammier about how they they should have made the final four, and the opportunity to land in a big bowl game (not that they wouldn’t already be getting a very nice bowl if they were in that high …#3 in SEC….in the rankings). It’s easily doable.
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Keep it at 4. The playoff isn’t important enough to warrant all this angst and existential effort. It’s just not.
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Good summary of my thoughts, 92. If we win the SEC consistently and never win a “natty” (I hate that term), I would still be happy with that hardware.
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Still firmly believe that ceding the November cupcake week to a nationally rotating Conference vs. Conference seated challenge is the best compromise for not screwing up the regular season and the title games.
It would force ADs to have another P5 non-conference games, have a pretty damn easy scheduling mechanic and give every team in the conference an in-season surprise bonus game (in the sense that it would be set about 1 week prior). The data point wouldn’t be just an Alabama vs. Clemson but you would get all the metrics of how 1 conference stacks up to another 1-14. It opens up the argument of “yeah, but our 2-6 murdered every one of your 2-6 on challenge weekend.” It works as an eliminator (at the top) and truth revealer (in matchups 2-14) without unchecking any of the tradition boxes.
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