Yes please
Great idea and there are actual meetings to discuss this surprisingly. I thought Thamel might have been Mike Florioing a narrative out of thin air.
How is Pete coping with the fact that there was a little bit of college football played last fall? I hope his heart can take a return to further normalcy this fall.
12 is a lot, but I would take any increase over having only 4 teams
Post-season college football is almost unwatchable recently
16 is the most we could hope for.
I'm with you. 8 would be perfect in my mind. Champs from the major conferences, champ from the group of 5, and 2 at large bids.
This is still my preference. With conference championship games, you're basically in the playoffs if you win your division. That's something basically any program can sell to recruits. Of course the rich will still be rich but seems like now recruits feel there are really only a handful of programs to choose if you want a shot at the playoffs.
So with 12 teams, we can get 9 sec teams in the playoffs!!!
The number of blowouts in a four team playoff already kind of proved four is too many. We should either go back to #1 vs #2 or go back to the older way with claimed national championships.
Having more teams/more games increases the possibility of an upset. Yes, the raw number of blowouts will increase, but it's more likely we get a unique national title game this way than just having the same 4 teams compete every year
The BCS lasted 16 years. Of the 32 teams that played in the title game, 15 were unique. Of the 16 champions, there were 11 different ones. That sounds much better than now.
Longer playoffs make it harder for underdogs to have a shot, not easier as well because you have to beat more elite teams to win a title than before. I prefer the actual best team wins the title but I know some people love to push the underdog narrative.
That's only by looking at the BCS vs. a four team playoff system in a vacuum though. Back when the BCS existed, recruiting talent was more equitable in a sense because every high school prospect with their pick of the litter knew it would take a truly special season to make it to a championship game, and there were approximately a dozen programs or so that had the recruiting chops and roster talent to get them there.
The four team playoff, on the other hand, has created almost a caste system dynamic in college football because elite recruits understand there are about six programs today that effectively guarantee them an opportunity to play for a championship. Any program outside of those six represent a major gamble if you want to play in a playoff game, The big time programs who make the big time dollars, willing to cut the right deal with the NCAA, are put in better positions to play in the big time games, which is what attracts the big time talent. That's how the racket works.
The BCS model is not coming back. It's not what the greater viewership wants. An 8 or 12 team playoff breaks the cycle of the caste (for lack of better term) dynamic, once the most highly recruited athletes have confidence there are more avenues to the college football playoff outside of the half dozen or so programs that dominate in recruiting every single cycle.
I agree the BCS system made for more entertaining college football than what we have now with a 4 team playoff, but I think an 8 or 12 team system would arrive us back to the same place; where a special season is how you win a championship, not choosing which school you attend based on which has the best all star team.
Sometimes, less is more. There may be a number bigger than 4 that is better than 4 and less than 12.
When are these games supposed to be played so there is no overlap?
I also have my doubts that the NFL is going to agree to not play Saturday games which the play at least one weekend in December and in January for playoffs.
I believe the current structure leads to the inequities that are present in recruiting. Give more teams a chance and maybe the high school talent will realize that there are other avenues to reaching the ultimate college football goal. Maybe a 5 star from MI or Utah or North Carolina stays home instead of going to Alabama or OSU. The chances for exposure on the national stage might just lead to less of a “rich get richer” scenario which has been the norm for years now.
Agree with this take. "Making" the playoff will be a big deal, at least for a while. Schools will be able to pitch that to recruits regardless of the chances of winning it. They will see it as a chance. The big 3 or 4 will still get the best most likely, but offering that chance to recruits will do nothing but help UM in recruiting battles.
@Jibbroni
This is completely accurate. Current recruiting is essentially locking the top tier players to a very small set of schools. The NCAA has become very rich from upsets happening in the basketball tournaments and they will happen in football. This will dilute recruiting, somewhat.
+1 Jibbroni.
I've always thought this. Players go to the top 2 or 3 schools because they are guaranteed a shot at a playoff birth to showcase themselves. It will stay this way unless we go back to pre BCS or implement a large playoff expansion.
Bama, OSU and Clemson will strongly oppose any type of expansion.
maizenblue92 gets an upvote. As stated, there have been blowouts especially when #4 plays the #1 seed. I ask, would adding 4 to 8 more teams prove different?-No. Upset chances-yes but unlike the basketball model.
Adding 4 to 8 more teams in the playoffs will show the big gap between the Top 3 seeds and seeds 4-8 or even 9-12. Those games will prove to be meaningless. I understand the benefits to those team's programs per recruiting and stature. Although I am not in favor of that kind of expansion in the playoffs, I believe it will happen sooner than later. The TV networks will jump at the chance at airing these games.
The benefits to those teams in recruiting and stature would decrease that gap though, which is kinda the point. Recruits wouldn’t have to go to Bama, Clemson or OSU to have a shot at the playoffs. A Quinn Ewers would be more likely to stay at Texas and push for the playoffs instead of going to OSU to an essentially guaranteed Playoff because the path for a team like Texas is now much easier.
The variable both this post and maizenblue92 fail to miss is the impact a playoff expansion would have on the overall dynamic of college football recruiting.
The 4 team playoff model incentivizes the very best high school prospects to consolidate their talent amongst 5 or 6 programs to assure they get a chance to play in the CFP. That recruiting dynamic continues to perpetuate itself as it is demonstrated over and over and over again, Bama, OSU, Clemson. UGA, Okla. etc is where you have to go if you want to be sure you play in the playoff.
The blowouts we see now are a symptom of the behavior the current model incentivizes the best prospects to do: go to the perennial powerhouse program, beat the shit out of everyone on your schedule, play in the CFP and go to the NFL.
If you expand the playoff field, you create more avenues for players to feel confident they can reach the CFP in their college career without signing with one of the 5 or 6 aforementioned programs. Over time you distribute the most elite talent across more programs and create more competitive and entertaining football.
I think that just shows how consolidated the talent is at the tippy top right now. More teams adds recruiting momentum to more schools, and also introduces the likelihood of more upsets in there. Almost every other college sports I follow has 16+ teams including every level of football except FBS.
Four is what has allowed those top tier teams to separate from the pack. Now the top players all want to go to the same 4-5 schools because those same schools are always in the playoff. You expand it to 8 (ideally) or more and it expands that spectrum of “top tier” teams for top recruits to go to.
2 is too small because it’s impossible to narrow it down to just two teams based on the eye test/computer formula. In the 7 years of the CFP, only 3 years has featured a 1v2 title game. Meaning more often than not, the 3/4 team pulls the upset. Twice winning the title. This past season, 3 seed OSU beat 2 seed Clemson by three TDs.
4 allows teams to play it out but has led to a talent vacuum at the top, and 8+ allows for all P5 champs to be represented and allows for at-large bids/G5 Champs to be represented as well.
I always liked the idea of 8. Give every conference an auto bid, take two at larges based on some criteria and then take the highest ranked non-power five school. That way no conference is complaining and there is a cinderella in the mix.
Many conferences will have conference championship games. These championship games would effectively be play in games with the weird outcome that a play in game loser could still get in the final 8. So 8 with autobids is effectively more like 13 team playoff. I say eliminate conference championship games, top 2 from best 6 conferences get in a 16 team playoff. If the 7th best conference is above some criteria, its top 2 get in with 2 at large. Otherwise 4 at large. No conference gets more than 3 teams in.
If you want to preserve conference championship games, first round could be conferences top 2 playing with some other ad hoc games.
My ideal playoff still looks like this: Split FBS into FBS-A and FBS-AA. 8 conferences (4 in each). You can crossover up to twice between the divisions in the non-conference. Each conference plays 9 games. The conference championship is a de-facto Quarterfinal (held in your own region which is ideal for travel). The winner gets an automatic bid to the playoffs. FBS-A and AA have their playoffs and the bowls go on with crossovers welcomed. The AA championship is played the Friday before the CFP.
It makes it so simple. Win your conference, and you get to play for a national championship. This finally gives Group of 5 schools a chance at having a championship at the end of the season as well. No committees, no worried about OOC scheduling (this could allow for some real great matchups in the OOC).
Lastly, the NY6 needs to become the NY8 with bowls added to the East (probably Charlotte) and Midwest (probably Indy). That way there isn't constant geographic advantages to the Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC.
Well stated. If expansion in the playoffs does happen, I'd like to see it done by your proposal.
I want anything that doesn't reward teams not winning their conference or division getting rewarded for an at large. I hate the argument that they were upset in a fluke. BS. They had their shot and blew it.
This is everything to me. For being a paper juggernaut, you’re rewarded a mulligan game. It really devalues a major upset. With a playoff that will be loaded with two-loss teams and maybe even some with three who didn’t win their conference, this format will take the focus off the regular season and on to the playoff. At-large bids will ruin it.
But if it’s a champions-only tournament of six with five from the Power Five and one from the G5, or a ten-team conference champions, I’ll take either one and rejoice that the conference games are do-or-die, and that, with conference championships, it’ll truly be double the number the size of the tourney with division winners getting a de facto ticket to the first-round of the tourney. Any multi-loss teams will have at least earned their spot.
I loved the old Bowl system, but I'm a realist and know that we aren't ever going back to that. With that as an assumption, and given that any number of teams to include will be imperfect in any given year, I think 12 is a good number. Give the top 4 seeds byes and then perhaps home games in the first round. Instead of only 3 meaningful post season match ups, we would have what? 11, meaningful games and hopefully far fewer athlete opt-outs.
The Bowl system was fun. Using the polls to determine #1 was not.
How often did the polls get it wrong?
Some would argue most years.
Look at Michigan and Nebraska in 97. Both contend that they are the rightful national champions from that year because the polls were split. If I remember right, the polls were split most years.
As recently as 1997 they got it half wrong.
Realistically, the polls had contested champions anywhere from 1-3 times a decade. Besides the Michigan-Nebraska controversy after the 1997 season, there was also Penn State-Nebraska in 1994 and Colorado-Georgia Tech in 1990.
In the eighties, I think you could make a pretty good case that Washington and probably a few other teams were better than BYU in 1984.
In the seventies, you had USC-Alabama in 1978 and Texas-Nebraska in 1970.
At the same time, the polls tended to lock teams into a ranking until they lost. If you were ranked below them, you almost always had to beat them in order to get to the top ranking. This was a problem for the Big Ten and the Pac Ten in many years, since they were locked into playing each other in the Rose Bowl, and a big advantage for the independents (Miami, Penn State and Florida State until they joined conferences and Notre Dame).
Your entire line of thinking shows why the polls sucked.
Why would you EVER think that voting of a champion would "Get it right" over actually playing the games?
Can you imagine any pro sport just voting for a champion instead of having playoffs? They would lose all fan interest overnight. College football survived in spite of this stupidity, not because of it.
I don't think the bowl system necessarily even has to go away. I doubt any teams playing in the Blue Bonnet or Liberty Bowl had any illusions they were not playing for a national championship, but it still made for some entertaining football to watch.
In fact, the bowl system sets up the infrastructure required to host the 12 playoff teams interspersed between the non-championship bowl games which could work fine.
I'd also hate to see the bowl games go away too, but by no means does an expanded playoff suggest that they should or have to.
More playoff games. Less meaningless bowl games.
Anything that busts up the hegemony that is the current 4 team playoff I'm in favor of. The four teams seemingly always are:
Alabama
Clemson
Ohio State
Notre Dame/Oklahoma/random SEC team that bitched the most about how unfair it was that they only lost to Alabama (if in SEC East) or Alabama and some other super-awesome SEC team (if in SEC West) especially since they absolutely CRUSHED Southwest Mississippi Tech the week before.
This will help recruiting a lot for teams not listed above. Coaches will be able to legitimately claim they have a shot at making the finals unlike today where they cant.
Keep 4 teams and make it only conference champs instead of all at large. Or even 6, but keep the regular season meaning something and even more important, the conference championships means something. Anything but more at larges that didn't win their way in.
Yes, please - more is better. The FCS can have a 16 team playoff, so there's no reason FBS can't do the same. This will help spread recruiting quite a bit, too. Hopefully the days of Bama/Clemson/OSU/ND/OU dominating everything will be over soon.
Let's just be like the NHL and put 90% of the teams in a playoff and make the regular season largely meaningless (aside from extracting money from fans).
Right, because a beauty contest where teams get voted into the playoffs by a random committee is such a great idea?
The point of the playoffs is to get any team that MIGHT be the best team in the country into a tournament and then let the teams battle it out on the field. 12 teams probably does that. 16 teams does it and doesn't give out byes.
Byes suck because it increases the power of the committee and reduces the effect of the result on the field. Everyone should play every week of the playoffs.
ND being included as part of the "dominating everything" category? They've been to two (out of seven) play-offs. Certainly commendable but hardly dominating.
Edit: Note, I replied to 1VABlue's comment but my reply was attached to this chain.
Edit: Website did it to me again, so it is clear that 1VaBlue has an impressive cloaking device on his post.
That'll teach you to disagree with my posts!
Yeah, ND in the 'dominating everything' category is a bit overstated, but they can legitimately state that they've been in the playoffs - something exceedingly few teams can do.
"Hopefully the days of Bama/Clemson/OSU/ND/OU dominating everything will be over soon."
To be fair, I think its only Bama, Clemson, and OSU who are dominating everything. Oklahoma and ND are getting in because someone has to take that other seed, and I've got to say the variance between those two teams and the other three is on full display once the semifinals start.
Minus the 2018 Rose Bowl (which was a fantastic game, but it was against Georgia), Oklahoma has been blown out of every semi-final they've ever played. ND lost fairly big to Alabama in the semis this past season and then got destroyed by Clemson in the semis two years before that.
I credit OU and ND for getting there, for sure. But to imply they are dominating on the same level as OSU, Clemson and Alabama is inaccurate. Michigan would've gotten to the playoffs by now at least once if it had ND's schedule.
"To be fair, I think its only Bama, Clemson, and OSU who are dominating everything. Oklahoma and ND are getting in because someone has to take that other seed, and I've got to say the variance between those two teams and the other three is on full display once the semifinals start."
Agree...
FCS does a 24 team playoff. They switched to 24 teams in 2013.
FBS is the outlier in the football world. It's the only version of football that has such a small playoff. Getting the playoff to 12 would be a huge improvement. Even 8 is much better. What we have now can barely be called a playoff. I don't know of any other sport where teams start a playoff in the semi-finals.
12 is dumb--just move to 16.
That being said, 12 is 10000000000000000000000% better than the idiocy we have now, which in turn is significantly better than the idiocy we had before.
So, at least things keep getting better. I guess.
The current system had the unintended consequence of devaluing the non-playoff bowls. Expanding it further will likely start to devalue the regular season, which is some of the magic of college football.
The Power Five will demand that conference champs get in any expanded playoff.
My fear with with that is that you will then have teams with their divisions locked up who will start benching their starters at the end of the season. Which happens to be when most of the rivalry games take place.
I honestly had no problem with the BCS.
C'mon man. The BCS was garbage. It was just lipstick on the poll voting system.