4 Team Playoff Likely on the Way

Submitted by ChiBlueBoy on

SIAP, but I don't see any prior postings on this

Bottom line: looks like the +1 folks will get to have a word, but the 4-team approach will win out. SEC basically got its way.

Slive has won on a playoff. He likely will win on his preferred criteria for entry into the playoff. He will win on having the title game played outside the bowl structure, bid out to a neutral-site city. He already won on semifinals sites, having led the successful opposition to playing those games on campuses. Instead, according to reports, they will rotate among existing bowls.

So there's a conference championship, then a bowl, then a neutral-site final and lots of travel for the fans. When bowl games start being half-empty, there may be a push for a change re: location, but playoffs are likely to be here for a while.

WolvinLA2

June 21st, 2012 at 2:49 PM ^

Outside of the neutral site semifinals, this makes the most sense. Even for a lot of SEC fans, this could be tough. Let's say LSU is one of the four top teams. They could very likely play the SEC champ game in Atlanta, semi final in Tempe or Pasadena, and final in Miami or something like that (really any city that's not NO or Houston). You could sub in any SEC West team and it's the same. That's a ton of travel. The Pac-12 is on to something with their champ game at the top team's home stadium. Chances are any team who would come out of that league would only have to travel twice (which is good, since they'd likely have to travel pretty far.

WolvinLA2

June 21st, 2012 at 7:08 PM ^

Exactly.  Only one of the four bowls are really in SEC country, since the Orange Bowl is pretty far from most of the SEC teams outside of UF.  So even an SEC team that qualifies has 75% chance of having to travel anywhere from a decent distance to a very long distance for its semifinal game. 

If Michigan has a semifinal game against an SEC team in Pasadena or even Tempe, we'd have a pretty sizeable advantage. 

WolvinLA2

June 21st, 2012 at 7:17 PM ^

Taking this a step further, Slive's insistance against home-field semifinals may come back to bite him. 

Let's say a team like LSU or Alabama are undefeated going into the SEC championship game, or are in some scenario where they are either really confident they'll win the game, or confident they'll be in the top-4 either way.  Those fans are probably going to save their money and stay home for the SEC champ game, knowing they'll need to travel for the semifinal game, and for the final if they make it.  That could have a major impact on SEC champ game attendance in a lot of years. 

It will have the same effect on the Big 10 champ game, but we already knew that.  I think the Big 10 should switch to the Pac-12 model where the game is hosted on campus of one of the teams competing. 

smwilliams

June 21st, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^

Late last night, I recently emerged after being trapped for nearly two weeks in a sub-terrean dungeon. While rock climbing in the Ozarks, I slipped and fell into that dank, earthen basement, after noticing a curvy siren on the cliff opposite me. After subsisting on a diet consisting of grubs and rain water and battling the effects of hypothermia and paranoid hallucinations brought on by a lack of sleep (with the bobcats and all), I finally managed to escape my prison thanks to some passing Dutch tourists.

Now, I awaken to find some kind of playoff for college football being implemeted.

blacknblue

June 21st, 2012 at 3:08 PM ^

This system is still stupid and unfair and hopefully will evolve to an actual 8 team playoff played in late December and outside of the bowl games within a couple years.

ChiBlueBoy

June 21st, 2012 at 4:02 PM ^

I looked. The meeting was today. There are no posts today on it. The 4-team playoff isn't new, but the done-dealness of it is. If it's been discussed, I'm sorry, but I see nothing referencing today's meeting, folks. Brian also seems to have found it noteworthy as of today. Sheesh.