OT: What if the Group of 5 had its own CFB Playoff?

Sure, I'd "watch" in the same way I "watch" a lot of bowl games during December, which is: "Hey, look, there's a bowl game on at 4 PM today. That sounds like an excuse to sit on the couch and drink until my liver hurts and eat pizza and ignore work and other responsibilities!" 

But don't you think teams like Houston and Western who did well in the regular season would want to play power 5 teams to prove that they can compete on that level?

You, and 50 other people would watch, If there was nothing else on TV. Those teams would rather compete against the big boys, where the money is greater and they would have nothing to lose. 

Do you think birds would be afraid of them?

In addition, I think we will see that happen pretty soon. The NCAA does not control the bowl or playoff championships like they do in BBall.

It would be more exciting than at least 2/3 of the bowl games so I would definitely watch at least part of it. Basically an NIT for football

G5 schools don't really belong in the playoffs with the P5 schools.  Beating up on other G5 teams and scoring an upset or two over P5 teams shouldn't be enough to get a G5 team in.

WMU was undefeated this year.  How would they do in a game against US, Alabama, or OSU?

Step 1: Have group of five playoff

Step 2: Expand CFB to Eight Teams, garuntee G5 Champion a spot and power 5 Conference Champs, two "wild cards"

Step 3: Profit

If a team like Houston ends up going undefeated and makes the top 4 in the CFP Playoff, then they go and you can take the next best team in the Power 5 to be the 1 seed.

That would be really fun. Instead of them competing against Power 5 schools experiencing down years, they can test themselves against Group 5 schools experiencing unprecedented success. Those would be some great battles.

Eastern Michigan, New Mexico State, Louisiana-Monroe, et cetera ........... The NCAA sets out certain requirements to be an FBS school, and all those schools meet them.

Given that, why should anyone in FBS be considered a "2nd rate citizen"? ----- segregated, as it is, to their own playoff.  It smells of "B1G and SEC schools at the front of the bus, MAC and Sun Belt schools at the back of the bus."

The real answer to this is for either (1) the NCAA to actually enforce the requirements to be an FBS school (e.g., EMU doesn't get to meet attendance requirements by having Pepsi help them out), or (2) we actually break FBS off into 2 divisions.

Until that happens, I think the CFP should be equal access for all 128 FBS teams - just as the NCAA hoops tournament is for all 350-ish D-1 teams.  Win your conference and you are guaranteed a spot.  Then fill in with at-large spots.  For college football, that would essentially be a 16-team playoff.

Take the crappy bowl games and have them host the playoff.  Semifinal 1:  Pizza Bowl (or whatever they call it these days), Semifinal 2:  Heart of Dallas, Finals:  Independence Bowl.  I would watch, however.

I think a G5 playoff would be viewed similarly to the other postseason college basketball tournaments (NIT, CBIT, etc). In other words, there wouldn't be much interest. Now I understand there are a lot of bowl games that no one cares about, but is that really a good argument for a G5 playoff? 

If anything, adding a G5 playoff widens the gap between P5 and G5. The current bowl model allows G5 teams the opportunity to compete against good P5 teams. My guess is Western Michigan would prefer the opportunity to upset Wisconsin and be Cotton Bowl champs instead playing two other G5 teams to win a G5 championship. 

Would be cool if for no other reason than its more football, but I'd personally rather have an 8 team CFP field, with potentially an at-large bid reserved for the best Group of 5 team out there if they meet certain qualifications, like being in the top 10 and scheduling/beating tough opponents like Boise used to do. 

I'd want to see a Boise or a Houston get the chance one day to truly play for it all. Having a Group of 5 only-playoff feels too much like a "Separate But Equal" system. You get to have your own playoff so you can say you were there, but you know you haven't truly been given a seat at the table. Even if you win that national championship, everyone knows you aren't the real national champion. 

Just call it what it is: a playoff for perceived "lesser" teams. Scrap the idea and give a G5 team a shot that has truly proven itself worthy. 

Not only would nobody watch it, G5 schools don't want their own playoff.  They already feel like the CFP has put more distance between the P5 and G5 as it is and they don't like that.  Doing this would essentially make them a  separate division which, again, they don't want.  

Here's what I wrote, so I'll contribute it to this discussion. Perhaps the G5 have their own division and 16-team playoff. The shitty bowls are mostly G5's vs G5's so why not make the games mean something. I also add in the implications for paying Fleck a big salary in either scenario. 

"It would be interesting if the Group of Five re-aligned themselves with the NCAA and left the CFP and NY6 to the Power 5. The P5 would basically just be the NFL minor leagues at that point, but whatever. 

The Group of Five could be another "division" (they could use the old "1A" tag from back before 1A and 1AA were renamed FBS and FCS). They could have their own 8 or 16 team playoff instead of sending teams and fans off to Boise or Mobile or Boca Raton for a shitty bowl. 

The Group of Five championship could be played alongside the same schedule as the NY6 bowls, either as one of the New Years Day bowls or on NYE. Or, the Saturday before the CFP championship game. It would be played in a rotating southern location like the CFP, using Tampa or Orlando or San Antonio, etc..

In this scenario, there were a lot of successful P5 teams that are going to match up against each other in crappy bowls anyway so why not have them play each other on the higher-seeded team's campus and have it actually mean something. WMU as the 1 seed along with Houston, WKU, Temple, Navy, USF, Memphis, San Diego State, Tulsa, Toledo, App State, Louisiana Tech, UCF, Wyoming, Boise State and Troy. Playoff istead of shit bowls.

This is where the Fleck $3 mil salary is unteneble. It's too much to justify coaching a program that will never have a shot at a national championship and probably will rarely if ever make NY6 bowl again. But is it also too much to pay a coach who could conceivably win multiple "NCAA division 1A championships"? Probably too much for that, too, as cool as that would be. So I don't know what WMU private donors would be going for here: Perennial bragging rights in the MAC plus an NY6 bowl every decade? "

We should get Larry Culpepper right on this...

You might watch, but do you think the players would want to go through this?

I think they'd rather just have one bowl destination.