Andy Staples: Other Potential Playoff Implications
Questions/thoughts from a recent Athletic article:
What happens to divisions? They could cause conferences a potential bid if the "wrong" team wins a conference championship game. Are they even worthwhile anymore? Does a conference title game payoff mean more than getting a second team into the playoff? SEC is proposing a 3-rival format, where you play 3 rivals every year and cycle through everyone else. SO every SEC player over 4 years would play at every SEC stadium, instead of having a Wake Forest-UNC situation of scheduling each other as a NC game or playing a team once very 7 years, or having to play Wisconsin for what seems like 15 straight seasons while OSU plays Illinois & Nebraska.
Coaching effects: Would that essentially make good G5 school jobs like Boise in 2005, or UCF/Cincinnati now a more attractive option than a lower tier P5 gig? Obviously the pay is different, but with playoff money, that gap could be shrunk a little bit.
Realignment in the Big12, less likely to happen now because it would mean sharing the playoff pie with more schools.
What are your thoughts and how much if any of this will affect the Big 10?
I miss playing Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Purdue and Northwestern consistently. Protect OSU and MSU and rotate through everyone else. If we need a third rival I would prefer the gophers. I won't be broken up if we skip PSU here and there.
This. Playing Rutgers and MD every year is meh.
Definitely. I know a lot of other writers have advocated for pods. OSU, MSU, and Minnesota would be great. How are conference champions determined with pods though? Top 2 records in the conference like big 12?
not playing for the Little Brown Jug every year is a dong-punch. Not drinking at the Brown Jug every year is also a dong punch.
We have played Purdue 3x in ten years (2011, 12, &17) and haven’t played in Ann Arbor since 2011. We remember the 6 year Wisconsin hiatus (now we have played them 7 years straight). Divisions are stupid. Protect a couple games and round Robin the rest. No fun playing Rutgers every year and going to Lincoln once a decade.
It’s gotten to the point where we will play Western twice since last playing Purdue
No bigger group of sycophant idiots than PSU fans.
Won't miss them at all.
Honestly if they go to a 12 team playoff I think the only way to make those extra games work is to dump the conference championships, but I doubt that'll happen because...money.
I can see removing conference championships games as an issue not related to money as well.
In the case of larger conferences where teams don't play a round robin schedule, fans/coaches/admins, will be absolutely pissed when two teams who didn't play each other resort to non-head-to-head tiebreakers to determine automatic playoff bids.
Then lets jettison two teams. I nominate Rutgers and Nebraska.
And Maryland and Penn St. there back to Big 10
Divisions and conference championship games are contrived, nonsensical, chaos producing silliness. Divide the Power Five schools into six conferences, or 7 if enough group of five schools want to move up to make 7 ten school conferences. If you want to play for an NC you sign up to a P5 conference. Play an 11 game regular season schedule. All schools play every other school in their conference-and only one non-P5 school. The NC tournament is a 16 team affair. Something like that.
That is a great name. I feel like that could be the name of a new CBS sitcom with a wacky premise.
I wish we could get down to 10-12 teams in a conference and be able to play a true round robin schedule. Not a fan of seeing Rutgers every year and not seeing Iowa every year.
with 12 teams it seems like you'd end up with the conference champ and "next best team" being strongly ranked and still likely for consideration to a slot. And while the "wrong" team wins the game - they STILL won the game and earned their shot while the "right" team just lost at the wrong time.
The "wrong" team is the Minnesota or NW randomly beating OSU in a conference title game. NW might not get ranked one of the top 4 conference champs unlike OSU for example, and ending up #5 or 6 could prevent the BIG from getting 3 teams in, instead of 2 for example.
Also the team that is less likely to win it all and the team that will get fewer eyeballs. Picture NW getting in as a 5 seed, and hosting Texas A&M or Georgia and getting smoked.
Imagine being a 12-0 Wisconsin who misses out on hosting a CFP game and/or receiving a bye because a 12-0 OSU team that you didn't play gets the nod over you due to some arbitrary tiebreaker.
but in that scenario they would play in a CCG right?
No, this is assuming CCGs are removed to prevent the "wrong" team making the CFP.
Gotcha, I mean in a scenario where Penn State & Michigan are both 10-2, OSU is 12-1 and the West winner is 8-4. A fluke win in a title game by the West winner would be chaos. But in a division-less world the 2 best teams would play and wouldn't necessarily push a potential 3rd team out..by having to accommodate a less interesting, less successful team. Or an 8-4 Auburn team getting in and then forcing the committee to only take 2 of Bama, LSU & Georgia which would cause the south to rise again.
Another scenario that could be just as bad…If you keep the conference championship game, but eliminate divisions, you could easily have 3 or even 4 one-loss teams who all beat each other. Who plays in the title game. Let’s say OSU, Wisconsin, and Michigan all finish with one loss. We beat osu in a close game at home, but lose to Wisconsin and OSU beats Wisconsin. Do you take the two highest ranked teams? If so, it might be better to be 3rd because you’ll probably still make the 12 team playoff, but if you lose the Championship game, you’re probably eliminated from the playoffs as well.
Sounds ridiculous, but something like this is almost guaranteed to happen eventually.
Indeed this has already happened: in 2008 Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech ended the season in just such a three way one loss round robin. Oklahoma was chosen the winner by virtue of having the highest BCS rank. That was within what was then the Big12 South Division rather than the conference as a whole, but as all three had better records than any North division team, the problem would have been the same if there had been no divisions.
Closer to home, in 2016 we were two points at Kinnick away from the same thing happening with Michigan, OSU, and PSU in the B1G East. (Sorry for the reminder.)
In both those examples the tiebreak winner did go on to win the conference championship, so maybe not the full doomsday scenario you outlined. But particularly for the Big12, a stronger team from the South being upset in the championship game had happened in 2001and 2003, and Ndamukong Suh almost made it happen again in 2009. So yeah, in college football, total chaos is never far away.
Obviously, whichever format allows OSU to skip Wisconsin and Penn State as much as possible is the best one.
This just in, Gobgoblue to replace Kevin Warren as Big Ten commissioner effective immediately.
PODS! YOUR TIME HAS COME!
Seriously divisions have always been stupid, and the only league that ever made them work is the SEC. Every other league has had one good side and the other comically inept, leading to bad conference title games that are either blowouts or ruinous upsets that screw the league itself. Most of the Big 12's history in particular is the championship contender getting upset in a Big 12 title game by a team with 3-4 losses that ruins any chances for the league.
Do what you gotta do to make sure the Big 10 title game is two playoff contenders.
Agree. There are a lot of ways you could do the details, but I think the basic idea of an 8 game, prescheduled regular season with a crossover game at the end is the way to go if you use the crossover week to put 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 in conference semifinals. I think you'd almost guarantee both teams in the conference title game make the playoff if you did it this way.
SEC had that issue too though. The East was really good for the first 10 years and the West has been dominant for the last 10 years. It's really only lately evening out.
With the exception of a couple of seasons sprinkled throughout the last 30 years, there's almost always been at least one team in the west and one team in the east worth talking about. The SEC's also been lucky that the brief periods when there has been unbalance, the stronger team with a chance to win big things took care of business.
In contrast, there was literally never more than one season tops where the Big 12 North and Big 12 South were remotely equal. The Pac 12 North and South have never been remotely equal in their short history. The ACC was kind of balanced for the first few seasons of divisions but that was because the entire league stunk equally. The Big 10 has always had lopsided divisions.
Divisions are not worthwhile anymore because they have never been worthwhile.
Dump Michigan State, Penn State, Nebraska, Rutgers, and Maryland.
Add back the University of Chicago.
Do a round robin. Get off my lawn.
One likely effect is better non-conference matchups. If you are guaranteed to get in if you win the conference, you can lose your non-conference games and still get in.
Or you schedule cupcakes and focus on winning your conference because SOS is less important.
I don't think big non conference games distract teams from winning their conferences.
The sec was king of protecting schedules. It was no mistake that when the sec went to 14 team 2 league divisions they protected one cross over rivalry and then played only one other cross division game and stuck to an 8 game conference schedule. Alabama played Missouri, Vandy and UK twice each and rotated florida, georgia and south carolina once in a ten year period before they had to cycle back with florida and georgia, usc again. Tennessee was their locked in game and they have sucked forever now.
The "wrong team"?
How is it different than it currently is?
One loss can determine the division champion. That can prevent a very good team from winning a championship or going to the current playoffs.
2018 Michigan was undefeated in conference, going into the game with OSU. They had one out of conference loss, to eventual playoff team Notre Dame. They blew out almost everyone they played, including Penn State (who ended the season ranked #12). They went into the game with both Defensive Ends/NFL draft picks (Chase Winovich and Rashan Gary) being hurt. Both of those players tried to play, but left the game. They also had the starting right tackle (Juwan Bushell-Beatty), the best defensive player on the team/starting MLB/NFL draft pick (Devin Bush), the best Cornerback/NFL draft pick (David Long), the starting Tight End/NFL draft pick (Zach Gentry), senior wide receiver (Grant Perry), and the starting QB (Shea Patterson) all leave the game due to injury. Not to mention, the back up QB (Dylan McCaffery) was out for the season. They lost their ONLY conference game, that day (to another playoff team, OSU).
They didn't get a chance for any kind of championship, even though they tied OSU for the best record in the entire conference.
Instead, 4 loss Northwestern (whom Michigan actually beat that year) got to play for the BIG Championship.
Michigan's ONE loss screwed them over.
I say that to say....if Northwestern would have beaten OSU, then they would have given OSU a loss, and would have won the championship. Why would they have been the "wrong team"? They would have earned it, by one win. No different than OSU did, by beating (an extremely short handed) Michigan.
*By the way....(side note): Michigan's only other loss was to another team that finished in the top 10, and Michigan didn't play with the guys I mentioned above (except Patterson) + their 1,000 yard running back (Karen Higdon).
The last two losses were to a playoff team and a top 10 team, while playing without the majority of their starters. Beating top 10 teams is hard enough, but it's damn near impossible to do it without most of your starting lineup (most of whom were NFL draft picks). That's why I keep saying 2018 was Harbaugh’s best team. They just got really unlucky with injuries, for the OSU game and the bowl game.*
It's "wrong" in the national eyes or the conference's eyes if the goal is to get the conference a national championship. Not wrong as in they didn't deserve it. As right as it may seem, NW winning and getting dog-walked by Bama like an FCS school on a national stage would be really bad for perceptions. (which do matter). I'm sure the Big Ten would prefer to have a national name bringing in more eyeballs too.
Things will change, generally for the worse but occasionally for the better. Michigan fans will complain regardless, as the football program continues to fall short of fans' expectations.
Thank you, wise clairvoyant prognosticator. Your eastern bloc commentary is always appreciated.
now don’t hack my account.
Even with 12 teams I doubt Michigan can make it in.
Nothing. Yes. Yes. Yes. No effect on B1G because OSU will always get in and once every 10-20 years, another B1G team will get an at large.
It really doesn't matter because our protected game is against the best team in the conference.
So unless we can also add Rutgers as our 2nd rival/protected game, to balance things out with everyone else, I'm indifferent.
We obviously know that's not happening and if we have 2, it's going to be OSU and MSU...3, add Minnesota.
Point is, we're always going to be at a disadvantage.
Been saying this a while, but get rid of divisions in all the P5 and let the two best teams play in the conference championship. If you are going to go to a playoff and try to award the best team, which we already are, we are knowingly sacrificing some of the traditions of CFB in favor of awarding the best team and/or to generate more money. The only way to do that correctly is to get rid of guaranteed rivalry games and divisions and either play rotating schedules or get rid of out of conference play and play everyone in your conference every year. That's it. You simply can't put OSU and UM in the same division nor force UM to play OSU every year as a protected rivalry. The only way to keep The Game the last game of the year every year (which I also think they should get rid of) is to make everyone else in the B1G play OSU every year too.
Go a step further and get rid of conference championships altogether.
Play your conference rivals once and then move on. If two teams share the title, great. Don’t waste a valuable weekend in early December playing a rematch in a sterile NFL stadium.
Divisions were a bad idea from day one. Some how accidentally the Big12 has done it right. Mega conferences were a bad idea as well.
Winners of the 6 top conferences should get in. There should be 2 other play in games that feature 4 at large teams not in a top 6 conference championship game. With at most 1 at large from any single conference. This if effectively a 16 team playoff with the conference championship games and 2 wild card play in games as the first round.
As far as coaching job attractiveness, I think high end G5 jobs like UCF or Houston or Boise already more attractive than low end P5 jobs, and those schools having playoff access is only going to increase the gap between jobs like UCF and jobs like, say, Wake Forest.
The only thing places like Purdue/Wake Forest/Kansas State/Wazzu/Vanderbilt have is more TV money to use in a hiring, but as we've seen, alumni at these top G5 jobs are stepping up to close that pay gap because it's easier to get rich people to write checks if you win 11 games every year. And if the AAC is consistently getting a team in the playoff every year, it won't be long before their TV deal goes up and closes that gap a bit too.
Get rid of the divisions, drop back to 8 conference games, drop the conference championship game. Highest rated team in the playoff standings would get a bye unless the Big Ten was not in the top 4.
Scheduling would be 3 permanent opponents and 5 teams you play home and home. The next 2 years you play the other 5 teams home and home. That way every school gets a home and away game for every other school in the conference at least once every 4 years.
Here is an example of permanent opponents (hopefully didn't screw up).
Ha, i was just about to post such a matrix only to see that you came up with the exact same one. Apparently there is some consensus already on the best solution!
I miss the Rose Bowl.. last visit 2007
That sucks.
I’ve mentioned it before here but I fear that the playoff expansion will devalue the regular season to a point that we’ll start to see teams sitting players at the end of the season, which will affect rivalry games.
If UGA has the SEC East wrapped up then what’s the point of playing their starters versus GA Tech? Same with Florida-FSU. Same with Michigan-Ohio State.
Maybe the end result will be a net gain for everyone but I suspect at some point in the future we’ll be discussing the impact of the expanded playoffs moving rivalry games to earlier in the season
Lose that game, win your ccg: could cost you home field advantage.
Lose that game, lose the ccg: might cost you a spot in the playoff