Playoffs and Conference Title Games

cyclejacket said:
It certainly slowed down Bama's accumulation of national titles. I think they've only had 5 in the last 10 years rather than the 12 they "earned" in the previous 80.
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That’s because they have been the best. They set a pretty high bar!
 
cyclejacket said:
It certainly slowed down Bama's accumulation of national titles. I think they've only had 5 in the last 10 years rather than the 12 they "earned" in the previous 80.
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These are Bama's rankings at the end of each year of the CFP, before and after the CFP is played:
2014: #1 – #4
2015: #2 – #1
2016: #1 – #2
2017: #4 – #1
So, oddly enough, without the CFP, they would have just as many NC as with it.
 
GT65_UGA89 said:
I would be on board with scrapping the conference championship games in favor of an eight-team playoff.

It would take a major shake-up in tradition to scrap the old and move forward with the new -which is probably where college football needs to go. Being that I am an individual steeped in tradition, this is not an easy thing for me to accept -but I can see the benefits. Someone earlier, in another thread, put together a listing of four super-FBS conferences -ee8384 above mentions going to eight. Either way, the foundations of traditions, conference affiliations, rivalries, would in some cases be shaken to the core. Look to the NHL for an example.

Look at the progression of the ACC since Tech has been a member -from Tobacco Road and the 4 dwarfs to being scattered from Miami to Boston. I was not a fan of the ACC expansion, or at least some of the teams that were invited to join, so I would have no problem blowing up the conference and starting anew. I can see the same mindset with fans of the Big 12's 14 teams. However, fans of the SEC and Big Ten's 12 teams would probably have a big problem with this approach.

The only problem with expanding the playoffs to eight is teams nine and ten will feel they got the shaft, so "we need to expand to 12 with the top four teams getting a bye," would be the next cry. This is how it has gone in college basketball over the past several years with the stupid play-in game and crap like that. In terms of college basketball, I have always been of the mindset that every team IS in the tournament, with the conference tournaments serving as the first few rounds.

With four, or eight, power conferences you could simply take the conference winner and let then duke it out in a four/eight team playoff. If the move is to four conferences then do you limit the playoffs to conference champions or do you include four wild cards? Be careful if you do because wild card teams #5 and #6 will feel left out.

It's all conjecture at this point because of so many obstacles beneath the surface, money being the #1 obstacle with TV contracts, revenue sharing, bowl tie-ins, etc, not to mention the basketball aspect of doing something like this. But it is intriguing to discuss it.
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Why do you have to eliminate the conference championships if go to 8?
 
txsting said:
Or you could go even bigger and get rid of the cross-divisional game problem. What if you have conferences of 20 teams, 10 in either division, giving you a nice 9-team round robin on each division. It's big enough to accomodate most of the natural rivalries. For example, what is currently the Big 12 could have one side that looks like the old Southwest conference, and the other side like the old big 8. You could see how it would work in the ACC and across the rest of the country without much squinting.

Whether you have 5 or 6 such conferences, there are more seats at the table, and it's easier to figure out a playoff.
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Do this but 18 team conferences with 2 divisions, cross division games don't count in conference standings. Essentially you have paired 9 team conferences in a Championship game. It creates an 8 game round robin. 4 OOC games is important to mix things up, although it should be mandatory to schedule 2 P5 teams or something like that.

There are clear winners for the 5 or 6 conferences with autobids to 8 team playoff, 2 to 3 at larges.
 
My conference and college football champion proposal is this...

Imagine a 9 team conference making up teams from the Mid- to Southern Atlantic coast.

Imagine a 10 team mid western conference. It’s really big, btw.

Imagine a 8 team dust bowl state conference. It, too, is big.

Imagine a southwestern conference made of Texas schools and Arkansas for shits and gigs.

Finally, imagine a 10 team pacific conference.

Bowl alliances are drawn. Fee fees are always hurt. No one has closure. We just argue about who really is champion because that’s what men do. We don’t care about fee fees and we love confrontation.
 
The idea is crap and is predicated on the fact that this year the conference champions would have been clearer based on record. All these arguments are stupid because they assume that everything is going to stay static and that there isn't any ebb and flow in college football.

I'm in favor of 6 with the five P5 conference champions and one G5. Only two teams have to play an extra game.

The idea that we need to scrap conference championships to avoid extending the season is dumb. You're extending the season for two teams out of 129... because they're playing for a national championship. Big deal. Just the factories trying to protect themselves from tripping up.
 
GT65_UGA89 said:
The only problem with expanding the playoffs to eight is teams nine and ten will feel they got the shaft, so "we need to expand to 12 with the top four teams getting a bye," would be the next cry
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I disagree with this because an 8-team playoff solves almost every problem with the 4-team playoff. The *major* flaw with the current format is it excludes a lot of P5 conference champs while also not even considering a G5 team. An 8-team playoff settles this flaw and all are happy. It scraps conference championship games, which I dont think anyone will cry about except for league commissioners (revenue loss). In the occasional occurrence of conference co-champs that didnt settle it directly on the field, then we go with the higher rated champ (playoff rankings). This format would also take the highest rated G5 team. That's 6 auto-bids + 2 at larges which would be the two highest rated non-conference champs (UGA + ? this year). The first round is played on campus the week where championship games were to play. The losers are then eligible for the bowl selections, with the winners moving on to the current CFP formatted bowls. One more benefit of this format is it will encourage teams to schedule strong OOC opponents to improve their ranking without the penalty of costing them a chance at their league championship and auto-bid.

There is no further need to expand beyond this.
 
Buzz_PhD said:
How so?

It is superior to any of the other previously implemented MNC processes, IMO.
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It is superior in mimicking the NFL. It lessens the chances of a streaking non-factory team to win it all, and gives more opportunity for the factory teams to stumble and still win.

Maybe it will be more interesting when Saban leaves, but the playoff wouldn't have prevented that awful LSU/Bama MNC game.
 
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