Posted on 11/26/2017 5:17:52 AM PST by C19fan
Did you really think figuring out the 2017 College Football Playoff field was going to be straightforward? Thanks to No. 1 Alabama losing to No. 6 Auburn on Saturday and No. 2 Miami’s upset loss at Pitt on Friday, there’s still a lot to play for during championship week. Will the Crimson Tide make it in to the playoff despite not winning its own division in the SEC? Will Wisconsin move to 13-0 with a win over Ohio State? Will the Big 12 have a team make the playoff for the second time in four years?
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That won’t be a good thing though. Some years you’ll play a garbage team like Georgia a couple years ago and the next year you’ll get this year’s Georgia.
Ohio state and OU did it right. They chose tough teams in each other. Both gain from that.
It might not always work out. But I think if you seed the teams going into next season, and say put the top 32 in a hopper and randomly draw teams, in most cases, you should get pretty good matchups. Beats having games against Podunk State.
bray wrote: “If you make an 8 team tourney, every D1 team in America would have a chance at the start of the season. Every Conference game would matter.”
Not really. It’s a myth to think that all D1 teams have a chance to win a national championship. There are fewer than 20 teams in any given season with such a chance.
If you wish to give those teams in the G-5 a chance to win a national championship, then let them establish their own series where they would be more than a body bag game for the power conferences.
Alabama didn't lose to a "cupcake"......badly. Their loss to Auburn is on par with OSU's loss to Oklahoma, but Alabama didn't lose to an "Iowa".
OSU has two wins against Top 20 teams (at the time they played). Alabama has three.
Hurts had Clemson beat last year till the best quarterback in the country went on the game-ending drive and won the game for Clemson. Alabama lost yesterday because of injuries to their linebackers. They managed to win 11 games with those same injuries.
Alabama’s best win was Florida State (preseason #3). Florida State actually led that game. Florida State lost the game on Special Teams and their starting quarterback was injured. It was a dominating win by Alabama, but most people lose sight of that because FSU didn’t do much the rest of the year. They lost their starting quarterback that night.
It would seem that an eight team playoff might work pretty well this year. But then the 9, 10, 11...teams would argue that they should be in as well.
Reminder: FCS started out with a 4-team format. It now has 24! Way too many!
Right. But in this case, you’d have a team with two losses going to the playoffs among the top four teams in the country — over a lot of other teams with only one loss.
Far be it from me to suggest that college football would prostitute itself for more tv dollars.
Conferences used to make sense. They were built around natural rivalries, mostly similar institutions in a coherent geographical region. There were a few oddities like Northwestern in the Big Ten, but not enough to much matter. They played a round robin and the team with the best record was the champion. That model still makes sense for those of us who like college football as a college game, as opposed to a junior NFL.
I know I'm showing my age; I'm nostalgic for the days when we used to at least pretend that college football and basketball players were able to read. But then television took over the game and ruined it, as tv tends to ruin everything it touches.
As for the playoffs: there is simply no way to equalize strength of schedule in college football. There are too many teams and the season is too short. Conferences go through cycles. There will be years when a given conference will have two of the top five teams, or three of the top ten. Five years later, it may hit a trough. But again, there's no way to equalize this.
The answer is to make the playoff a tournament of champions. Win your league or stay home. End the regular season by Thanksgiving. Take a week off and start the playoffs in December. Don't seed the tournament; draw the names from a hat and flip a coin to see which team hosts the game. (All games should be played on campus, and if that means Alabama or USC has to contend with 20 below in Ann Arbor or South Bend, fine. It's time the sunny schools learned to play real football anyhow....) Tell the bowls to get lost. The alumni can get drunk on their own.
That might actually create a huge incentive for top NCAA football programs to migrate to the weakest conferences in the country just to guarantee themselves regular spots in the playoffs.
That's why the rule has to be: win your league or stay home. Automatic bids to the top five or six conferences would cover most of the power teams while leaving room for the occasional minor conference team or independent (are there any independent teams left?) with a truly outstanding season.
And if the runner up in the power leagues -- you know: the Southeastern If You Consider Texas, Arkansas and Missouri the Southeast, the Big Whatever the Number Is This Year, the Atlantic Coast-Ohio River Valley-Upstate New York -- has to sit out, that's ok. If they can't win their league, they stay home. That makes conference championships important again.
I'm slow to say it but you're correct.
I was embarrassed to watch.
And no FCS games. If your school can’t fund a football team on its own, then don’t have one. Lots of good schools don’t have a scholarship football team.
I’m keeping my mouth shut until the Badgers get past Ohio State . . .
Now the scuttlebutt, is that Florida is going after Dan Mullen. Florida’s AD, Scott Stricklin was Mullen’s boss at Mississippi State, so Mullen has always been the odds-on favorite since Mac left.
The ways that money is made on college football are:
1) Butts in seats
2) TV rights
3) Alumni contributions
4) Gambling
5) Fantasy football
That system will be chosen which maximizes the profits off all of these ways of making money. Rationalizations will be forthcoming to justify whatever system that is chosen as being good for colleges, good for the student athletes, good for the fans, etc.
Butts in seats is no longer a major source of revenue. I also believe that alumni interest in their alma maters' football prowess will decline over time. Some colleges may have to start fielding great soccer teams in order to keep alumni interested.
The remaining sources of income derive from people who care little about the universities and more about the game of football and its participants: coaches and players.
These folks tend to want playoffs rather than boring bowl games. So I see that over time the playoffs will expand to 8 and then eventually 16 teams. If there is even one bowl game left over that is not a playoff game then that will be treated like the play-in game at the beginning of March Madness.
People can argue about how this will negatively impact the players or worry about how the money will be shared among the colleges till the cows come home (or even until Rutgers wins the National Championship) but the writing is already on the 50yd line.
The more bowl games that get eliminated the better. In my opinion there should be 6 bowl games, all played on Jan 1. 2 in the late morning, 2 in the afternoon and 2 in the evening. Then have the 3 playoff games.
Also being the free farm teams for the NFL.
Not only does the NFL get stadiums paid by the taxpayers they get free farm teams which are paid for by real college students trying to earn degrees to go out and support themselves.
Yep....Gonna be Mullen, per ESPN
Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen finalizing deal with Florida
Sigh...where did I say Alabama lost to a cupcake?
They had a cupcake schedule. Geesh...
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