Playoff Expansion

J

JRD90

Well-Known Member
With the announcement that the college football playoffs are going to expand to 12 teams, I think this is great for a program like Iowa. Under the current structure, being top 4 was going to be tough, but top 12 is very doable.

I assume in the Ferentz era, Iowa would have made the playoffs 5 times (02, 03, 04, 09, 15), and would have hosted a first round game in 02, 04 and 15. I would love the idea of hosting a SEC school in Kinnick the first week of December.
 
If Iowa could have had the chance to play and beat Indiana last year during champions week, they might have made a 12-team playoff last year in 2020.

Oh well, there are so many what-ifs from 2020, it can only drive you crazy.

Not sure if 2003 Iowa would have made a 12 team playoff. Iowa was only 9-3 before the bowls, and playoff format requires the top 6 conference champions to be included out of 12 teams total. Which probably means Iowa would need to be in the top 10 before the bowls. Iowa was only 13th in the final 2003 BCS standings, so I assume they would not have made a 12-team playoff in 2003.

Actually, even 2004 is debatable. Iowa finished 12th in the final BCS standings with Michigan 13th. But Michigan was the official conference champion because they beat Iowa, which tells me a commitee would have picked Michigan over Iowa, leaving Iowa out again as the 13th team again in 2004.
 
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I am shocked Notre Dame agreed that the four conference champs get byes. That means the Domers could never be seeded higher than 5th, even if they go undefeated. On the flipside, with a committee picking, they will get in any year they have a 2 loss season or better.
 
I hate it, ruins the bowl system and the current system is not broken. The current system is awarding the best team in college football. Eventually it will expand to where the FCS system is.
 
NorthKCHawk said:
I am shocked Notre Dame agreed that the four conference champs get byes. That means the Domers could never be seeded higher than 5th, even if they go undefeated. On the flipside, with a committee picking, they will get in any year they have a 2 loss season or better.
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I don't believe that is how it is being proposed. This, from a story on espn.com:

"The proposal does not include guarantees for conference champions. Instead, it calls for the bracket to include the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus the six highest-ranked other teams as determined by the CFP's selection committee."

I have not read about it in detail so I could be wrong. But I caught a couple of radio programs on it and it sounded to me like the top four would come from a ranking, presumably by the CFP selection committee.
 
If you are an Iowa fan, I think you need to root for it hard. We have a snowballs chance in hell of making a 4 team playoff. A 12 team though? Yeah, I think we're in that field at a tantalizingly high frequency.

The bowl system as we knew/loved/hated it I think is already dead in terms of meaning and prestige with the introduction of the 4 team playoff. An expansion to 12 I really don't think changes much with that picture. Whatever was once there is already largely gone.

On the other side, IMHO, I think a 12 team field is still a long ways off from rendering the regular season meaningless. As a P5 school, you're still going to be very iffy with 2 quality losses and, with 3 quality losses, you better hope your school's name rhymes with "bloater main" if you want to even dream of making it.

I'm all for it.
 
haydensly said:
I don't believe that is how it is being proposed. This, from a story on espn.com:

"The proposal does not include guarantees for conference champions. Instead, it calls for the bracket to include the six highest-ranked conference champions, plus the six highest-ranked other teams as determined by the CFP's selection committee."

I have not read about it in detail so I could be wrong. But I caught a couple of radio programs on it and it sounded to me like the top four would come from a ranking, presumably by the CFP selection committee.
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All that means there is no automatic bids for P5 champions. The top 6 teams in the the rankings that are official conference champions get in. But no conferences are guaranteed their champion will get in the 12-team field.

That way, teams like 2012 Wisconsin, which won the Big Ten CCG and had an 8-5 overall record, would not make the playoffs.
 
ssckelley said:
I hate it, ruins the bowl system and the current system is not broken. The current system is awarding the best team in college football. Eventually it will expand to where the FCS system is.
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Bowl system was ruined when they started having 20+ bowl games that morphed into 40+, including teams with losing records. All but 6-8 of them are meaningless exhibitions that you literally have to do nothing to get qualified for.
 
Fryowa said:
Bowl system was ruined when they started having 20+ bowl games that morphed into 40+, including teams with losing records. All but 6-8 of them are meaningless exhibitions that you literally have to do nothing to get qualified for.
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The schools cared, their fans cared. There hasn’t been an Iowa bowl game I’ve ever missed regardless what their record was.
 
smhawk said:
I would think there would still be non playoff bowl games.
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But their importance will go out the window. Imagine how thrilled the 13th team will be missing the playoffs but getting a bowl bid. Any player with a shot at the NFL will probably skip it. The cries over the 13/14th team missing the playoffs will eventually lead to more expansion, at some point it will be the FCS format.
 
ssckelley said:
But their importance will go out the window.
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Bowl games' importance went out the window a loooooong time ago. They're just exhibition games and a trip for players to somewhere warm for a week. Which is fine and dandy. But let's not kid ourselves here, they don't mean much. Other than about 6 or 8 of them, bowl games are just goofy.

I mean why not just plan out before the season that your 6-6 team and the 5-7 Upper Central Midwestern Kalamazoo Welding School Fighting Gerbils are gonna play each other in the Ray's Muffler Shop Bowl presented by the West 8th Street Noon Kiwanis? Wouldn't that be easier to do?

Yeah, I know players like them and they want to be able to say they played in one. I get it. But back when there were just a handful of bowl games and you had to be a damn good team just to make one, were we bitching and complaining that it was a travesty that there weren't tons more of them that you could "qualify" for? Did anyone think, "Man, it's just a crime that we don't have like 40 extra podunk bowl games as participation trophies. These kids are getting ROBBED!"

ssckelley said:
The cries over the 13/14th team missing the playoffs will eventually lead to more expansion, at some point it will be the FCS format.
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It's a lot harder to bitch about not being 12th best than it is about being 4th best. The gap from say, 10th on is light years from the top 4 teams.
 
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Fryowa said:
Bowl games' importance went out the window a loooooong time ago. They're just exhibition games and a trip for players to somewhere warm for a week. Which is fine and dandy. But let's not kid ourselves here, they don't mean much. Other than about 6 or 8 of them, bowl games are just goofy.

I mean why not just plan out before the season that your 6-6 team and the 5-7 Upper Central Midwestern Kalamazoo Welding School Fighting Gerbils are gonna play each other in the Ray's Muffler Shop Bowl presented by the West 8th Street Noon Kiwanis? Wouldn't that be easier to do?

Yeah, I know players like them and they want to be able to say they played in one. I get it. But back when there were just a handful of bowl games and you had to be a damn good team just to make one, were we bitching and complaining that it was a travesty that there weren't tons more of them that you could "qualify" for? Did anyone think, "Man, it's just a crime that we don't have like 40 extra podunk bowl games as participation trophies. These kids are getting ROBBED!"


It's a lot harder to bitch about not being 12th best than it is about being 4th best. The gap from say, 10th on is light years from the top 4 teams.
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There might be one year out of four or five where the 5th or maybe even 6th best team has a chance to win it all (e.g., 2019 when Bama missed the playoff after Tua had a horrible game against LSU and Jones played awful at Auburn). But we have to face facts. The team that will be an at-large that can win it all is going to be an Ohio State that dropped an inexplicable early game in a year where ND, Clemson, Oklahoma and the SEC champ are all undefeated or an LSU program that lost to Bama and Florida by a combined 4 points or something. It is not going to be some team like Iowa, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma State or whatever that squeaks in by being ranked 6th at the end of the regular season on the back of a few fluke wins and a down division/conference that boosts its record.

The biggest reason the bowls have become a farce is guys opting out or just half-assing it to protect their knees. I'm not faulting those guys because that is the rational decision, but when you watch a game like that Auburn-Minnesota game from a few years ago, it is clear some teams give absolutely zero shits about the bowl game and this expanded playoff will hopefully generate some excitement in "undercard" type games.
 
okeefe4prez said:
There might be one year out of four or five where the 5th or maybe even 6th best team has a chance to win it all (e.g., 2019 when Bama missed the playoff after Tua had a horrible game against LSU and Jones played awful at Auburn). But we have to face facts. The team that will be an at-large that can win it all is going to be an Ohio State that dropped an inexplicable early game in a year where ND, Clemson, Oklahoma and the SEC champ are all undefeated or an LSU program that lost to Bama and Florida by a combined 4 points or something. It is not going to be some team like Iowa, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma State or whatever that squeaks in by being ranked 6th at the end of the regular season on the back of a few fluke wins and a down division/conference that boosts its record.

The biggest reason the bowls have become a farce is guys opting out or just half-assing it to protect their knees. I'm not faulting those guys because that is the rational decision, but when you watch a game like that Auburn-Minnesota game from a few years ago, it is clear some teams give absolutely zero shits about the bowl game and this expanded playoff will hopefully generate some excitement in "undercard" type games.
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As a young kid in the 80s I used to look forward to bowl season because it meant the roughly top 25 teams got to duke it out with each other.

Now I just laugh at it. 84 teams "make" bowl games now. It's a complete joke.
 
There will still be bowls and we will still watch them.

Heck, I wonder if the losers of the first two rounds could still get invited to a bowl?

I agree bowls are not what they used to be, but they are still fun, and some of us have a great excuse to fly to warmer weather around the first of the year. The reason that they have 275 bowl games a year is because they all make money. Fox/ESPN/Networks/new entrants all need content. Bowls feed the beast.

Expanding the playoffs just expands the revenue pie and makes it more possible for teams like Iowa to at least have a shot. This is win win.
 
Fryowa said:
Bowl games' importance went out the window a loooooong time ago. They're just exhibition games and a trip for players to somewhere warm for a week. Which is fine and dandy. But let's not kid ourselves here, they don't mean much. Other than about 6 or 8 of them, bowl games are just goofy.

I mean why not just plan out before the season that your 6-6 team and the 5-7 Upper Central Midwestern Kalamazoo Welding School Fighting Gerbils are gonna play each other in the Ray's Muffler Shop Bowl presented by the West 8th Street Noon Kiwanis? Wouldn't that be easier to do?

Yeah, I know players like them and they want to be able to say they played in one. I get it. But back when there were just a handful of bowl games and you had to be a damn good team just to make one, were we bitching and complaining that it was a travesty that there weren't tons more of them that you could "qualify" for? Did anyone think, "Man, it's just a crime that we don't have like 40 extra podunk bowl games as participation trophies. These kids are getting ROBBED!"


It's a lot harder to bitch about not being 12th best than it is about being 4th best. The gap from say, 10th on is light years from the top 4 teams.
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You've already told me this, I responded. Someone must have cared enough or enough money was being made to have those "40 extra podunk bowl games" or they wouldn't have existed in the first place. I'm going to speculate that you've watched every bowl game Iowa has ever participated in regardless of what their record was. I rarely watch the lower tier bowls, but someone was or it wouldn't have been televised in the first place. I typically watched the bowls that featured Big Ten teams or had really good matchups. With the amount of money those games produced I'm guessing someone cared.

Yes, I agree the 10th is light years from the top 4 teams. You just made my point as to why playoff expansion is unnecessary. The 4 team playoff system was not broken, it's been crowning the top team the NC which is the goal. I could have lived without watching a Alabama/Clemson beating up on a 8/9th ranked Cincinnati or Iowa State.
 
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