Revamp the playoffs

deanvogs

deanvogs

Well-Known Member
Ok tis the time of year to start bitching and moaning about the fake playoff college football has. Why are we leaving out a team like OSU who won the 2nd toughest conference and only lost 1 game? Why are we matching 2 of the top college football teams up in a Conference championship game, instead of for the title?

Scrap the conference championship games. They are obsolete with 14 team conferences. It is strictly a money grab and it doesn't even determine who makes the playoffs. In the last 4 years we have let 3 teams into the playoffs who didn't even play in a conference championship game. At the same time a team like Georgia gets eliminated because they had to play in that game.

So what we do is simple, replace conference championship games with the first round of the playoffs. You don't see the FCS wasting time playing a "championship game", and the only reason they even came about was for money. Well we have a bigger money making opportunity in a opening round 8 game college football playoff slate. Here is how you do it.

-Each P5 conference division winner gets a spot (Big12's top 2 teams make it)
-6 at large bids whomever the committee picks.

First round games are a week after Thanksgiving and replace the conference championship games. Opening round games can only be hosted by teams who won their your division (At large teams have to go on the road). At large teams and the 2 "worst" division winners go on the road. Matchups determined by the committee.

After the 1st round games are done, the committee re seed everyone and incorporate those next 4 games into the bowl system. New seeding no longer takes into account winning a division. This years 1st round would have looked like this:

Pitt @ Alabama
Northwestern @ Clemson
Penn St. @ Georgia
LSU @ OU
Florida @ Ohio St
UCF @ Washington
Michigan @ Texas
Notre Dame @Utah

This makes the regular season actually mean something. Win your division and you are in period. It forces ND to join a conference or be regulated to going on the road in the first round every year. It gives a non P5 a shot at the playoffs. It lets regular teams like Northwestern, Pitt, etc a shot at making the playoffs. It sets up inner conference rematches for playoff games instead of wasting it on conference championship games.

Don't tell me that the season is only meaningful if only 4 blue blood teams get selected to make the playoffs. Look at all the great matchups we would have in the 1st round. Michigan vs Texas, Penn St. vs Georgia, Florida vs OSU. Sure you got a couple cakewalks, but if you have the best seasons the first round is always easier.

Anyway, I know TL: DR, at least that is what I would say if someone else posted this.
 
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Problem with this is the host cities for the conference champ games get cut out. Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and Indy want those games. I think you gotta work host cities in, but with a decided location advantage for the top teams so you'd have like Bama playing in New Orleans, Georgia in Atlanta, Clemson in Charlotte, etc. You gotta do them in a city so the underdog can get some fans in the stadium, too. You're forgetting the most important rule of effectuating change in college sports - anything is possible if you grease the right palms!
 
okeefe4prez said:
Problem with this is the host cities for the conference champ games get cut out. Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas and Indy want those games. I think you gotta work host cities in, but with a decided location advantage for the top teams so you'd have like Bama playing in New Orleans, Georgia in Atlanta, Clemson in Charlotte, etc. You gotta do them in a city so the underdog can get some fans in the stadium, too. You're forgetting the most important rule of effectuating change in college sports - anything is possible if you grease the right palms!
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That would be fine, but you would need it to be more regional then. I mean you can't send the "host team" across country, and would make it more difficult. Plus selfishly I want to see Texas, OU, Georgia, Florida, LSU, even Bama come up and play in Michigan/OSU in Dec.
 
deanvogs said:
Ok tis the time of year to start bitching and moaning about the fake playoff college football has. Why are we leaving out a team like OSU who won the 2nd toughest conference and only lost 1 game? Why are we matching 2 of the top college football teams up in a Conference championship game, instead of for the title?

Scrap the conference championship games. They are obsolete with 14 team conferences. It is strictly a money grab and it doesn't even determine who makes the playoffs. In the last 4 years we have let 3 teams into the playoffs who didn't even play in a conference championship game. At the same time a team like Georgia gets eliminated because they had to play in that game.

So what we do is simple, replace conference championship games with the first round of the playoffs. You don't see the FCS wasting time playing a "championship game", and the only reason they even came about was for money. Well we have a bigger money making opportunity in a opening round 8 game college football playoff slate. Here is how you do it.

-Each P5 conference division winner gets a spot (Big12's top 2 teams make it)
-6 at large bids whomever the committee picks.

First round games are a week after Thanksgiving and replace the conference championship games. Opening round games can only be hosted by teams who won their your division (At large teams have to go on the road). At large teams and the 2 "worst" division winners go on the road. Matchups determined by the committee.

After the 1st round games are done, the committee re seed everyone and incorporate those next 4 games into the bowl system. New seeding no longer takes into account winning a division. This years 1st round would have looked like this:

Pitt @ Alabama
Northwestern @ Clemson
Penn St. @ Georgia
LSU @ OU
Florida @ Ohio St
UCF @ Washington
Michigan @ Texas
Notre Dame @Utah

This makes the regular season actually mean something. Win your division and you are in period. It forces ND to join a conference or be regulated to going on the road in the first round every year. It gives a non P5 a shot at the playoffs. It lets regular teams like Northwestern, Pitt, etc a shot at making the playoffs. It sets up inner conference rematches for playoff games instead of wasting it on conference championship games.

Don't tell me that the season is only meaningful if only 4 blue blood teams get selected to make the playoffs. Look at all the great matchups we would have in the 1st round. Michigan vs Texas, Penn St. vs Georgia, Florida vs OSU. Sure you got a couple cakewalks, but if you have the best seasons the first round is always easier.

Anyway, I know TL: DR, at least that is what I would say if someone else posted this.
Click to expand...

If you want to make it 16, you could take the 10 P5 divisions (Big 12 would split in a heartbeat) the 5 other conferences, and the independents. I've always felt that there could be 8 conferences of 16 teams, play a CCG, and have an 8 team playoff. Either join a conference or GFY (yeah, I'm talking to you Neuter Dame).
 
deanvogs said:
Ok tis the time of year to start bitching and moaning about the fake playoff college football has. Why are we leaving out a team like OSU who won the 2nd toughest conference and only lost 1 game? Why are we matching 2 of the top college football teams up in a Conference championship game, instead of for the title?

Scrap the conference championship games. They are obsolete with 14 team conferences. It is strictly a money grab and it doesn't even determine who makes the playoffs. In the last 4 years we have let 3 teams into the playoffs who didn't even play in a conference championship game. At the same time a team like Georgia gets eliminated because they had to play in that game.

So what we do is simple, replace conference championship games with the first round of the playoffs. You don't see the FCS wasting time playing a "championship game", and the only reason they even came about was for money. Well we have a bigger money making opportunity in a opening round 8 game college football playoff slate. Here is how you do it.

-Each P5 conference division winner gets a spot (Big12's top 2 teams make it)
-6 at large bids whomever the committee picks.

First round games are a week after Thanksgiving and replace the conference championship games. Opening round games can only be hosted by teams who won their your division (At large teams have to go on the road). At large teams and the 2 "worst" division winners go on the road. Matchups determined by the committee.

After the 1st round games are done, the committee re seed everyone and incorporate those next 4 games into the bowl system. New seeding no longer takes into account winning a division. This years 1st round would have looked like this:

Pitt @ Alabama
Northwestern @ Clemson
Penn St. @ Georgia
LSU @ OU
Florida @ Ohio St
UCF @ Washington
Michigan @ Texas
Notre Dame @Utah

This makes the regular season actually mean something. Win your division and you are in period. It forces ND to join a conference or be regulated to going on the road in the first round every year. It gives a non P5 a shot at the playoffs. It lets regular teams like Northwestern, Pitt, etc a shot at making the playoffs. It sets up inner conference rematches for playoff games instead of wasting it on conference championship games.

Don't tell me that the season is only meaningful if only 4 blue blood teams get selected to make the playoffs. Look at all the great matchups we would have in the 1st round. Michigan vs Texas, Penn St. vs Georgia, Florida vs OSU. Sure you got a couple cakewalks, but if you have the best seasons the first round is always easier.

Anyway, I know TL: DR, at least that is what I would say if someone else posted this.
Click to expand...
An 8 team playoff would be sufficient and much easier to sell to the NCAA. There's no way in hell they're going to get rid of the conference championships and they sure aren't going to add 3 weeks to an already too long schedule.

If you're going to advocate for an expanded playoff you have to be realistic as far as what would be accepted.

The 8 team (P5 champs +3 at large) is by far the most accepted scenario and is a good compromise between full representation and keeping the season as short as possible.
 
99topdawg said:
(Big 12 would split in a heartbeat) .
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It's required by the NCAA that for a conference to have 2 divisions and a championship game it has to have 12 teams. That's one of the reasons we didn't do it until nebraska joined.
 
Fryowa said:
An 8 team playoff would be sufficient and much easier to sell to the NCAA. There's no way in hell they're going to get rid of the conference championships and they sure aren't going to add 3 weeks to an already too long schedule.

If you're going to advocate for an expanded playoff you have to be realistic as far as what would be accepted.

The 8 team (P5 champs +3 at large) is by far the most accepted scenario and is a good compromise between full representation and keeping the season as short as possible.
Click to expand...

8 team playoffs leads to WAYYYY to many issues, here are the big ones:

Teams that lose their conference championship games will still make the playoffs (why even play them then).
Teams that don't even play a 13th game now will be making the playoffs. This is a HUGE deal. You are telling 10 teams they have to play a 13th game, while others get to sit at home (like Bama and OSU in years past and ND this year). It is crazy unfair.
 
And if we're really being honest with ourselves, we all know this will never change. There is money pouring in like Niagra Falls and that's the only thing that could ever make things go a different direction. The best football is by far in the south and those fan bases make ours (and the rest of the Big Ten's) look like a 1A school's booster club. Those southern teams are getting the most exposure and have the most playoff success (as they should, they're just ridiculously better than everyone else), and hence bring in the most money.

It ain't changin', Jack.
 
Fryowa said:
An 8 team playoff would be sufficient and much easier to sell to the NCAA. There's no way in hell they're going to get rid of the conference championships and they sure aren't going to add 3 weeks to an already too long schedule.

If you're going to advocate for an expanded playoff you have to be realistic as far as what would be accepted.

The 8 team (P5 champs +3 at large) is by far the most accepted scenario and is a good compromise between full representation and keeping the season as short as possible.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything here. NCAA isn't going from 4 teams to 16. And 8 is enough, IMO, and they should include 1 from the Group of 5 conferences. Now, I also accept the fact that as soon as the ink is dry on an 8 team playoff agreement, people will be whining for a 16 team playoff. That's the nature of it.
 
deanvogs said:
8 team playoffs leads to WAYYYY to many issues, here are the big ones:

Teams that lose their conference championship games will still make the playoffs
Click to expand...
P-5 Conference champs +3 at large, which are defined before the season. No CCG losers would get in...

If Alabama is ranked #2 and loses to #6 Georgia in the SEC title game, sorry. It will never happen but it's exactly how it should happen.

So should we give the Patriots a pass and let them continue in the post season after a loss, just because they're "good?"
 
Fryowa said:
It's required by the NCAA that for a conference to have 2 divisions and a championship game it has to have 12 teams. That's one of the reasons we didn't do it until nebraska joined.
Click to expand...
Right, but I think they would try a little harder to find teams to join instead of keeping their little crapwad conference with only 10 teams. Of course, they'd probably try to add Drake, etc.
 
Fryowa said:
P-5 Conference champs +3 at large, which are defined before the season. No CCG losers would get in...

If Alabama is ranked #2 and loses to #6 Georgia in the SEC title game, sorry. It will never happen but it's exactly how it should happen.

So should we give the Patriots a pass and let them continue in the post season after a loss, just because they're "good?"
Click to expand...

If you have 8 and don't take the conference champ loser, you'd end up with some team like LSU in there. It should be P5 champs get an auto berth, add the best non-P5 team (other than ND) and then 2 at large. So this year you would add Central Florida, OSU, Washington and Georgia. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. The runner up in the SEC champ game or even second place in the Big Ten East might often be good enough to be in the top 6-8 (wouldn't necessarily get in by being #8 due to automatic berths).
 
Fryowa said:
P-5 Conference champs +3 at large, which are defined before the season. No CCG losers would get in...

If Alabama is ranked #2 and loses to #6 Georgia in the SEC title game, sorry. It will never happen but it's exactly how it should happen.

So should we give the Patriots a pass and let them continue in the post season after a loss, just because they're "good?"
Click to expand...

So basically 5 P5 champs, 2 G5 champs, and an independent.
 
You can't go to a 16 team playoff unless you completely get rid of the bowl system. I'd like your idea for an 8 game playoff system but I can't see conferences agreeing to getting rid of their conference championship games. But to me that's the only way you can keep the bowl system intact going to a 8 team playoff structure.

The winners advance on to a reseeded playoff spot, while the loser is still eligible to be selected for a bowl game.
 
haydensly said:
I agree with everything here. NCAA isn't going from 4 teams to 16. And 8 is enough, IMO, and they should include 1 from the Group of 5 conferences. Now, I also accept the fact that as soon as the ink is dry on an 8 team playoff agreement, people will be whining for a 16 team playoff. That's the nature of it.
Click to expand...


One solution could be to eliminate the conference championship game and just have the conferences get rid of the divisions and require these conferences to play more conference games. Go to one out of conference game and rotate the rest of the conference games. The big issue will be for the small schools that rely on the big name school to pay them to come and play them. It will hurt the small guys but i think we would have a much better product.

Look at the Big 12 why even have a rematch game for the Title game. Rotate thru the schedule and you have one game to beat someone. If people bitch about losing all this money have them play some neutral site games at indy or Dallas, like they do now anyway and then have the Bowl games host the playoff games as it is now. I think you will have a better product and you won't have as many of these controversies as the games will weed out the competition.

I think you will keep the reason why college football is better than the NFL because each week counts more, you bring back some of the conference rivalry games and eliminate the BS of conference divisions being less or more difficult. Having teams play each other every few years make a rule where you have to play each team in your conference within a two year period so you don't have the schedule making with hug gaps between the years you play and then just take the top 8 teams in the rankings for the playoffs and have the bowls invite the rest of the teams
 
deanvogs said:
Ok tis the time of year to start bitching and moaning about the fake playoff college football has. Why are we leaving out a team like OSU who won the 2nd toughest conference and only lost 1 game? Why are we matching 2 of the top college football teams up in a Conference championship game, instead of for the title?

Scrap the conference championship games. They are obsolete with 14 team conferences. It is strictly a money grab and it doesn't even determine who makes the playoffs. In the last 4 years we have let 3 teams into the playoffs who didn't even play in a conference championship game. At the same time a team like Georgia gets eliminated because they had to play in that game.

So what we do is simple, replace conference championship games with the first round of the playoffs. You don't see the FCS wasting time playing a "championship game", and the only reason they even came about was for money. Well we have a bigger money making opportunity in a opening round 8 game college football playoff slate. Here is how you do it.

-Each P5 conference division winner gets a spot (Big12's top 2 teams make it)
-6 at large bids whomever the committee picks.

First round games are a week after Thanksgiving and replace the conference championship games. Opening round games can only be hosted by teams who won their your division (At large teams have to go on the road). At large teams and the 2 "worst" division winners go on the road. Matchups determined by the committee.

After the 1st round games are done, the committee re seed everyone and incorporate those next 4 games into the bowl system. New seeding no longer takes into account winning a division. This years 1st round would have looked like this:

Pitt @ Alabama
Northwestern @ Clemson
Penn St. @ Georgia
LSU @ OU
Florida @ Ohio St
UCF @ Washington
Michigan @ Texas
Notre Dame @Utah

This makes the regular season actually mean something. Win your division and you are in period. It forces ND to join a conference or be regulated to going on the road in the first round every year. It gives a non P5 a shot at the playoffs. It lets regular teams like Northwestern, Pitt, etc a shot at making the playoffs. It sets up inner conference rematches for playoff games instead of wasting it on conference championship games.

Don't tell me that the season is only meaningful if only 4 blue blood teams get selected to make the playoffs. Look at all the great matchups we would have in the 1st round. Michigan vs Texas, Penn St. vs Georgia, Florida vs OSU. Sure you got a couple cakewalks, but if you have the best seasons the first round is always easier.

Anyway, I know TL: DR, at least that is what I would say if someone else posted this.
Click to expand...


So in your model what is different than the way it is now? Your still leaving out an undefeated UCF and including a 5 loss (not counting conference championship) divisional winner in your bracket. In no way am I saying that I feel UCF has a legit chance at winning, but if Georgia being excluded this year sparks the debate about best or more deserving teams getting left out then you still have the exact same argument, but with a larger field of participants.

Without conference championships, there's no longer a reason to split conferences up by divisions, but that creates additional problems. Not sure how to solve the problem, but the fact is that OOC games need to be used to weed out the pretenders from the contenders rather than simply padding the win columns. Not a knock on Georgia or any other programs, but it would be easier to solve the "who's better or more deserving debate" if a team like Georgia is playing OSU or OU in September rather than Austin Peay, Middle Tennessee State, or UMASS. When you only have 12 games to figure out who the best teams in the country are its time for those programs that want to be there to start scheduling like they do. You want to be a program that gets in with 2 losses...then start scheduling OOC games in which you can give those programs that second loss. There's a reason why no one wants to do this, but at the same time think how much better the regular season would be.
 
kicker22 said:
Not a knock on Georgia or any other programs, but it would be easier to solve the "who's better or more deserving debate" if a team like Georgia is playing OSU or OU in September rather than Austin Peay, Middle Tennessee State, or UMASS.
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Georgia actually tries to schedule good teams in non-con. They have a protected rivalry with Georgia Tech, so that is one game every year. They have a protected crossover with Auburn, which is always a tough game. They had a series with Clemson a few years ago and have another one in the future with them. They also have played ND and have more games scheduled with ND. I think they also have Texas.

I know you're not calling out Georgia, but part of the problem is teams like Wisconsin, Iowa and Penn State only schedule decent OOC games once every few years, if that. With 9 conference games in the B1G now and a protected game against ISU, I think the odds of Iowa ever scheduling a SEC game are pretty remote. And to be honest, Georgia prefers to play teams in the South for recruiting and given how bad the ACC is, I think it's hard to find decent OOC games.

I'd like to see the NCAA mandate 2 P5 OOC opponents for a team to be considered for the playoff just to force some scheduling changes, but then I suppose the smaller schools would scream bloody murder.
 
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