College Playoff

[HailToMichigan]

You may want to do some research before posting. I-AA teams have played 11+ games for decades, so there is no "shortening the regular season to accommodate a playoff". Thus, I-A can continue with their current 12-game schedule with no problems. Next...

I-AA teams are playing 11 this year. I-A teams are playing 12. The best will play a conference championship game, which I-AA teams do not partake in. That's called a shorter schedule, numbnuts.

I-AA teams played a 12-game schedule once. 2002. I-A teams played 13 that year. Calendar quirk. Schedule still shorter.

"Next."

Edit - One I-AA conference, the SWAC, does in fact play a championship game. Because of this, they do not participate in the I-AA playoffs!

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

What's with the 4-team, 6-team, 8-team playoff shit? The playoff is 16 teams...period. That's how I-AA does it and they have nearly exactly the same amount of teams as does in I-A. Seed the top 16 teams in the BCS rankings...no conference-affiliated auto-bids. If you're in the top 16 in the BCS rankings, you're in.

 

[methomps]

The Fox BCS contract is for $20 million per year.....that's $4 million per conference. So....starting with advertising. Will each individual playoff game have a title sponsor as the bowls do? "Quarterfinal Game Presented By Chick-Fil-A" is not worth as much as the "Chick-Fil-A Bowl". That bowl alone pays $3.25 million to the ACC. The third-tier bowl - the Gator Bowl - pays the ACC $2.5 million. These are the bowls that would suffer the most under a playoff system and the conferences would lose that money. Simply put, the TV contract is a much smaller percentage of the payouts to the conferences than the bowl contracts are. Playoff games will not support the kind of advertising that bowls do. Bowls all have major events, all sponsored. Bowls place advertising all over the stadium - on the field, in the stands, on the scoreboard. Playoff games cannot do that. They will not suddenly plaster a giant FedEx logo at midfield of Ohio Stadium or the Big House.

The BCS generates about $100M in revenue a year. BCS bowl payouts are $17M. With a playoff, those numbers would be much higher simply for the fact that there will be more games. If a playoff generates more interest than the BCS, that is even more money.

As for sponsors, you can have sponsors for an entire round, similar to "Capital One Bowl Week."

As for the bowls like the Chick-Fil-A and Gator, I have always advocated that those bowls stay. With a 6 or 8-team playoff, all the lower team bowls get virtually the same teams they currently do with the BCS (which takes 10 teams away). Under my plan, one of the four BCS bowls would rotate out of the playoff hosting each year, so that means the Orange, Rose, Sugar, and Fiesta take 8 teams. The Chick-Fil-A, Gator, Cotton, and Holiday (and so on) bowls still get the same level of teams they do now (if not the same exact team in most cases)!!11111!

 

[BrutusBobcat]

The easiest thing to do is a plus-one game. Take the top four (1 v. 4, 2 v. 3), meet in a pair of BCS bowl games, then a week or two later play the winners.

Once that proves itself, and we all see that the players don't fail out of school and that the NCAA, bowls, ABC, ESPN and the bookie down the street all make their pound of flesh, then maybe we can see about working it up to 8 teams.

It's all about baby steps. Heck, even the highly flawed BCS is better than how things used to be. At least there's some type of mythical title game.

 

[HailToMichigan]

What's with the 4-team, 6-team, 8-team playoff shit? The playoff is 16 teams...period. That's how I-AA does it and they have nearly exactly the same amount of teams as does in I-A. Seed the top 16 teams in the BCS rankings...no conference-affiliated auto-bids. If you're in the top 16 in the BCS rankings, you're in.

You are the only one saying anything about a 16-team playoff.

And speaking of research and not doing any, check on your claim of "11+ games for decades." I-AA played more than 11 regular season games only once - the aforementioned 2002 season. Prior to that, and since then, it's been either 11 or 10. With 12 games in a I-A season and a week of conference championship games, there's a reason you're the only one championing a 16-team playoff.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

You are the only one saying anything about a 16-team playoff.

And speaking of research and not doing any, check on your claim of "11+ games for decades." I-AA played more than 11 regular season games only once - the aforementioned 2002 season. Prior to that, and since then, it's been either 11 or 10. With 12 games in a I-A season and a week of conference championship games, there's a reason you're the only one championing a 16-team playoff.

"11+" means "eleven or more", so again you're wrong. By the way, this isn't the only thread that has been opened on college playoffs, and there have been others who agree with the 16-team playoff format, while maybe not in this particualr thread. Still, I don't whether anyone else agrees with me or not...the fact remains that the 16-team format has worked very well for a very long time. I don't recall anyone I-AA coach ever bitching that his team lost in the playoffs to a 13th- or 14th-ranked team.

EDIT: Here's the college-playoff poll thread...

 

[Zurp]

What I hope I've shown is that, on balance, a playoff solves nothing. So we have controversy regarding who should get to play in the title game because occasionally, one team has a legit beef about being snubbed? Nothing compared to having three or four teams, every single year, having a legit beef about being snubbed.

I'm still on your side. I still vote "no" for a playoff.

But I don't care much for this argument. It's reasonable that a 3rd team can bitch about being left out of a national championship game. Especially when it was Auburn in 2004 - when they were undefeated. There were people who felt that Auburn was the best team. However, if you go to a 4-team playoff, and you snub the 5th team, I don't think anyone is going to care about the bitching that goes on. Rarely does anyone look at the 5th team and say that they really should have a shot. And as you expand the playoffs to 6, 8, or 16 teams, the complaints from the teams being left out become less and less meaningful.

The only time that any of those complaints might have any press is if it's a current non-BCS conference team, arguing that they never really had a chance to prove that they were good enough to be in the top-however many teams you have.

 

[Thump]

Exactly what I've been saying since day one. The lower-tier bowls, i.e. the Thump Anal Lube Bowl, would rather have a #1 vs #16 or even a #8 vs #9 first-round playoff matchup instead of a couple unranked 7-5 or 6-6 teams.

So you're saying you want to use the lesser bowl games for the playoff or no?

 

[Zurp]

So you're saying you want to use the lesser bowl games for the playoff or no?

I've heard people argue both ways. I personally don't like the idea of using the lesser bowls for earlier rounds. I like the way teams now can say, "We went to the Peach Bowl and won this year. Good end to the season." But I'd hate to hear stuff like "We went to the Peach Bowl and won, then we went to the Subway Meatball Sub Bowl, and won, then we went to the Cotton Bowl, and won, but then we lost in the Rose Bowl." You get one bowl game. One. If that game is the national championship game, then fine. If it's the first round of playoff games, then fine. If it's the third round, then fine. Whatever.

If playoffs ever do come to I-A football, I'd like to see teams get home-field advantage in the play-offs, and the bowls keep their noses completely out of them, until the final game.

 

[Thump]

I've heard people argue both ways. I personally don't like the idea of using the lesser bowls for earlier rounds. I like the way teams now can say, "We went to the Peach Bowl and won this year. Good end to the season." But I'd hate to hear stuff like "We went to the Peach Bowl and won, then we went to the Subway Meatball Sub Bowl, and won, then we went to the Cotton Bowl, and won, but then we lost in the Rose Bowl." You get one bowl game. One. If that game is the national championship game, then fine. If it's the first round of playoff games, then fine. If it's the third round, then fine. Whatever.

If playoffs ever do come to I-A football, I'd like to see teams get home-field advantage in the play-offs, and the bowls keep their noses completely out of them, until the final game.

You'd have to scrap the bowls to do such a playoff b/c people couldn't afford to go to 3 different cities in 3 consecutive weeks plus getting time off of work would be a problem as well.

Not to mention the cost to the University for flying and boarding the teams and band at such games.

 

[holybuckeye33]

Using the 2006 season. Eight team playoff using the BCS formula as the selection process. Top eight teams get in. Top four seeds host first round game. No automatic spots for conference champions, no exemptions for Notre Dame. Coaches, Harris, Computers, and BCS do not come out until after week 5 so that no one can claim anyone started with an unfair advantage/disadvantage. AP can do whatever it wants since it's irrellevant anyway. Second round games played at two of the four BCS bowls one week after the first round games. Championship game played at a third BCS game a week later. The fourth BCS bowl would rotate out every fourth year, and would be required to take the highest rated conference champions or independant team that did not make the eight team playoff. Those two teams get the same payout as would be allocated to the teams in the first round of the playoffs. None of the other bowls would be affected.

2006- First round Playoffs
#8 Boise State @ #1 Ohio State
#7 Wisconsin @ #2 Florida
#6 Louisville @ #3 Michigan
#5 Southern California @ #4 LSU

Nonplayoff BCS Bowl:
Oklahoma/ND

Bowls affected:
Capital One loses Wisconsin

Upset team- Wake Forest (ranked 14nd in BCS) won ACC and went to Orange. Under this scenario, would be left out and searching for a bowl.

I can only see two groups that this may upset: 1) teams like Wake Forest that get left out despite winning their conference championship and 2) the BCS bowls because as opposed to having two good matchups once every four years, now, once every four years they are left out of the the playoff picture. Other problems, suggestions?

 

[holybuckeye33]

2005- First round Playoffs
#8 Miami (Fla.) @ #1 Southern California
#7 Georgia @ #2 Texas
#6 Notre Dame @ #3 Penn State
#5 Oregon @ #4 Ohio State

Nonplayoff BCS Bowl:
WVU/TCU

Bowls affected:
Holiday loses Oregon
Peach loses Miami
Houston loses TCU

Upset team- Florida State (ranked 22nd in BCS) won ACC and went to Orange. Under this scenario, would be left out, while Miami goes to playoffs (obviously Miami was undeserving as they got crushed in the Peach by LSU)


2004- First round Playoffs
#8 Virginia Tech @ #1 Southern California
#7 Georgia @ #2 Oklahoma
#6 Utah @ #3 Auburn
#5 California @ #4 Texas

Nonplayoff BCS Bowl:
Louisville/Boise State

Bowls affected:
Holiday loses California
Liberty bowl loses Louisville and Boise St.

Upset team(s)- Michigan (ranked 13th in BCS) won Big Ten and went to Rose; Pittsburgh (ranked 21st in BCS) wen to Fiesta. Under this scenario, both left out.

 

[Buckeneye]

Conference champs should form the playoff teams. obviously problems with that if you dont win outright -

 

[RugbyBuck]

College football has the best/most meaningful regular season of any sport. Consequently, it is the only sport to which I pay more than passing attention outside of the Buckeyes. I love keeping track of what other teams are doing because it has/may have an effect on us. What we have is a 12 or 13 week playoff. I don't care about end of the year matchups. Play the games on your schedule, take care of business and you're in a decent bowl game. College football is different and special. We shouldn't change that.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

You'd have to scrap the bowls to do such a playoff b/c people couldn't afford to go to 3 different cities in 3 consecutive weeks plus getting time off of work would be a problem as well.

Not to mention the cost to the University for flying and boarding the teams and band at such games.

If I-AA, II, and III teams and their fans can do it, sure as fuck Ohio State and their fans can do it.