Did I state that?
6 teams have a bye week
4 teams play the first week. The winner of those two games advance into the bracket of 8
Independents such as Army and ND compete for the at large slots.
That doesnât hold true in in Menâs BB and donât think it would hole true in football either. Of the last 25 NCAA Menâs BB champions, 11 won their conference tournament, 12 did not win the conference, and 2 were in a conference that had no tournament.
In Division II football this year, Texas A&M - Commerce won it all. They finished 2nd in their conference and were seeded 5th in their region by an objective, results-based method.
Winning a conference is nice and most conference winners in FBS would probably make a 28 team playoff, thatâs how many DII has. The ultimate winner may not be one of them.
Just goes to prove the old âany given weekâ adage.
However, I would rather just line up the conference champions and let them duke it out. Just my opinion. Iâd even extend that to basketball. Just puts more of am emphasis on winning your conference title, which should rank only slightly below the prestige of a national title.
If there must be wildcards, they should be the low seeds by default.
2 Likes
It would certainly be better than what we have now.
I think wild cards would be necessary. Itâs really hard to bracket 10 teams. Even with byes, I canât get an even bracket for round two. 16 is a nice number for bracketing. Iâm a fan of 28. Top 4 teams get first round bye and round 2 is all nice and even.
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A lot of good points made in this thread. No matter how many teams make the playoff, Iâm 100% in favor of all conference champs getting a seat at the table. I donât care if the 2nd or even 5th place SEC team is a ton better than the Sunbelt champ. The upside to playing in a tougher conference and having more losses is the windfall in revenues. Deal with it. Since there would be no G5 if G5 teams got to pick which conference they wanted to be in, conference affiliation should have nothing to do with making the playoffs. Win your conference and youâre in. Period. Maybe the math is harder, but in this scenario, I donât care for at large bids as it re-introduces the conference affiliation/strength of schedule bias. As someone stated earlier, maybe the only reason to have at large bids is for the independents.
The problem I have is scheduling. Iâm so sick and tired of people complaining about strength of schedule, but top tier G5 teams having little to no say when it comes to scheduling strong OOC games. This is why Iâm in favor of only conference champs making the playoffs. It makes OOC strength of schedule completely irrelevant. Once the playoff field is set, the teams can be ranked according to strength of schedule for purposes of seeding. Thereâs still some bias there, but at least it is much more limited and doesnât prevent someone like UCF getting a chance to prove it on the field.
Iâm sure some of you will knock some pretty sizable holes in this argument, but Iâm just spitballing here. Obviously something needs to change if the playoffs are ever to be fair.
5 Likes
To whittle 10 down to 8, have the bottom 4 play round one like the baseball wild card game. Two survivors get the top two teams in the elite 8, while 3 thru 6 play, then final 4 and the title game. Remove one regular season game from everyoneâs schedule. Play in round is home field second week of December, elite 8 is home field near Christmas, final four is new years as now, and final the next weekend, as now, last two rounds at ny6 bowl sites like now.
Independents can GFY or join a conference.
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The FCS has the right formula. Just follow it.
Conference champions only. No committee, no politics, no polls, no BS.
No discrimination, total participation.
Totally democratic, no oligarchy.
4 Likes
Iâm all in brother. Even if it has to continue to evolve over time. A change to a more level playing field for all is necessary.
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I wouldnât complain.