8 is fine if it includes some sort of rule that every undefeated team gets in. I don’t care for a 4 loss Sun Belt or Mac getting into a playoff, but if one is undefeated, they deserve a shot. With that set up, every team in FBS has a chance of winning the championship.
Unfortunately, any playoff expansion will have to include the bowls as there is too much money invested in them to just drop them for home site games.
I’m right there with ya. I’ve been telling people this for years and adding that if they made a fair shot for all for the NC you would actually grow new viewership as non-traditional powers became powers in their own right.
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Yeah, bowls have been the reason for no playoff and extremely slow expansion of the playoff. I was actually in favor of a +1 system instead of a 4 team playoff. Let the bowls play out and then take the #1 and #2 for the championship. You could do that with a 4 team playoff after the bowls also with a requirement you have to win your bowl (should have gotten UCF in it last year). It lets the bowl games still be important and expands the playoffs. Thinking outside the box will not happen in college football though.
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No committee. You will just get more of the same. I like the 10 champs plus 2 with the top 4 teams getting a bye. Champ plays 16 games. It is a win win. Regional bowls can host if you want to keep an outdated bowl system kicking.
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If you’re talking about inviting all conference champs or something, I don’t think a first round matchup with 8-5 Northern Illinois as a 35 point underdog to Bama is the solution for the particular problem the people concerned about interest in the playoff want to fix.
But Bama would be on bye in the first round, so 8-5 NI would play like 9-3 Washington
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6,8 or 9 is a non starter. You can be certain that the cartel will come with the same preposterous comment that an undefeated G5 does not belong. All conferences champions should be represented with four or five at large. The cartel does not like? What about a Georgia or Alabama bolting to the AAC if they feel like it and think they can dominate easy. The cartel has dismantled local rivalries because they are the cartel. It is time congress intervenes for this scam of a so called competition.
The cartel needs to be taken to court. Mrs. Khator made a huge statement about the implications of the P5’s vs. donations. This is about perception & money. This is not about education or sport. When Carl Lewis is explaining that the cartel figures head are trying to do the same thing to athletics (see Patrick’s post in T&F) this is even more concerning than I originally thought.
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If we go by this years rankings assuming it’s all conference champs and 2 wild cards, they’d play UGA and maybe be a 33.5 point underdog.
Note that this year against P5 opponents NIU lost to 9-4 Iowa 33-7 on the road, 9-5 Utah 17-6 at home, and 37-19 at 5-7 FSU.
For another conference champs you want to see have a shot at Bama and Clemson, UAB’s lone game against a P5 was a 21 point loss to 9-4 A&M and they lost by 23 @ 5-7 Sun Belt Coastal Carolina out of conference.
Most of you would end up turning those games off in the first or second quarter.
Maybe, I am just assuming under this scenario to keep the facade alive, the 5 P5 champs would be 1-5, then the 2 at large, then the 5 G5
I wouldn’t. The beauty of the basketball tourney is to see the upsets. Trust me if a real CFP was implented with 12 teams, some of those sure losses you predicted would be upsets. That is why champions should be crowned on the field, not in the court of public opinion.
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Do you watch every minute of a 16 seed losing to a 1 seed by 40 points? Yeah, it’s exciting to see UMBC take down Virginia, or Duke lose to Mercer, but those are really rare and on Thursday and Friday you can flip over to a 12 seed going back and forth with a 5 while UNC stomps Iona.
Also, basketball has more variability making upsets more possible. I’m not going to take the time to look it up, but I doubt that a team that has finished in the top 10 in the AP has lost to a Sunbelt or MAC team in that season more than maybe once or twice in college football history.
The opening weekend of March Madness is my favorite time in sports, but it doesn’t really translate for college football.
How do you know? It hasn’t happened yet. 
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I don’t know honestly but I’ve heard it mentioned in the media as a concern.
The problem is, they are trying to make the bowls part of the system and they are just plain too expensive for most fans. The NCAA BB tourney tries to keep the games as regional as possible; but the bowls throw that out the window. You have Alabama and Clemson playing in California. Airfare from either tea’s fan base is very expensive, add on the high price of game tickets and high hotel prices and you just price it out of the range of most fans. Tack that on the price of their previous bowls and you have a major expenditure most just can’t afford.
Yes, basketball plays for 3 weekends and there are there is a group from each school that can afford to make all of them. But that is to fill a basketball arena, not a 100,00 seat stadium. Most will just pick a weekend and hope for the best.
I think the FCS level teams have their playoffs at the higher seeds home fields – that makes more sense to me. But, it is still expensive for the travelling teams and it gives a home field advantage, a perk for being higher ranked. But every team in the FCS division has a shot at the title. Oh yeah, it is an actual NCAA National Championship, unlike the CFP champion. Go look at the NCAA record books and tell me how many NCAA national football championships it shows for Div 1/FBS level teams. That’s actual NCAA sanctioned championships, not just polls or BCS and CFP champions.
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Mark D’onofrio or Frank Bush may be great high level FBS head coaches and we just don’t know because it hasn’t happened yet. However, we can make the best judgment based on what the data we do have indicates and can make a safe assumption that either would not be successful.
The SEC is 149-9 against the Sun Belt and I’m sure most of those wins were like WKU beating Kentucky the year Kentucky went 2-10 or Middle Tennessee beating Vandy three times in the early 2000’s when Vandy was atrocious. LA Monroe beat Bama in Saban’s first season when they won 7 games, which is solid but nothing to stump for playoff inclusion as a conference over. Troy’s win over LSU two years ago was pretty legit though. But that’s really, really rare.
Ticket prices for the NC game have cratered.
The ratings for uncompetitive semi finals is down.
It was dumb to have it on the 29th.
Yeah, the playoffs need to be fixed.
I also think playing the NC game on a Monday is a bad day to play it.
The ticket price cratering is obvious, it’s on there West coast this year with Southeastern teams It’s too much for most people to bear the brunt of two big trips especially to the Bay Area which is crazy expensive. I’m sure also there’s a small fraction of fans who won’t go because of political/ hate California reasons as well. It’s just a perfect storm of not great attendance. And resting wise it just doesn’t help that Clemson and Bama are just so far ahead of everyone that it’s almost always a race for third for everyone else.
You have no way of knowing TJCoog. You do not know what the next lotto numbers will be. Do you?
You play the games and then you have the answer. It is as simple as that.
The cfp is a scam to maximize the money that the P5’s can make. It is as simple as that.
By the way, in case you can predict the next lotto or Mega Lotto numbers please let us know.
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Of course I have no way. There’s no way to really know anything until it happens, but that’s about the worst argument you could make for really anything, especially to determine decision making in an industry worth billions. There’s a lot of evidence out there to indicate most of the time schools from the Sun Belt, MAC, etc. are going to get completely smoked if they play against the teams that are generally regarded as the 5th or 6th best in the country.
If you want to see all the conference champs play against each other that’s fine and your prerogative. But most people don’t and most people probably aren’t going to watch. Even people who claim they want a fair system. The once every twenty-thirty years event of a Sunbelt school knocking off an SEC team isn’t going to change that in aggregate. The article was specifically discussing issues with ticket sales and viewership. Not ways to make sure every one of the 120 FBS schools have the opportunity to play in the playoffs.
Let’s line up North Shore against Bama while we’re at it. They could win! You don’t know until they play the game!