A four-team, two-weekend playoff is the most likely scenario. Otherwise it would kill the bowl games and that is a lot of money. There are rarely more than four teams in contention by December. Whoever comes in 5th should have just been luckier.
...that doesn't make any sense at all. And anything less than an 8 team playoff is asking for too much whining and not including cinderella's, which is part of the point of a playoff.
Yes it does make sense. Highschool players have no choice where they play. Our local highschool sucked for 5 years straight .. .the last two years they've been in the playoffs! The only reason they are in the playoffs is because they have no choice where they go to school, and as luck would have it, they have a good team this year. In pro football, it doesn't matter, because ALL the players are top tier players. Teams are allowed to compete for the best talent with salary and perks. Thus, the Saints, who were the worst fricken team in Pro Football for all of my life ... won the Superbowl last year. In Div I college football, players DO have a choice where they go, but the teams cannot compete for the players with perks etc. As a result, the "name" and its resume are all we have. As a result, the SEC is running away with College Football! Putting a playoff in place will completely marginalize the other conferences over time. You'll end up with a playoff with LSU, FL, Bama, AU, Georgia, AR, OU, OHS and USC or Oregon every year. Or you're going to get a bunch of Boise's in the playoff who will be stomped down ... leading to the same scenario you have now, with a second place team in another conference being left out. That will become just plain boring after a while. .. or it will lead to the same kind of moaning and complaining that exists. The answer, IMO, is to clean up the ranking system in the current Bowl system ... and create scheduling that ensures equal strength of schedule opportunity across all conferences. An example is Boise .. if they want to play in the NC game, they need to be allowed to sched top tier teams in their sched on their off conference weekends, and the rules should be made such that top tier teams must accomodate to prevent them from collaborating to keep the non BCS conferences out of the NC. You may be all pro-playoff .. but I can guarantee you that unless you start with a lot of teams, like they do in Basketball, someone is going to cry foul The ONLY way to make a Playoff "fair" is to start at the very beginning of the season, with all 138 teams entered into the bracket. Then let the season progress from their and eliminate conferences altogether.
A playoff system will bring in more revenue (even the former Big Ten commissioner admitted in front of a congressional committee that a playoff would likely bring in 3 to 4 times the amount of revenue that the current system brings in), and would likely allow the likes of Boise State, TCU, etc. to make the playoffs more often than they make it into the current system, so that means more money overall, including more money for the smaller conferences, which means that they'll be able to fund their football teams better, which means they'll be more likely to attract upper recruits and coaches. So I think a playoff would lead to less boring football, and despite some claims to the contrary, I don't see why a small playoff would kill off the entire bowl system. We have a 2-team playoff now, and have had one for over 10 years, and we have more bowls now than ever before. I believe that there are 35 bowl games this year. If the BCS bowls were used for the final 4 teams of any proposed playoff system, the other bowl games could still happen with any available (i.e., non-playoff) teams.
Like I said .... The ONLY way that you have a successful playoff in College Football that is fair to all involved is to eliminate conferences all together. Have 4 or 5 scheduled games to allow seeding of the brackets, then, you start out with 128 teams .. or whatever it is the first game of the "tournabment", that gets cut to 64 teams for game 2, 32 teams for game 3, 16 teams for game 4, 8 teams for game 5, 4 teams for game 6, and a NC on game 7. That is the ONLY way you can remove all bias from the system. Trying to start a playoff with 4 or 8 teams just leads to more bias and moaning. That gives you a total of 11 or 12 games for the season, and the NC is determined by the total play. Further, Play gets tougher and tougher throughout the season for every team leading up to the final game. ... then the BCS can put whoever they want in the Exibition Bowl Games on New Years. I mean ... most bowls are regional anyway.
I disagree. Going from 2 teams to 4 teams means 2 additional teams get a chance. Going to 8 teams means that 6 additional teams get a chance. I don't see why that's would lead to more bias/moaning.
Why do you disagree??? Using your own logic ..... my plan is ideal. Starting with the entire 128 teams provides equal opportunity for all. Starting with any number less than the entire field means someone has to "choose" who's going to be in the playoff, and that will lead to the same moaning and groaning that we are hearing today. The garbage such as choosing the conference or division champs I've been hearing thrown around is just that ... garbage. This year, the SEC West is clearly the toughtest conference in the nation. So .. in a playoff scenario where you start with 8 teams, the bracket is going to consists of LSU, Bama, AU, and who's to say that AR and MSU couldn't take it to an Oregon or Boise?? I'd be willing to bet AR could crush just about any team in any of the other conferences. GA and SC are not slouches either. So ... concievably, this year, 6 of your 8 teams should be SEC teams. Do you think that wouldn't cause an uproar in the other conferences???? Unless it's a true elimination trounament, I'm opposed to it. IF it is going to involve the same subjective "choosing" .. then we might as well stay with the current BCS system.
Take the winners of the 4 BCS games and have a 3 game playoff. There would still be minor controversies over the at large bids, but at least the game is settled on the field and you still keep the other bowls in tact. The Sugar winner faces the Rose winner in game 1, then Orange winner vs Fiesta winner in game 2. Take the winners of those 2 games to play for the NC. Now there would be push back for adding more games to the schedule, but it really only amounts to 2 games. The BCS bowl games would be played anyway. Plus, there's such a long layoff between the end of the season and the bowl games that 2 extra games would not matter much. Why wouldn't this work?
Sorry - I shouldn't have quoted that line of yours about removing all bias. That's not really my personal goal - I'll settle for a better system. And 4 teams are better than 2 teams, but 32 teams aren't better than 16 teams (in my opinion). There's a "sweet spot", and many people argue where that spot is - for some, it's 2 teams (the status quo). For others, it's all Div. 1-A teams. For most people, I bet it's somewhere around 8-12 teams.
A small playoff (4-8 teams) would not kill the bowls. It would actually make the pool of teams the bowls pull from sweeter than the current BCS orientation (which involves 10 teams). As for subjectivity, it is impossible to fully eliminate without making the entire season a full fledged playoff (it is already a playoff of sorts). Subjectivity isn't bad, the basketball tournament has it, and at the end of the regular season most experts concur there are a handful of teams that are most deserving to play for a NC. Teams will still get left out and I'm ok with that. The most deserving teams won't be left out and those that are (depending on size of playoff) really aren't NC material based on regular season performance.
