Expand the Playoff... and here's how

[jbhtexas]

I think you're posting with your heart by reminiscing on bowl games of yesteryear. Bowl games don't have the appeal they once did and it's trending downward. The main storylines from this bowl season are who didn't play and who even cared to be there.

Well, perhaps there was an extenuating circumstance or two this year that skewed those storylines...

As mentioned already, the conferences that don't have round-robin schedule pretty much need a conference championship game to determine their champion.

The current format engages about 1/2 of the the FBS fansbases through the end of December. The proposed 24-team format removes a connection to the post season for about 4/5 of the FBS fanbases in late November. From a marketing standpoint, that doesn't seem like a good idea...

 

[Urbandale2013]

I think you're posting with your heart by reminiscing on bowl games of yesteryear. Bowl games don't have the appeal they once did and it's trending downward. The main storylines from this bowl season are who didn't play and who even cared to be there.

There's plenty of teams like Iowa State that are up and coming that love to play, but those teams are fewer and farther in between anymore.

If you continue to see disinterest in the bowls I think people are more likely to be ok with a bigger playoff. That said I don’t think it makes sense to give up on the bowls yet. I think this year had more opt outs as people were just tired by the end of the year.

I think going to 8 and having auto bids will help the bowls. It brings more teams into the conversation for the playoff and continues the interest for more teams. If it doesn’t then we can talk about a much bigger playoff. I want to bring interest back to the bowls.

 

[cycfan1]

Need to find a better way to promote parity in college football first.

A 24 team playoff is worthless if only 3 teams have a legitimate shot every single year.

Lot of argument on who deserved to get in this year, but none of which stand a chance at winning a title.

 

[beentherebefore]

Maybe just limit the number of bowls? Maybe there should never be more bowls than what would allow for half of the FBS teams to qualify. So if there are 120 FBS teams, there should be no more than 30 bowl games. That qualifies 60 teams. Maybe that is too many. There has to be a balance.

 

[Al_4_State]

I think you're posting with your heart by reminiscing on bowl games of yesteryear. Bowl games don't have the appeal they once did and it's trending downward. The main storylines from this bowl season are who didn't play and who even cared to be there.

There's plenty of teams like Iowa State that are up and coming that love to play, but those teams are fewer and farther in between anymore.

I just really don't understand this change. Bowls have always been glorified exhibitions whose "meaning" was just derived from people deciding they cared. They alter the meaning of the season no less or more than ever.

It's always fascinating to me how people just arbitrarily decided to care less about this. When we had the BCS, it was a 2 team playoff. We literally added 2 teams. The amount the bowls actually matter is as insignificant now as it was 20 years ago.

 

[WooBadger18]

If we can't venerate the hallowed Bad Boy Mowers Gasperilla Bowl then what have we become?

****ty bowl jokes aside, Bowls and the regional conference rivalries are what made FBS football the greatest American sport. The quickest way to neuter it is to make it into the NFL lite.

If playoffs are here to stay they should integrate the traditional Bowls better than they do now. OU is a perfect example. OU was playing some of the best football in the nation at the end of the season, better than their dumb CFP ranking. They should have played in their natural Bowl (Orange) vs the natural opponent (Clemson?) and THEN been evaluated for some playoff whether it's a plus one, plus three, or whatever...

Negating the traditional Bowls is dangerous, these need to remain at all costs:

Rose (b10 / p12)
Orange (b12 / ACC)
Sugar (SEC / at large)
Cotton?
Fiesta?
Peach?
Citrus?
Sun?
Holiday?

No rankings until after these are played.

I just don't know what waiting until after the bowl season does for you except expand the season (and I think at that point there's a question about whether it's too long of a season). But that's why I do like the solution of having an 8 team playoff (5 p-5 auto bids), 2 at-larges, best g5 rep) and just having that first round be your traditional bowls. So that's how you get the traditional matchups in the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl (I didn't follow college sports until after the Big 12 formed, so the Big 12 has always gone to the Fiesta Bowl for me). I think it would be a great way to marry those two systems, would be a unique format, and would still be a really good competitive format.

 

[beentherebefore]

Need to find a better way to promote parity in college football first.

A 24 team playoff is worthless if only 3 teams have a legitimate shot every single year.

Lot of argument on who deserved to get in this year, but none of which stand a chance at winning a title.

If a majority of the very best players decide to attend the schools with the very best teams, then parity will not likely happen. But what college to attend (other than they highly selective schools) is still generally the choice of the student, so I would hate to see scholarship limits or "recruit drafts." An expanded playoff does give more teams a chance, though.

 

[WooBadger18]

Maybe just limit the number of bowls? Maybe there should never be more bowls than what would allow for half of the FBS teams to qualify. So if there are 120 FBS teams, there should be no more than 30 bowl games. That qualifies 60 teams. Maybe that is too many. There has to be a balance.

But does it really matter how many bowls there are? If I don't care about a bowl like the Motel 6 Bowl in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, then I don't watch it. But what does it matter if it exists?

 

[Isualum13]

How do bowl games work if the playoff goes to 8? Orange, Rose, Fiesta end up being first round games? If that's the case would be weird to win a trophy for winning in the first round but losing in semi final.

I have posted this before, but expand the playoffs by virtue of a play-in game. Top 8 seeds play for one of 4 spots in the semi finals. Get rid of a bye week or start the season a week sooner, and play the play-in game the first or second weekend in december.

4 teams to the semi finals all the eligible teams, including those that lost the play-in game, go off to their bowl game.

 

[awd4cy]

I have posted this before, but expand the playoffs by virtue of a play-in game. Top 8 seeds play for one of 4 spots in the semi finals. Get rid of a bye week or start the season a week sooner, and play the play-in game the first or second weekend in december.

4 teams to the semi finals all the eligible teams, including those that lost the play-in game, go off to their bowl game.

That's not a bad idea. I kinda like something like that.

 

[BMWallace]

The four team format and the CFP committee make the current version of the playoff the worst possible option for the college football. Of the 130 teams in FBS, only 66 (P5+ND) have a viable path to the playoff. Of those 66, the committee has shown that it will give preference to the schools that have larger brands when they have the choice. At the end of the day, the current version is not a true playoff, but an Invitational designed to draw the most viewers posible and generate the most revenue.

The four team format also creates feedback loops that are damaging the future of the sport. In the 7 years of the CFP, 11 schools have been selected, and 5 of those schools account for 22 of the 28 total participants. Much like in college basketball, being able to say that your team made it to the playoff is a major recruiting tool. And it has allowed the top tier of programs to expand their advantages in the recruiting world, which gives them a higher chance of repeated success. What has resulted is a stagnant hierarchy at the top of college football, and a growing sense of apathy toward those programs by the general college football fandom.

If the FBS would transition to a 16 or 24 team playoff, that would open the door for more programs to reach the playoff/tournament and give recruits more options for schools with a viable chance to compete for a national title. More teams also gives more possibility for compelling stories. Again to draw on the comparison to basketball: a team like Coastal or Louisiana could have a Cinderella like run similar to Loyola, and programs like Boise and Cincinnati could become like Gonzaga and Villanova as teams that consistently punch above their weight class and are given the chance to actually compete.

 

[Aclone]

If you guys are going to repeatedly obsess over this, would you put threads like this in General College Sports instead of the Cyclone Football forum, please?

I’d just prefer not to have my Cyclone football feed cluttered with things not actually about, well, Cyclone football.

 

[ISUCyclones2015]

If you guys are going to repeatedly obsess over this, would you put threads like this in General College Sports instead of the Cyclone Football forum, please?

I’d just prefer not to have my Cyclone football feed cluttered with things not actually about, well, Cyclone football.

But we're gonna make the playoffs next year so it IS about us

 

[Aclone]

But we're gonna make the playoffs next year so it IS about us

Yes, but that’s true whether it’s 4 or 8.

 

[20eyes]

I just don't know what waiting until after the bowl season does for you except expand the season (and I think at that point there's a question about whether it's too long of a season). But that's why I do like the solution of having an 8 team playoff (5 p-5 auto bids), 2 at-larges, best g5 rep) and just having that first round be your traditional bowls. So that's how you get the traditional matchups in the Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and Fiesta Bowl (I didn't follow college sports until after the Big 12 formed, so the Big 12 has always gone to the Fiesta Bowl for me). I think it would be a great way to marry those two systems, would be a unique format, and would still be a really good competitive format.

My frame of reference for playoffs in college begins and ends in 1997 when UNL & Michigan both claimed to be National Champs (UM winning the Rose Bowl, UNL winning the Orange Bowl). Personally, a shared championship never bothered me. And to this day I don't understand wanting to diminish the weight of a conference championship in FBS.

Why not go back to 1997, wait for a similar dispute and solve it with a plus one game? Or simply have a plus one based on post bowl (AP) ranking?

 

[BMWallace]

As something of a tangent, there has been some early rumbling that the next round of realignment that is expected in the next few years won't start at the P5 level, but between the bottom G5 and the top FCS. We could see a situation where the 254 schools that comprise D-1 football split into 3 levels. This shuffle is largely being driven by costs operating costs for the lower G5s and opportunity of better competition for the top of FCS.

The result could be a restructured FBS with something like 80 to 100 teams, and the consolidation of G5. This would also be likely to raise the competition floor within the FBS, so moving to a 16 team playoff within that reduced pool greatly increases the odds of participation for everyone still involved.

Say as a hypothetical, this restructure ends up with 100 teams in 8 conferences and no FBS independents, a 16 team playoff could be structured as the 8 conference champions and 8 at-large bids. This gives every team a legitimate shot at reaching the playoff, and, over time, will allow for more opportunities for those schools that currently do not have a legitimate path to a championship.

 

[isucy86]

I'm torn. I tend to agree with everything you said, but I found myself liking the 24 team idea more as I read through it all. Having conferences give up their conference championship games could be a tough battle, though, especially in the larger conferences where teams don't all play each other and have very different schedules.

I do love the idea of giving the top 8 seeds another home game. That gives fans another opportunity to see one more game without the travel cost.

With the 24 team playoff as @dualthreat laid out, the first round of playoffs would basically resemble the current early slate of bowl games, but there would be additional incentive to watch knowing that the results would factor into the next round of matchups. Cinderella stories are what make the first weekend of March Madness great, and this could have a similar effect to viewership. The unknown location of these games does lead to my main concern, however.

The networks would be giving up guaranteed sponsorship contracts that are currently tied to bowl games. Without knowing the location of the games until 1-2 weeks beforehand, I'm not sure the revenues can be replicated that quickly. And if the networks don't make their money, I'm not sure this concept ever gets off the ground.

I agree a 24 team football playoff would generate a lot of interest in December. But IMO it would decrease fan interest in Sep to Nov.

Also, we have seen some pretty uncompetitive games with just 4 teams. If Bama can dominate Notre Dame, how close will a 2nd round game against the 16/17 seed be?

Not sure trading bad bowl games for a handful of uncompetitive playoff games is a good trade-off.

Also the potential of a college football team playing 16 games (seeds 9-24) is not all that appealing to me from a physical wear & tear and academics for the players.

I do think there are some cool ideas on expanding playoffs if conference championship games are eliminated. But in reality the 5 conference championship games are playoff games today.

I also agree it could be neat if the current conferences were blown up and geographic conferences were created. But this would require the P5 schools negotiate TV contracts singularly like the NFL.

 

[VeloClone]

I don't think there is anything magical about a 12 game season. Not that long ago it was 11 games. Mandate it as a 11 game season and also mandate a minimum number of conference games so that a league (cough...SEC...cough) can't make their teams' road to the playoff easier than everyone else's. Then an expansion to an 8 team playoff isn't expanding anyone's season beyond what we see now.

Even if you don't reduce the number of regular season games, one more game for two teams beyond what is the max right now isn't going to kill anyone. If a team gets tired of having to play the extra game every year they can always opt out of the championship playoff.

 

[Clonefan94]

But does it really matter how many bowls there are? If I don't care about a bowl like the Motel 6 Bowl in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, then I don't watch it. But what does it matter if it exists?

This has always been my thing. I know people love to rail on the number of bowls, but if you aren't putting up the money, who gives a **** if someone else does? I just don't get all the people complaining about it.

There are so many of these reality type shows on TV and I don't like any of them. I certainly don't obsess over getting them cancelled, I just don't give a ****. If they come on, I change the channel, I don't think, "These all need to be cancelled, the are a waste of time."

 

[MNCYWX]

There's a lot of money tied into bowl games (more than just the networks too). They won't be going away.