It's simple... history shows us pretty clearly that it's not always (or even usually) easy to identify the two most deserving teams. Texas, USC, and Auburn go undefeated in 2004. But Auburn started off ranked in the mid-teens, while Texas and USC started much higher (maybe #1 and #2). So who makes it into the championship game? With 4 spots instead of 2, you're now allowing in these too-close-to-call teams to settle it on the field. Sure, it's not perfect - there could be a deserving team that finishes at #5. And then maybe we'd get a 6-team playoff with the top 2 getting a bye week. But 4 teams are better than 2, so for now that is what we should be pushing for.
Agreed. I think anything more than 4 teams is going to get even more convoluted. Especially since a 4 team scenario would fit better into the BCS bowl rotation. I think it would be very difficult to try to fit more than 4 teams into a playoff and still get the BCS bowls to agree.
They started the season unranked. Then they had to slowly work their way up the polls. We had 2 losses before they even entered the polls. Other than the loss @ Michigan, and a 3 point win @ Iowa, they won every other game by at least a TD, most of them Blow-outs. If they had started in the top 10-15, they would have probably finished above us. So they don't get into the playoffs now, because not enough people predicted them to be good in the pre-season. How is that any better than what happened to Auburn in '04?
No, definitely not better. It's obvious no system would be perfect but I think a 4 team playoff would fit better in the current BCS bowl system as opposed to a 6 or more playoff.
That is probably true, although a 6, 8, or 12-team playoff could also be worked into the bowl system if needed, without the BCS bowls coming out on the short end of the stick. The BCS's piece of the financial pie may shrink in terms of percentage, but the overall pie will be larger, giving everyone more money. In my opinion, at least. Here's the thing... we are arguing about what I think of as minor details. Conference champions only, does margin of victory play a role, do human voters deserver a role, should each conference have a maximum number of teams that can make the playoffs, will special rules be implemented to get undefeated teams a better chance, will Notre Dame have a special rule, etc. The more important detail is this - let's get to a 4-team playoff, and THEN let's see how it works out for a few years! We know that the BCS system can be tweaked, because they tweak it almost every year. So the best way forward is to tweak it by expanding to 4 teams. Then we can push for further tweaks as needed.
That's why I decided on a flexible playoff. Some years the #4 team or the #6 team or the #8 team may not be deserving. The teams I included in the playoff in 2006 were decided by a set of guidelines that selected only 4 teams the year before. As a sidenote, since 1995 there were never less than 4 teams selected, and I think 6 was the most. If more than 4 teams are to participate in the playoff, the lowest ranked teams will play at the home of a higher rated playoff participant, with the highest rated teams getting byes if there are an odd amount of teams involved in the playoff. This deals with the attendance issue (fans can't travel to 3 or more bowl games during the holiday season), this keeps the BCS bowls only involved in the final and semifinal, and it keeps the secondary bowls as they are, and actually better most years because the BCS bowls currently devour 10 top teams, weakening the pool of teams the secondary bowls can pull from. Wisconsin doesn't get in because they aren't a conference champion. I say leave it up to the conferences how they determine their conference champion. I'm not totally opposed to allowing in non-champions, but if Wisconsin isn't #2 and Wisconsin's conference is already represented by a conference champion, unless Wisconsin beat the conference champion, Wisconsin was shafted by the B10's no conference championship policy, not the BCS.
So, according to this ^^ paragraph, We take out Michigan, because they didn't win their conference (if that's the reason one team is left out, all teams with that distinction gets left out), and OU gets in. OU was ranked higher than USC pre-bowl games (which is when the bracket would be formed). So, #'s 1 (OSU),2(Florida),5 (Louisville),7(OU),8(USC),9(Boise) all get in, but 3,4,6 all get left home? So you're using rankings to decide who goes, but you leave out 3 teams in favor for 3 teams with a worse ranking?
I think the school presidents have a lot more to do with it than anyone. So far they have opposed a playoff system. Also, I would prefer an 8-game system.
