What will it take to get a playoff system?

I think 12 teams takes too much away from the regular season. With 12 teams, truly undeserving teams are allowed in, and the highest rated teams are holding off once they've clinched a spot to rest their players. CFB will turn into NFL-lite.

 

I'm sorry about the long post in advance.

Quoting Nutriaitch…
The only way to field a true playoff, would be to completely eliminate any and all polls (human or otherwise).
From this statement it seems you believe that we should use conference champions. You don’t seem to have any confidence in rating systems. I think most college football fans believe that rankings have some legitimacy, and I would argue that a good rating system would go a long way in deciding which teams are the best in the nation. I don’t think the majority would disagree with that.

On the other hand, many fans believe that if you can’t win your conference you shouldn’t be playing in a single national championship game. At the same time, if there were a playoff, I believe most would have wanted to see Oklahoma in a playoff in 2003. More folks would have wanted to see Oklahoma get in than Kansas St considering what each team did the entire season.

What I propose is letting only the best teams in (setting a maximum number of teams and a minimum allowable ranking). I give auto-bids to the #1 and #2 teams. After that I give precedence to those teams that are conference champions.

Then I give teams from conferences that aren’t represented a chance. This seems to be a major source of contention with you. The logic behind this is that if one conference is over represented and other conferences are under represented, those other conferences are going to be unhappy. With a more diverse spread of teams, there is a better likelihood that the best teams from around the country are present. This eliminates most of the inconsistencies involved with ranking teams. Some highly rated teams will not be included, but it will be because they didn’t accomplish what they needed to during the regular season. Unlike Auburn in 2004 and USC in 2003, those teams will have had their chance on the field and failed.

Simply using conference champions is a flawed proposition because it is not uncommon to have a BCS conference champion that isn’t NC caliber. That is based on popular opinion and an entire season of data. In 2001, LSU didn’t belong in the NC picture. Looking at LSU’s entire season bears that out. The same can be said of last year. LSU had their opportunities during the regular season and did not capitalize. While LSU may have been one of the best teams in the nation, they did not deserve to play for a NC because they didn’t have a NC caliber season. No real college football fan wants to see college football turn into the NFL-lite. For that reason, playing for a NC must really be a reward for a NC caliber season.

By the way, I’m proposing a flexible playoff, a playoff involving between 2 to 8 teams, varying each season based on the way the season plays out.

 

I would agree with you, except that the 12-team playoff proposal I'm advocating gives some pretty big incentives to continue to win even after you think you're "clinched a spot".

For example, if you're in the top 4 and lose a game, you are susceptible to dropping out of the top 4, meaning you lose a potentially crucial bye week to recuperate. If you're in spots 5-8, you want to win because (a) if you win and a team above you loses, you might slip into the top 4 and get a bye week, and (b) if you lose you might fall out of the 5-8 spot, and thus lose a potentially crucial home game in the first round of the playoffs. And finally if you're in spots 9-12, you want to continue winning because you have a chance to move into the 5-8 spots if one or more teams lose ahead of you, and if you lose you may miss the playoffs completely.

So this would make more regular season games more meaningful for more teams, in my opinion.


P.S. - another factor... teams that are in the 9-12th spots the chance of being skipped over by a lower-ranked undefeated team, so that is yet another incentive for the higher-ranked teams to keep winning. And I would not be opposed to a rule that says that a team that doesn't win their own conference is ineligible for the bye week, assuming that their are enough conference champions ranked high enough to fill any remaining 1-4 slots.

 

You are correct. I have zero confidence in the rating system. People are subjective. They will give a vote to a team that has the bigger "name brand" to them over an upstart program, regardless of who is actually better. Do you really want home-field in the 1st round (a pretty big advantage in most stadiums), to go to the team we "think" is better. Or would you prefer for that to be settled completely on the field? Think about how wrong the experts, and rankings have been just in the last few years. Is that the syatem you want deciding seeding, home-field, or who even gets to go?

 

While I personally agree with you, and want a completely "on the field results" type of ranking, the reality is we are more likely to get some variation of a 4-team playoff than we are to change the way the rankings are done.

I'd rather expand the playoff spots to more than 2, and then push for better rankings down the road. I think that as time goes on, people will be more comfortable using a system that is not dependent on human voters, but we're not there yet.

 

If this ever does ig put into play, I'll bet you a beer or 2, that there is controversy at least 3 out of 5 years regarding who is in and who is out.:thumb:

 

I have little doubt that you're right, and I personally would welcome the controversy (since I want more than just a 4-team playoff), it will lessen the controversy's legitimacy with the public at large.

 

You've got some points there, but I simply do not believe in any year you can find 12 teams that truly deserve to play for a NC in any given year. Inviting 12 teams makes the NC less prestigious and takes some of the excitement out of the regular season. It makes the regular season less like a playoff. I think by the end of the season there has been enough interaction that a narrowing down of teams that deserve to play for the NC is mostly obvious, and rarely is that number more than a handful of teams. Including 12 teams might do more damage to college football than good, IMO. I really believe a playoff needs to be small. (Not to mention, including 12 teams takes away from the pool of teams for bowls - a smaller playoff is better for the bowls, which are good for college football).

Some people, like me, have ranking systems based solely on what happens on the field. I don't think the BCS is all it should be and I'd like to see a less "human" (biased/flawed/ignorant) influence on ranking. That said, even the faulty BCS is usually close enough to have the best teams at the top - all contenders are at the top by the end of the season (with the exception of nonBCS teams). The complaints you bring up are petty when considering what we have now, and no matter how you structure a playoff, problems in seeding exist. We'll never have a perfect system, but we can approach perfect.

If we use only conference champions, there are going to be more teams that don't belong than if we were to use my system. If we use only seeding, some conferences will get shut out and some conferences will have multiple teams, likely leading to rematches more often than most would like. There would be a question about how accurate the ratings really were and how the ratings are biased to favor one style of play or another. Neither is better than a mixture of the two.

 

Some good points from you as well!

My take...

1) Look at this current season... how many teams at this point realistically have a decent shot at the title game? Maybe 6-10 max? Do the other 110+ teams that are NOT one of those 6-10 teams think that the rest of their regular season is irrelevant? Some might, but a lot don't. They are still playing hard, trying to win their conference, trying to make it to the best bowl possible, etc. With a 12-team playoff, now you'll have probably 20 teams at the mid-way point of the season (maybe more) who would not only want to do those things (win their conference, etc.) but also have a realistic chance of making the national championship game. That sounds like lots of exciting games to me, with a lot on the line. I don't see it damaging college football, and with 120 teams available, giving just 12 a chance at the title is still a LOT lower percentage-wise than any other sport that I can think of.

2) With the increase in parity, I think we will see more and more teams that can have good case to be made to have a shot at the title in a multi-round playoff. We'll probably have fewer and fewer undefeated teams as the years go on.

Right now a Rutgers/South Florida game like last night is important/exciting to a handful of teams - with a larger playoff field that type of game could be just as meaningful to a larger number of teams.

Your parenthetical exception is important when that non-BCS team is undefeated, in my opinion. I hate the idea that a team can win all of their games have not have a chance at the national championship.

But the ratings, flawed as they are, are "good enough", in my opinion, to make sure that if 12 teams get in, all of the truly deserving teams are in there. Sure, there would be arguments over seeding ("How the hell did USC get a first-round bye when they lost to Stanford!"), but at least the teams are in the playoffs, which is immensely "better" than not being in the playoffs.

First, just to recap my point of view, I don't think my 12-team playoff system has a shot in hell of being implemented anytime in the next decade or two. But I do think we have a chance at a 4-team system pretty soon (within 5 years I hope). I'm sure that the rules would be devised to prevent one conference from filling more than 2 slots in a 4-team playoff (similar to the current rules with the BCS bowls).

 

Guys, we may be missing something here. This season may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened for the pro BCS crowd and the worst thing that could have happened for the pro playoff crowd. All these upsets and teams getting knocked off the top and if there's controversy at the end.............It's is generating an even more rabid interest in college football than any year prior. I don't think the school presidents are going to want to change a system that creates the kind of interest in CFB like we've seen this season.