2024 College Football Playoffs

[Bishop2b5]

It was reasonable to argue that more than 4 teams each year would have some reasonable chance of winning the championship.
It's not reasonable to argue that there are 12 teams each year that have some reasonable chance.
The most it should be is 8 with no teams getting a bye.

This, all day long. Anything beyond 8 is a joke. There probably aren't even 8 teams with a real shot, but I get the idea of 8. Anything beyond that is just a participation trophy.

 

[ColoradoIrish]

It was reasonable to argue that more than 4 teams each year would have some reasonable chance of winning the championship.
It's not reasonable to argue that there are 12 teams each year that have some reasonable chance.
The most it should be is 8 with no teams getting a bye.

If someone wants to counter that the basketball tournament has way more teams than what is necessary or which have even a remote chance of winning. You are right. The difference is that football is a violent game and significant injuries will take place that could have a significant impact on who wins the championship. I'm not sure if the NCAA or most teams even care about though. It's all about the money. Let's expand it to 32 teams and everyone gets more money.

Agreed 8 is probably perfect, but we have the sec to thank for the current format

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

It was reasonable to argue that more than 4 teams each year would have some reasonable chance of winning the championship.
It's not reasonable to argue that there are 12 teams each year that have some reasonable chance.
The most it should be is 8 with no teams getting a bye.

If someone wants to counter that the basketball tournament has way more teams than what is necessary or which have even a remote chance of winning. You are right. The difference is that football is a violent game and significant injuries will take place that could have a significant impact on who wins the championship. I'm not sure if the NCAA or most teams even care about though. It's all about the money. Let's expand it to 32 teams and everyone gets more money.

I’m not advocating g for a large tournament. I’m advocating for a NFL style divisional winner playoff that requires no selection committee and no ambiguity. It’s objectively based on Winning your division.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

That's going to happen to no matter. If they're a "bad team" then what "good teams" got left out? I can watch and determine who a good team is vs whose a talented team. A good team finds a way to win. Bad talented teams find ways to lose. That describes the 3 sec teams that got left out. They shouldn't lose to the likes of Florida, LSU, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt, and they damn well shouldn't lose to multiple of those teams.

Since you so vehemently think SMU is a bad team, what good team(s) do you believe should've been in over them?

All these dumb arguments center around the “best teams” or “deserving” teams. No one can objectively define what these actually are and it devolves in the subjective eye test and arbitrary SoS arguments. None of that matters till a team plays a team and the win or loss is determined.

There is no way to objectively define what makes a team pass the eye test and SoS is worthless metric until after all games have been played because otherwise it requires arbitrary rankings before games have been played and then becomes a self fullfilling prophecy as the season goes on. For example the SEC and Big Ten will have five to six teams ranked at any given point in the year annd they start out that way arbitrarily… and then they get credit for beating ranked teams throughout the year. It’s simply a positive feedback loop.

FSU was 14-0 last year with a bunch of returning players and passed the “eye test” (and was full of NFL talent )through the preseason only to end up being terrible.

 

[FDNYIrish1]

Teams with real potential of winning it all were left out of the 4 team bracket. Who cares if 13-16 are bitching. You weren’t winning shit anyway.

 

[Dale]

Why? They were 13-0, ranked #1, and playing like a dominant team against good competition. My argument is that record alone doesn't tell an accurate story. You have to take into account who that record was achieved against, how well did a team play, how well did the coaches handle difficult situations, and etc. Teams with pretty records achieved against weak schedules and showing glaring weaknesses that would get exposed against good teams don't belong in the playoffs. This is the cause of most blowouts. I understand if a team loses 3 of their starting DB's or their star QB or such and get slaughtered. Not talking about that. I'm talking about mediocre teams who go 12-0 or 11-1 against air and we want to crown them as a legit top team. They're not. This is why SMU got killed this weekend. It's why Cincinnati got embarrassed against UF years ago. It's why the idea of putting the top FCS team into the playoffs is a joke. "But they're undefeated!" ranks right up there with "They're gonna win because they have the prettiest uniforms and a lion would beat a bulldog."

Right but this proves my point. If blowouts can happen to Alabama, and IU and a FCS team, blowouts should not be used as indicative of a team that should not have made the CFP.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Right but this proves my point. If blowouts can happen to Alabama, and IU and a FCS team, blowouts should not be used as indicative of a team that should not have made the CFP.

Alabama got blown out by soft as fuck Oklahoma team and had 3 losses. Somehow they should have been in over Indiana. Gtfoh

 

[Bishop2b5]

I’m not advocating g for a large tournament. I’m advocating for a NFL style divisional winner playoff that requires no selection committee and no ambiguity. It’s objectively based on Winning your division.

I'd be for this except for the fact that there's nowhere near the parity across conferences and divisions in college as there is in the NFL. There are some haves and have nots in CFB when it comes to conferences. You'd get rid of the problems with the committee picking who's in, but you'd end up with even more mismatches.

 

[Kingbish01]

My final 2 cents is this....You need the SMU and Indianas in the bracket, they deserve it. It fixes the UCF issues from years past...but let's be honest. The champion will more than likely come out of the top 4 maybe top 7. So in years past Bama, SC and Ole Miss wouldn't even be in the conversation...now they expanded to 12 and they think they are one of the best teams....that's a joke. You want in, win the SEC or at best lose a game...maybe 2. Other than that STFU already.

It was expanded more for the UCF and Boises of the world to have a shot even if it's a long one to win the Natty. Not so teams like Bama can lose to Vandys and OUs and still slip in. It's ridiculous! The SMU, Boise and ASU are exactly why it was expanded. IMO it worked. If this was last year it would have been Oregon, UGA, ND and the final spot would have been a fight between OSU, PSU and Texas. Boise and ASU wouldn't even have been talked about.

Rant over...Merry Christmas!

 

[Bluto]

With this format, the Cinderella idea is very appealing. Although I dislike Clemson, how great would it have been to see them make it to the final 4? Or SMU squeak a W against Penn State (we'd all have loved that!). Anything can happen in these games and although the top seeds won big in R1, there will be underdog W's somewhere in this playoff.

Hopefully it is Boise against Penn State. That would be fantastic.

 

[stlnd01]

This, all day long. Anything beyond 8 is a joke. There probably aren't even 8 teams with a real shot, but I get the idea of 8. Anything beyond that is just a participation trophy.

And what’s wrong with a participation trophy?

Seriously. The playoffs aren’t only about crowning a national champion. They’re also about expanding interest in the regular season, rewarding teams that had good years, etc.

SMU and Indiana and Boise aren't winning a championship but their fans had a hell of a lot more fun this year than they would have if the reward was a "meaningless" NY6 bowl that half their best players would've sat out. And then they got into the show! You think those IU fans Friday night would've been as jazzed for like the Peach Bowl against Boise? Because that's where they would've been last year. Even teams that missed the playoffs, like Bama and South Carolina and Ole Miss, had something to play for up through the end of the season as well. Their last games still mattered, when in prior seasons they would've just been playing out the string.

More games that matter is good for the fans and good for the sport. Even if - if anything - a three-to-four round playoff probably narrows the field of teams that can ultimately win the championship.

 

[wizards8507]

Not if you have a 16 team playoff formed by 16 divisions playing round robin style with a divisional winner and promotion/relegation. That’s about as clear cut as it gets. No ambiguity what-so ever.

You still have the possibility of a clearly worse 16 seed beating a clearly better 1 seed because football is weird and the best team doesn't always win. But over the course of a season, the best team tends to reveal itself under the weight of all the evidence.

Tournaments work in professional baseball, basketball, and hockey because you can play a 7 game series and the better team usually wins. Single-elimination tournaments don't have that luxury.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

You still have the possibility of a clearly worse 16 seed beating a clearly better 1 seed because football is weird and the best team doesn't always win. But over the course of a season, the best team tends to reveal itself under the weight of all the evidence.

Tournaments work in professional baseball, basketball, and hockey because you can play a 7 game series and the better team usually wins. Single-elimination tournaments don't have that luxury.

Again define the criteria for best team that is objectively true and how do you determine that which out teams playing each other.

 

[MNIrishman]

So should Alabama have been left out of the playoffs in 2018?

South Carolina and Syracuse were far more competitive with Clemson than ND or Alabama that year.

Every single sport has blowouts in their playoffs, even championships, for the life of me I don’t get why people make it a narrative thing in CFB.

Because it's another wedge issue to enable ESPN and Disney to artificially increase the value of their SEC investment. The same way the SEC suddenly got "better than everyone else" around 2008 when ESPN made their first big media investment there----the guys who tell you what the "eye test" results were had a big financial incentive to get you to ignore objective reality.

 

[Bishop2b5]

Alabama got blown out by soft as fuck Oklahoma team and had 3 losses. Somehow they should have been in over Indiana. Gtfoh

Nobody has made that argument here. You're making up a position to complain about that nobody is advocating for.

 

[INLaw]

It seems you would prefer the AP and no playoffs then.

Was always and am now a old bowl system and then a plus one

 

[mrmcgrail]

There are never 12 teams that are good enough to win it all. SMU deserved to make it they won 11 games and lost in the conference championship. The committee said the conference championship can't hurt you so technically you are looking at a 1 loss team compared to a 3 loss bama teams who had 3 losses

 

[TorontoGold]

What does the eye test tell you if get clowned in the second last game of the season? Idk I would prefer a team that is peaking to get in rather than “dude trust me”.

 

[yankeehater]

The playoff system has been and will always be about the money for everyone involved. That is why even after these embarrassing first round games they are still discussing expansion. In the history of college football, have you ever sat back at the end of a season and said man one of these twelve teams let alone sixteen rightfully could have won the championship.

 

[Irish du Nord]

Any given Saturday would demonstrate that the underdog is playing their best ball at the end of the season. To me-appealing.

Luck of the ball/bounce is how teams W every year. Even the best teams. GA v GT anyone?

If a 9-3 ND barely made the playoffs and Won it all doesn't give you a chub, then I can't help ya.

Brother, we’re never going 9-3 again.

 

[Blazers46]

Not sure of it’s been said but the goal was never to get the top 12 teams in. If so there would not be all these qualifiers and rules and they would just say top 12 teams, period. People are going to really get upset when Boise State and Arizona State get demolished as well.

 

[Pointman02]

Not sure of it’s been said but the goal was never to get the top 12 teams in. If so there would not be all these qualifiers and rules and they would just say top 12 teams, period. People are going to really get upset when Boise State and Arizona State get demolished as well.

This is exactly right. First of all, the idea is to attract money and expand the sport. From the standpoint on identifying a “true national champion” the idea is to make sure that any team that might have deserved to be #1 over the course of the season gets a chance to prove it on the field. So the 1 loss Boise State team whose only loss is on the road to #1 Oregon absolutely needs to be there. The middle of the SEC has no case that they should be #1, so they don’t need to be in the playoff. Really, we’re trying to prove on the field that the undefeated UCF or last year’s FSU don’t deserve a title. The regular season already proved that Alabama, South Carolina, and Ole Miss are not championship caliber. And yes, I think the number 1 ACC team in the regular season is more deserving than #5 in the SEC of getting a shot.

 

[GATTACA!]

I’m not advocating g for a large tournament. I’m advocating for a NFL style divisional winner playoff that requires no selection committee and no ambiguity. It’s objectively based on Winning your division.

If I wanted to watch this I would just watch the NFL exclusively. This sounds very boring.

 

[INLaw]

Not sure of it’s been said but the goal was never to get the top 12 teams in. If so there would not be all these qualifiers and rules and they would just say top 12 teams, period. People are going to really get upset when Boise State and Arizona State get demolished as well.

Correct. A non insignificant part of expansion is to end the sec+ohio state playoff every year. It’s not that they arent the best Or didnt deserve it but ncaaf has thrived because it is the sport that is weird and diverse. Baseball has had decades of yankees and nba decades of celtics. Ncaaf was getting real stale with the decade of saban and georgia saban and dabo saban. The by gawd fuck iu and smu moar bama moar ole miss sec sec sec. No one disagrees they would woop that hoosier ass but damnit yall have a conference and it made a champion. No one in the normal talking states wants to rewatch the sec schedule as a tournament.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

The idea of the Rose Bowl was to get Midwesterners to visit LA and move there. It's been commercial since day one.

Sure and that happening before I began to exist. I don’t care cuz I haven’t liked it since I became aware of it as a kid.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

If I wanted to watch this I would just watch the NFL exclusively. This sounds very boring.

It’s infinitely better than all the bitching and moaning through out every single season and the media content that is created to keep it going is dumb and mind numbing. There isn’t anything objective about selecting the best team. What does that even mean? At what point in time were they the best? Who decides it? Each fan? Of course that’s why it’s never ever settled who the best team is any given week or year because it’s completely arbitrary and subjective and it causes nothing but drama which is tiresome. I like the games but don’t like ESPN doing four hour shows on subjective selection of the top 12 teams using arbitrary and biased criteria that changes each week.

 

[ab2cmiller]

The problem with the “eye test” is that people will still see what they want to see.

They talk about how people’s biases impact eyewitness testimony. Same is true for anyone who relies on the “eye test” to pick between teams 12 and 13.

 

[GATTACA!]

It’s infinitely better than all the bitching and moaning through out every single season and the media content that is created to keep it going is dumb and mind numbing. There isn’t anything objective about selecting the best team. What does that even mean? At what point in time were they the best? Who decides it? Each fan? Of course that’s why it’s never ever settled who the best team is any given week or year because it’s completely arbitrary and subjective and it causes nothing but drama which is tiresome. I like the games but don’t like ESPN doing four hour shows on subjective selection of the top 12 teams using arbitrary and biased criteria that changes each week.

Then don’t watch it. No one is forcing you to watch espns panel shows.

There being subjectivity keeps the season interesting. Instead of teams knowing exactly what they need to do to win. Teams sitting players for meaningless games like the NFL. Losses meaning nothing.

CFB has the best regular season. A big reason why is because so many of the games matter.

 

[Cackalacky2.0]

Then don’t watch it. No one is forcing you to watch espns panel shows.

There being subjectivity keeps the season interesting. Instead of teams knowing exactly what they need to do to win. Teams sitting players for meaningless games like the NFL. Losses meaning nothing.

CFB has the best regular season. A big reason why is because so many of the games matter.

Then games don’t matter for the unranked teams or teams outside of the subjective rankings required to make the playoffs. They aren’t ever gonna get ranked high enough to get in

 

[Bishop2b5]

Then games don’t matter for the unranked teams or teams outside of the subjective rankings required to make the playoffs. They aren’t ever gonna get ranked high enough to get in

What do you think teams like Vandy, Wyoming, Fresno State, Tulsa, or dozen of other programs play for? They're never going to win a NC or likely to be ranked. They still play and their fans enjoy the games. They're just playing with a different set of expectations and goals.