ND will have to be perfect to get into a 4-team playoff, which has happened 4 times in 60 years.

They very well may have been the No. 1 team in the country if they had won out in November.

I think they do.

Why? I think recent reputation has a lot to do with it.

If we expand to 6, people will complain about team #7. If it moves to 8, people will complain about team #9. The notion of any 2 loss team getting a shot irritates me. And that will happen with an 8 team playoff. You'd put the number 8 team with a puncher's chance of beating #1 and then the college football world is on fire.

With a six team playoff, the 1 and 2 teams would automatically move to the second round and be pitted against the lowest seed possible:

- Round 1 played 2 weeks after the regular season ends:
- # 1 and #2: OFF
- # 3 plays #6, #4 plays #5 - These games would be home games for the higher seed.

- Round 2 played after Christmas at neutral sites:
- # 1 vs Lowest remaining seed, #2 vs The remaining seed.

- Championship - 2 weeks after Round 2:

It's unlikely in this scenario that a power 5 conference champion will be left out, unless they have 2 losses. ND will always have a chance especially if they are undefeated. Some team like UCF could make it in as well. This would also be predicated on the elimination of conference championship games. Emphasis would be put back on the regular season and strength of schedule should be heavily considered. Any scheduling of FCS teams should earn you extra demerits.

This year, Georgia would be in as #5 (11-2).

Last year, Ohio State would have been in as #5 (11-2).

In 2016, it would have been Penn State as #5 (11-2).

In 2015, Stanford would have been #6 (11-2).

2014 would have included Baylor at #5 & TCU at #6 (both 11-1), so a two-loss team wouldn't have been an issue.

Still, a two-loss team would have made the field in 4 of 5 seasons, and I assume things won't change dramatically in the years to come.

People need to less involved.

Further, in my scenario, Georgia would have only lost 1 game. And any two loss team that would have made it would at least have a more difficult path than the #1 and #2 team. Under an 8 team format, difficulty of games aside, the path to the championship is the same.

And that’s what this format forces. I love that the BigN is out.

the current one.

This one was designed by the conferences for the conferences and two of them are missing out every year.

That friction is not sustainable IMO. And now Notre Dame is “dancing” and the entire Big N and PAC N are stuck on the sidelines.

Their pain is accute.

and NFL style, national rotating schedules are established to assure equalized schedule comparisons. This will only appease the two to three traditional powers in each conference; all others are props. I want to see Alabama playing outside the southeast four times a year. Too many apples and oranges today. Same old arguments will still exist unless meaningful changes are made.

teams in it are into the playoff with a win. Further, each conference has different rules for picking division champs when there are ties, so it's not even guaranteed to be the best team from half of the conference, let alone from the conference. If Northwestern had won, there was no chance in hell they deserved to be in the playoff this year. Washington and Utah played - neither was worthy of consideration. So the championship game has already been eliminated from consideration when it suits the committee. Therefore, it is a meaningless extra game. Now, if the conference wanted to put their best teams up against each other on an ad hoc basis (gee, like the Bowls used to be...) that would be fine - they'd get their money and leave the rest of the system in place.

And the same applies to basketball. Do away with football games against Tulsa and The Citadel in football and pretty much every December game in basketball. Play real competition.

An undefeated season should be as rare in NCAA Football as it is in the NFL.

And include all the conferences, including the non-Power 5 ones. 11 conference champions plus five at-large selections.

-Play the games on campus the first couple rounds

-Dump the conference title games

-Dump most of the bowls until the final four and title game

-Switch to an 11-game schedule

Like MLB and its 162 game schedule, they have tasted the money and they like it.

FBS football is the only NCAA sport that doesn't allow every conference champion into its post-season tournament.

Heaven forbid that the big name schools have to play the best of the little guys.

If it was 8, 16, or even 32, UMUC would not have been in it.

That'd be pretty fun! 12-0 vs 0-12. Who would that hurt? What's the risk? The symmetry is too beautiful to ignore.

First, App State won its conference, so I'm not advocating for terrible teams.

Second, if Bama can't beat App State in the Round of 8, it probably isn't the best team in the country.

Third, if App State beats Bama...then beats Georgia...and then beats Clemson to win the national title, who am I to argue with App State being crowned champs? They'd finish with a 13-2 record with wins over three teams likely to finish in the top 6-7 in the final poll. Who would have a better resume than that?

into a championship situation?

Who cares about hypotheticals? Every team has 12 to 13 games to justify a position in the final 4. If they're in a weaker conference, then they need to schedule better OOC. If UCF honestly can't find teams to play (without a home and home reqt - tough shit UCF, maybe you have to play an away game without a home game in return), then maybe the answer is to have the NCAA intervene with scheduling incentives. The answer isn't to open the door to anyone with 2 losses because "what if they won every game in the playoff??"

won with barely a winning record.

chances of chicanery knocking ND out in favor of a conference champion. To put it another way, in most seasons I believe we would be deserving of a playoff spot at 11-1, but we would almost always get knocked out in the current system by a 1-loss conference champion. Expanding it to 8 would eliminate that problem because then we would be compared -- at worst -- to a conference runner-up.

I also think it's a natural progression to eliminating conference championship games in favor of an additional round of playoffs. Wouldn't add any additional games in the overall, overall either (although of course it would add a game for us if we reached the finals).

In 1964 there were 24 teams in the NCAA Basketball tournament.

In 1964 the football season started September 26 and ended Thanksgiving weekend NOv. 28. 10 games and the students were in class before and after the season.

With a team ranked 8th at the end of the season actually having an opportunity to play for and win the national title?


That’s just absurd, in my view.

If we are 8th, we wouldn’t be getting screwed, we wouldn’t have earned it on the field during the season

But still crap.

Just to make sure we're on the same page.

Since the CFB playoff started:

2014
5- Baylor 11-1
6 - TCU 11-1
7 - Miss St 10-2
8 - MSU 10-2

2015
5- Iowa 12-1
6 - Stanford 11-2
7 - Ohio St 11-1
8 - ND 10-2

2016
5 - PSU 11-2
6 - Michigan 10-2
7 - Oklahoma 10-2
8 - Wisconsin 10-3

2017
5 - Ohio St - 11-2
6 - Wisconsin 12-1
7 - Auburn 10-3
8 - USC 11-2

2018
5 - UGA 11-2
6 - OSU 12-1
7 - Michigan 10-2
8 - UCF 12-0


I just don't see any of those teams that really should have a shot at the national title based on how they performed.

In 2014 Baylor and TCU absolutely deserved a shot. In fact the team that should have been #6 that year, Ohio State, wound up winning the whole thing. Just about every year since there are 1-3 teams in those lists that could have played for the national title. Also, due to the arbitrary nature of the playoff rankings, some of those teams which made it off the list and into the playoffs might have been no stronger than the ones listed just outside.

I don't see the crime in including all of them in an 8-team playoff. Any eventual winner would be historically credible based on playoff performance alone. None of the champions would be 84 BYU, 90 Colorado, 97 Michigan, or any number of questionably claimed national championships in the history of the sport.

None of those would have been issues in the 4 team playoff right?

97 would have seen Michigan and Nebraska play
(Final Four was Michigan, Nebraska, FSU, Florida)

1990 would have seen this Final Four
(Ga Tech, Colorado ,Texas and Miami)

1984 would have seen this Final Four
(BYU, OU, Washington and either Nebraska or Florida depending on how the balance between the Coach's/AP was decided)

I don't think we would have needed 8 teams to resolve those issues you called out

The fact that Washington declined the invite to the Holiday bowl to go play OU shouldn't be lost on any of us. That one should have been decided on the field.

the next year was another sign. The lone dissenting UPI coach was other than Barry Switzer himself, who voted undefeated Fresno State #1 after the 85 season just to be a prick about the BYU title the year before.

Nonetheless, I don't see the downside to an 8 team playoff. It's not as if any of the top 8 teams, in almost any given year, would be considered "unworthy" if they had two playoff-quality wins to close the year.

Another example might be the end of the 2002 season. Ohio State rode Maurice Clarett to beat Miami, but the fact of the matter is that by the end of that year nobody wanted to play Pete Carroll's nascent Southern Cal dynasty. With the benefit of hindsight, I can easily claim that USC was the best team in the country at the end of 2002, even though they didn't get the chance to play for #1.

"It's not as if any of the top 8 teams, in almost any given year, would be considered "unworthy" if they had two playoff-quality wins to close the year."

The more playoff rounds you have, the more likely it becomes that a three loss (or more) team could be crowned national champion over a one loss team, which, assuming the one loss team had a legitimate schedule, is a plainly unjust result.

If we go to eight teams, we're also almost certainly including conference champs, which all but guarantees an entirely undeserving team will be given a chance to get hot and win the championship. The 2008 Super Bowl is a prime example of something that should never happen in college football. The Patriots went 16-0, including beating the Giants at Giants Stadium during the regular season. They rematched in the Super Bowl, and the Giants gave the Patriots their only loss of the year, in a 17-14 game. On balance, there's no credible argument that the Giants were a more deserving recipient of an award for the NFL's best team that year. The only credible argument is that they won they playoff tournament. But this result makes plain that the NFL playoff is not a good vehicle for determining who the NFL's best team was that season.

Nor would an 8 team playoff in college be a good method for determining who college football's best team was that season. In 2016, putting 10-3 Wisconsin in the same single-elimination tournament as 13-0 Alabama would be plainly unfair. Let's even suppose that Wisconsin had beaten Alabama in the first game of the playoff. Overall, Alabama's performance would still be more impressive than Wisconsin's, even if Wisconsin went on to win the next two games as well. 13-3, versus 13-1.

In short, any single elimination tournament purporting to determine a season champion that could create a scenario where a win by Team A over Team B that would not result in Team A having a more impressive overall season should be invalid. An 8 team tournament fits that bill in college football.

USC was #4 in the last couple of BCS standings before the bowls and would have made the seminfinals


Going back over the last 35 years, every example I can think of, saw any controversy eliminated by a “final four”. Never has a team with a real honest claim on the title been outside that final top 4

I would have taken them straight up against the field that year.

Patterson's team proceeded to beat Mississippi so badly in the Peach Bowl that Georgia had to change its decency laws to televise the game.

ETA: 4 is too small because it allows for the power conferences to screw everyone else. Eight is enough, because it allows for 1-loss NDs, or non-blueblood teams (TCU that year; UCF last year) to have a chance. ND fans should be all about "more chaos" anyway.

TCU only lost one game, to Baylor, which created the tie at the top of the Big XII where Baylor was the conference champion, not TCU.


Was TCU a great team that year? Yes. However, should a team that did not win it's conference regular season or title game (the Big XII didn't have one) be a national champion? If you are Notre Dame or BYU, or other historical independents? Then yes. But TCU was in the Big XII and didn't win the Big XII that year.

The Playoff teams that year

OSU - lost early to a bad VaTech team (I could see TCU being ahead of them) but then they had wins against MSU (8) and Wisconsin (18) on their way to winning their division and conference. Right or wrong, a 1 loss team that didn't win their conference versus a 1 loss team that did, is not a travesty, especially with a win against a team that finished in the top 10 of the CFP final rankings.

FSU - undefeated heading into the playoffs, and were destroyed by Oregon

Oregon - lost one game to a very good Arizona team, which they avenged in the Pac12 title game (beating Arizona 51-13, they are sort of like this year's OU). Again, only had 1 loss, were able to avenge it and win their conference title.

Bama - lost to the previously mentioned Ole Miss (who was destroyed by TCU in the Peach Bowl). Went on to win the SEC with wins over Miss St (7), Missouri (16) and Auburn (19) along the way (those are the final playoff rankings after the championships).


TCU
1) Didn't win their conference
2) Played two games against teams that finished in the final CFB rankings and went 1-1
3) What would be the justification for putting TCU ahead of Baylor? The Bowl results?

I like TCU, and have attended many TCU football games. But that loss to Baylor killed them because it basically made sure they couldn't win their conference unless Baylor lost again, and they didn't. By the end, they were a great team, but I have no problem saying they didn't deserve a shot at the title, because they didn't win the Big XII.

The Va Tech loss was too bad to overcome. And Baylor played an absolute dog shit OOC schedule and got smoked by West Virginia.


But it is not an injustice that a one-loss team (in which it gave up 61 points) that also played a weak OOC schedule that mopped up a crappy conference did not have a shot a title. I will lose no sleep over that. They weren't deserving of a shot at a title, even if they were more deserving than OSU.

Obviously the No. 4 team is often capable of winning a title when it gets hot at the end of the year. But rarely is even that fourth team deserving of a claim to the title. None of Baylor, TCU, or OSU were. I won't lose sleep over their lack of inclusion.

In point of fact, Baylor and TCU were co-champions, and there were no tie-breaker provisions. So, the Big 12 submitted them as co-champions, and that's how the committee evaluated them.

I also don't give a shit whether or not the conference annointed you their champion. A conference championship is an insular, partial view of the season that should be irrelevant to determining who should be or compete for a national championship.

It has also resulted in the regular season being meaningless in every other sport. The last major sport where the regular season matters is college football.

Partly because home field advantage incentivizes teams to give a shit late into the season, and partly because we're still only talking about 16 games each year.

I think you could preserve the meaning of the regular season by giving teams #1-4 a first-round game on campus.

This year, that would look like this:

- UCF @ Alabama
- Michigan @ Clemson
- Ohio State @ Notre Dame (actually, I don't love this for us)
- Georgia @ Oklahoma

I'm watching all of those games!

win or go home. It is March Madness in the fall. The final four is for all the marbles. Why change a great system?

Pre-season rankings artificially bolster--and punish--teams before the season even starts. Teams schedule their way to wins. Conferences vary dramatically in terms of quality. Some teams (like Northwestern this year) get super lucky with their conference schedules.

I don't disagree with your larger point, but there's too much variability in college football for me to buy in to your comparison to March Madness. At least the NCAA basketball tournament directors try to create "fair & balanced" brackets.

In other words 2 SEC teams that later met in the title game would first have to destroy 2 Big 10 teams as a warm up and add yet another week to the postseason schedule

No need, no thank you

An 8 team playoff allows the greedy, communist conferences to guarantee themselves a spot in any such playoff, regardless of whether or not the team is actually deserving.

And, just like in the old BCS system, to keep the less powerful conferences happy, they'll get a guarantee of inclusion for their teams that may be undeserving as well.

But shit, even if we just took the best 8 teams as ranked by the college football playoff committee, this year, we'd have:

Alabama (13-0)
Clemson (13-0)
Notre Dame (12-0)
OU (12-1)
UGA (11-2)
tOSU (12-1)
Michigan (10-2)
UCF (12-0)

You're telling me that in order to determine college football's champion, we're going to put Alabama and Michigan in the same single-elimination tournament? That's bullshit.

Last year, we would have had 11-2 tOSU, 12-1 Wisconsin (with no wins of note), 10-3 Auburn, and 11-2 USC (who we absolutely destroyed) in the playoff.

No thanks. The 8th best team in the country doesn't deserve that chance. And some lower ranked conference champion sure as shit doesn't. Under the Conference Champ scenario this year, three loss Washington would have gotten in.

Want to get rid of meaningless conference championship games? Great, I'm all in support. Schedule your game like the Big 12 does, or get rid of it entirely. But don't ruin the playoff.

You had 1 good match up and 1 OK match up in 5 conference title games this year. All you did was eliminate Georgia.

8 teams would let UCF in and they get to show if they belong. I think that is a plus.

UCF lost it would have made people feel better about leaving them out.

The other 6 will want access to the quarterfinals if they can’t play their “lucrative” exhibition game on Tuesday for ESPN.

Not only are the fans lukewarm to following their teams to these meaningless exhibitions; but also the good players, specifically those likely to be drafted by the NFL, are increasingly skipping those games as well. Those decisions are devaluing these games even further, which means that college football is losing even more of its audience.

Increasing the playoff field to 8 would provide 4 more meaningful games for players to play in and fans to watch; it would also spread the wealth around much more of the college football landscape. As it stands now, fans of only 4 teams have a reason to care about football after the end of the regular season.

I think there would be absolutely no interest in these new quarterfinals matchups. The semifinals can't even sell out with a month of prep time...during Christmas...and there's only 1 game left to the title.

Now if they're on-campus...you'll probably sell them out depending on the cost of tickets. But imagine you're Clemson playing UCF in Death Valley. Are you going to spend your money on this game? Are you going to spend money on weeks 11 and 12 if you're already guaranteed your playoff spot?

The bowls have always been about an end of the year celebration of the football teams heavily focused on vacation spots...if the postseason becomes one big tournament you're going to lose that.

Who gets the money from the home game? The school? The conference? The NCAA? All 3? How do you keep the Rose Bowl happy?

Depending on the split there’s a small to very large incentive for the committee to favor some teams over others. Also depending on the split there’s an incentive to gouge your fans (like ND would) or if you can’t, avoid a home game (like ND would)

If you’re going to sell the conferences on throwing away their championship games...they’ll want a big slice of the new round’s revenue. If the NCAA is controlling it you know they’ll get their share. And once again the consolidation of power likely means independent ND is in a worse position as they were previously.

Just like every other post-season tournament in every other sport.

Sure, there will always be some debate about which team won between the four selected (or the two in the championship game), but I don't remember an outcry over an undeserving champion after the CFP has been played. I feel like it's gotten the champion right every season it's been played - there's been no "yeah, but if so-and-so had gotten in, the results would have been completely different". It feels like these playoff expansion people are just pro-conference folks with a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.

I mean, what is expanding to 8 teams supposed to solve besides making more money? Providing more access to major conference members? Conference representatives exercising their influence to drum up a problem that doesn't exist, to further their conference's interests? The "powers that be" see more money to be made, so they need to invent a problem to access it? Is there any doubt that, no matter how many teams the playoff is expanded to, there will always be one or two more teams on the outside looking in, and thus a perpetual expansion conversation?

Personally, I like the playoff at four teams. It makes regular season games more important (just ask tOSU) and doesn't give automatic reward to an undeserving P5 conference champion in a weak season. Most importantly, the four team playoff has given us college football fans a champion who won it on the field, and so far that champion has given us little reason to complain.

Dump the conference championship games and move to an eight team playoff.

Let UCF in and watch Lord Chaos reign.

adding yet another game detrimental to the health and well being of the players actually involved? I think there is a point in the NFL season every year where the rookies that play hit the wall because they aren't accustomed to the even faster and more violent collisions over the course of 16 regular season games plus 4 preseason games.

I'm stating the obvious, but the teams that make the playoffs and appear in the final game play 15 games if they appear in a conference championship game. Assuming elimination of conference championship games, then it backs down to 14 games for finalists, but with an 8 team playoff the total games played goes back to 15 for the finalists. There was an 11 game regular season when I attended ND, plus a bowl if your shitbird coach didn't get you on probation. In the era of Ara and earlier there were 10 game regular seasons (9 at one point) and for a while ND didn't attend bowl games as a matter of school policy.

Setting aside those guys that end up with meaningful degrees, a 15 game season is just using these kids up and throwing them away when they aren't useful anymore--hyperbole, maybe, but not by a lot.

and eliminate FCS games

A couple of points.
1) All the other divisions have playoffs where the championship teams play at least 15 games,
2) only the championship team participants would play 15 games. So at most you are talking about 1 team having a historic run like Bama or MU that could be some form of issue.

The bigger issue for not having 8 team playoff is when do you host those games. Is it right at the end of season, 2 weeks later to accommodate travel coordination, etc. Do losers of those games get to go to bowl games. Are all other bowl games eliminated.

neither is a college president, because that's who ultimately decides these things.

I'm sure the PAC-12 will echo these sentiments.

No bids last two seasons. Haven’t scored (Michigan State shut out versus Alabama and OSU versus Clemson) since OSU in 2014.

To rehash, while OSU did defeat Alabama and Oregon in the initial year 2014, recall the shenanigans that catapulted them to #4, and TCU dropped from #3 to #6.

To paraphrase, Rock was correct: the Big Ten is a sinkhole

SEC: 6 (Bama 5, UGA 1)
ACC: 5 (Clemson 4, FSU 1)
Big 12: 3 (all OU)
Big Ten: 3 (OSU 2, MSU 1)
Pac-12: 2 (Oregon 1, Wash. 1)
ND: 1

This is not about determining the most worthy national champion. It's about money, specifically for the conferences.

Of course, in a year like 2018, the SEC would've nabbed a second playoff spot, with the Big Ten also getting two and the AAC getting one (unless voting chicanery caused UCF to be replaced by LSU, for example). The Pac-12 still would've been shut out -- unless the system were changed to ensure automatic bids for the 5 major conferences.

the regular season conf. champion of the power 5.

We could conceivably have 8-4 (or even 7-5) teams in the playoffs.

...strong conferences in the SEC and ACC, but specifically strong programs. Nobody would argue the ACC is a strong, top-to-bottom football conference, but Clemson has 4 bids in 5 years.

Overall, 12 of the 20 bids have gone to 3 programs (Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma). 14 of the 20 to 4 programs (add OSU).

which has become even weaker with the demise of FSU. Clemson is rarely challenged, and almost never has consecutive difficult games.

Playing them at campus sites is even better. I like it.

In a sixteen-team league, when you only play eight or nine conference games, without divisions and a conference championship game?

The proposal set forth involves automatic bids (which I am against). How do you award an automatic bid to three Big 10 teams who all went 7-2 in the league if they all didn't play each other?

Wisconsin, who plays nobody in the Big 10 West, Goes 11-1 and is ranked 6th, and then UM/OSU/PSU/MSU is 10-2 with a good OOC win and wins over two of the three.

I think the conference championship games are, for the most part, uninteresting. Though they would be more interesting if the two higher ranked teams played in the championship game rather than two division champions.

Additionally, I don’t think a team with two losses should routinely have an opportunity to get hot at the end of the year and win the championship.

Four teams pretty much guarantees the undefeated teams a playoff spot, and should select the ine or two best of the one loss teams. And team with a loss, in my opinion, has lost any claim of a “right” to be in the playoff.

That said, none of which answers your question, I’d award the conference championship to higher ranked of the Wisconsin/UM/Ohio State/etc.

Particularly with grant of rights deals and TV contracts with each conference with different networks in place.

This is why the notion of eliminating the conference title games is a total pipe dream. Plus they are cash cows for the SEC, ACC, and Big 10. There's no way they would give those up. If they go to eight, it will be WITH conference championship games.

Or are we just going to kick to the "at-large" curb schools like Utah, TCU, Maryland, Arkansas, Syracuse, etc etc.?

8 conferences of eight teams.

7 non-conference games ... 5 conference games ...

Conference champions play the weekend after thanksgiving.

Seeding based on record and strength of schedule.

Yes, ND would end up in a conference. Under this framework, that's ok.

This is 64 teams. If you divorce football from the all-sports conference, I could see schools like IU or KU walk away from football as a resource drain.

I don't really care about UCF.

Boston Col.
Syracuse
Rutgers
W. Virginia
Virginia
Louisville
Va. Tech
Miami

Maryland
Duke
Wake Forest
N. Carolina
NC St.
Clemson
Ga. Tech
Florida St.

Penn St.
Pitt
Ohio St.
Michigan
Michigan St.
Notre Dame
Indiana
Purdue

Northwestern
Illinois
Wisconsin
Iowa
Missouri
Minnesota
Kansas
Nebraska

Washington
Wash. St.
Oregon St.
Oregon
Utah
BYU
Colorado
Air Force

Cal
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Arizona St.
Texas Tech
TCU
Arizona

S. Carolina
Florida
Georgia
Tennessee
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Auburn
Alabama

Miss. St.
Mississippi
LSU
Arkansas
Texas A&M
Ok. St.
Oklahoma
Texas

12 divisions of 8 for 96 "power" teams - 7 Division Games 4 Non-Division and allow 4 "at-large" playoff bids or 5 non-division games and top 4 get a first round bye.

Possible better alternative might be divisions of 9 so you have even number of home and road games.

I'd think it would be 7 conference games and 5 non-conference games.

"return to smaller conferences." I'm just quibbling now, I suppose.

The current contract runs through 2026. So even though there is increasing sentiment for 8 teams, all the parties will have to agree with the changes before they can happen. ESPN may also have contracts with advertisers that would have to be revised.

Makes me wonder why the contract was so long in the first place.

And to be clear, most of them probably still want 4 teams. These are a few voices calling for 8, not the majority.

I do think in the end, 8 will win out. 4 was never going to be enough for most people (I am not most people).

And if they were going to do it, it would make sense to do it halfway through.