(10-29-2019 05:22 PM)YNot Wrote: (10-25-2019 05:12 PM)jedclampett Wrote: If a team like OSU or Clemson or Alabama can't win its conference championship, it doesn't deserve to be the national champion.
Why? If every observable metric shows that LSU and Alabama are clearly among the four best teams, why should the fact that they play in the same conference, let alone the same DIVISION, determine whether one or the other doesn't have the opportunity to play for the national championship?
And Clemson or Oklahoma or Oregon or SMU (or Wake Forest or Baylor or USC or Cincinnati) do deserve a crack at the national championship simply because they win a conference championship game? Even if some of them might skate through an easy conference schedule and then beat an inferior CCG opponent?
All the major pro sports have wild card participants in their playoff structures. So should college football.
The first problem that I see with the current 4 team playoffs is that they are BORING. There is very little variation in which teams appear, and so there is no suspense. The same coaches, the same everything, year after year, Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Clemson, occasionally another team. It is a sham of a playoff, and who cares which team wins? A small number of schools have a franchise on the playoffs.
It is just a rotten system, imho.
Secondly, rankings are not based exclusively on "observable metrics." they are partly "subjective opinions," based on pre-existing expectations. Mistakes are made, and there is never universal opinion about which teams should be in the playoffs.
The BB NCAA is a much better tournament, because there is suspense, because major upsets can happen, and because every conference has a fighting chance.
The 4 team FB playoffs have none of that...none.
I like college football, but someone would honestly have to pay me to watch one of those brain-numbing, repetitive FBS playoff games.
I would be much happier watching a game between Utah State and Hawaii, or Cincy vs. Air Force, because I've really had it with the P5 for the most part, although an undefeated SMU vs a P5 in a NY6 bowl would definitely be interesting to watch.
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Lastly, you asked this question:
"And Clemson or Oklahoma or Oregon or SMU (or Wake Forest or Baylor or USC or Cincinnati) do deserve a crack at the national championship
simply because they win a conference championship game?"
The problem that I see with this sentence as written is that you got one little (but not so little) thing wrong:
If Baylor or Wake Forest happened to have won their conference championship,
they didn't just win a single (championship) game.
To win that game, they probably had to win 8 divisional and cross-divisional games, before they played their championship game.
Moreover, the only way they won their conference championship would have been that no other team in their conference was good enough to beat them in their conference championship game.
There should be a very strict test to be a 4 team finalist, and the conference battle serves as the early round of playoff games.
And there is a BONUS: By requiring a conference championship to advance, every game of the regular season suddenly takes on greater significance. That, my friend, is drama, that is suspense!
BTW: It is also traditional to use conference championships to identify the top teams in the land. Some traditions aren't worth keeping, but I think this one is.
College football was better before the boring BCS and FBS playoff system went into effect. The current system has backfired. It has succeeded in making the last weeks of NCAA football less interesting than they used to be.
