(12-11-2019 02:48 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: (12-11-2019 01:36 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (12-10-2019 04:25 PM)bullet Wrote: (12-10-2019 04:07 PM)Eldonabe Wrote: (12-10-2019 03:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: In contrast, the college football system is designed to eliminate 95% or even more of the potential playoff field by the end of September. That inherently caps interest in the sport. It's a totally different viewpoint as a fan when your *own* team is still in a division race to qualify for a conference championship game late into November that would *automatically* get your team into the playoff versus a situation where that same game can only get a consolation bowl spot at best.
Look - I get the romanticism with the heavyweight fights and high stakes regular season games and the desire to have only the elite of the elite participate in the playoff. I just don't think that's better than a system where teams (at least in the P5) have a clear objective on-the-field way to make it into the playoff that has nothing to do with committees or polls.
I agree with the bolded statement but I don't have a problem with it.
Win your games.... The best teams rise to the top, and there have been a couple that have lost early but still proved to be near the top at the end of the year.
I will say it again, every year there will be a team or three who think they got shafted and left out - EVERY YEAR.
I will modify my earlier statement - if there is ANY - even one - "at large" bid then there should be NO guaranteed games. If you want to set the number at 8 and have a 8 guaranteed spots by whatever measure you want, that is fine too, but either way a "good enough" team will not make your tournament.
I would rather leave that decision in a room of "old guys" to decide than a guarantee system that will only guarantee a team that has a microscopic chance will be there over a team that has a better chance than that - every day of the week!
Frank - this is nothing personal, we are obviously not going to change each others minds on this. And I do respect your view point. In the end I think we both want the same thing which is the best set of games possible... we just disagree on how to set those matchups.
That is where you are missing. Its not about the best set of games. That is a side benefit of deciding things objectively on the field.
It's not about the "best set of games" for your side because you know your 5-1-2 doesn't produce the best set.
For example, compared to straight 8, the only real difference is ... #1 LSU vs #8 Memphis (5-1-2) vs #1 LSU vs #8 Wisconsin (straight 8).
And LSU vs Wisky is obviously the better game.
And again, conference champs do not "decide things objectively on the field" because conferences ignore OOC games, which no other league does. A committee considering all games actually takes in to account results on the field moreso than does a P5 auto-bid system. Because they consider all the games.
Look - I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this issue.
I agree that 5-1-2 may end up inserting a G5 school that isn't "worthy" in many years. Of course, that has to be balanced with arguments to provide some type of access to the G5 leagues if the P5 leagues receive automatic access.
As we've established previously, a 5-3 playoff format (without any guaranteed G5 spot) would have had the exact same field as a "straight 8" playoff with the exception of 1 P5 team out of the last 30 P5 champs. There are two ways of looking at that: a "straight 8" wouldn't necessarily harm the prospects of the vast majority of P5 champs in practicality, but by the same token, providing auto-bids to the P5 champs wouldn't create a situation of allowing in "unworthy" teams into the playoffs, either. The trade-off (and IMHO, a *massive* benefit*) is that you're taking 5 of the bids and allowing them to be objectively determined on-the-field as opposed to having them all be determined subjectively by a bunch of old guys sitting in a conference room in Dallas. If we're going to get almost the exact same outcome in terms of 8-team playoff fields while removing a significant amount of subjectivity from the system, then it's hard for me to see how a 100% subjective system is somehow superior year-to-year. The best that the subjective system offers is to eliminate that 1 out of 30 "unworthy" team at the expense of removing all of the objective metrics, which isn't worth it at all IMHO.
Now, your argument that the conference championships don't take into account non-conference games is certainly true. However, on the flip side, as I've noted previously, conference championships are the *only* thing that a team has 100% control over, which is why they are rightly accorded automatic access to playoff systems in every other pro and college American sport.
Football also isn't like basketball where schools can adjust schedules year-to-year and reasonably control their non-conference SOS. Non-conference football games are scheduled years (even over a decade) ahead of time and you don't know whether even a name brand team will be a national championship team that year or not even eligible for a bowl just 5 years later (see Florida State).
Finally, the system that the vast majority of people (including me) are advocating for here would have 2 or 3 at-large bids. Those at-large spots will certainly have a lot of focus on non-conference schedules. Even schools like Alabama and Ohio State can't just bank on winning their conference championship every year, so that's going to continue to make non-conference games important (just as is the case for the NCAA Tournament that provides auto-bids for the arguably even less important conference tournament champions).
I could settle for "agree to disagree" too, but since you then went on to state some cases again:
1) Among the P5, the price of objectivity is too high. As we know in practice, the vast majority of the time straight 8 will get all the P5 champs in. Which means that if a P5 champ doesn't make it, it's probably because they don't deserve to make. You've probably gotta be pretty weak to be a P5 champ and not in the top 8 of anyone's rankings. So i see that as a nice trap-door to avoid "UVA in the Orange Bowl" outcomes.
2) By not giving P5 champs a bid, we also avoid having to give the G5 a bid. And as we both know, most years the G5 champ won't be deserving. But if they are - like UCF last year- then they will be in the top 8.
3) As you note, in every other sport, a conference champ gets in automatically. But, and to me this is crucial, it's also true that in many sports, all games count towards the title - e.g., in the NFL, the NFC Central winner is the team with the best overall record, not best divisional record. And in the sports where that is not true, like in college hoops, the sport allows a format that gives us a much better view of who the best team was - e.g., in hoops, everyone plays everyone home and away, followed by a tournament. There's nothing like that in CFB.
That's why the NFL counts all the games too, because football is such that you can't play 40 or 60 or 80 games like in hoops, baseball, etc.
Now, I understand that because teams schedule their own OOC games, it is not practical or wise to count OOC games in determining a conference title. But, to me, that doesn't leave us with "well then we can rely on the champion anyway". It leaves us with "well, that means we can't use conference championships for autobids". It's kind of like if I'm in the Army in Iraq and I see a wounded soldier getting on a plane to go home and I'm told he's flying back to DC to get a combat medal, and I say "well, why don't i get a combat medal? I'm stationed in the rear with the gear so never had the opportunity to prove my bravery".
That's true, which is why nobody is blaming that soldier for not showing his bravery - but it doesn't mean he deserves a combat medal either. Not having the opportunity to prove something doesn't mean you should be treated as if you proved it.
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Back in Aug I made a thread about what I think the CFP should look like...here it is:
