The College Football Playoff is officially expanding to 12 teams beginning with the 2024 season.
I think this should only be viewed as good news by just about every fanbase. Since 2014, only 13 programs have been part of 8 four-team playoffs. If TCU and USC make it this year, they would be the 14th and 15th programs to make the playoff in nine seasons.
Alabama, Clemson, Georgia, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Notre Dame have all been in multiple playoffs. Four of those teams have been in the playoff at least four times.
Hopefully this will open recruiting doors for teams that have shown promise but have not been able to crack the top four. So much of the transfer movement by elite players has been from one playoff regular to another because they still want to be part of a team that competes for a championship.
Not really. With maybe an exception here and there, you are still going to have to win 10 or 11 regular-season games to get in to the playoff. Iām almost certain the 12-team playoff will include every Power 5 champion and the highest-ranked Group of Five champion, so there will only be six at-large spots.
I hear ya. Iām Don Quixote on this one, but I donāt like it. I didnāt like it when baseball expanded their playoffs. It has allowed the Cardinals front office to become lazy. I donāt think Ole Miss shouldāve had the opportunity to get hot and win the college basketball championship with a rather ho-hum regular season.
I think a dominant regular season should be rewarded and not be subject to a flukey injury and bad whistle if stuck having to play an 8-4 PAC 12 winner
Penn State is 10-2 and lost by 13 to Ohio State and 24 to Michigan. They donāt have a top 25 win. Do we really need to see them in a playoff?
Clemson is 10-2. I have the privilege of owning season tickets and a front row seat to witness this mediocre team. Either Clemson or UNC are a win away of getting a playoff game. They donāt deserve it and we shouldnāt be punished to be subjected to it.
Well they have lowered the bar substantially. I guess, those that reach it, it will be very exciting. So until thenā¦itās another nice goal to shoot for.
With twelve teams, four teams are going to get a bye in the first round. Just like the pros you donāt want to play extra games if you can avoid it. So that will be one important thing about the regular season.
The Group of Five auto bid and the six at-large bids are going to make for a lot more meaningful games in the regular season.
Hopefully the new system will kill off about half the bowls. Iād guess seven neutral venue ābigā bowl games to accommodate the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game, with a group of slightly lesser bowls played around New Years Day. Hawaii, the Bahamas and Vegas will probab;y still have games as televised travel brochures which ESPN can use because the team payouts are low and the advertiser interest is a bit higher.
Beyond that it will depend how the tv numbers look in the first few years after the new format starts. If viewership goes way down quite a few of those bowls will wither, probably replaced by much cheaper college basketball games.
Arkansas was 10-2 in 2011 and lost by 24 at both Alabama and LSU, and finished ranked fifth in the AP poll. Sometimes good teams have bad days. I would have loved to have seen what that team might have done in a playoff setting. The same goes for the 2006 and 2010 teams.
Do you think that Arkansas team deserved to play in a playoff? I donāt. We had our chance v Bama and LSU. Why should Bama or LSU have to prove it again?
For full transparency I didnāt think there was anything wrong with the BCS. They tended to always ended up with the right teams playing in the championship
In a 12-team playoff? Yes. In a four-team playoff? I donāt remember enough about 2011 to know, but I do remember a lot of good teams lost in Week 11 to set up the 1-3 LSU-Arkansas game.
Most bowl games draw big TV numbers, so I donāt see them going away. ESPN owns about a quarter of the bowl games. Itās great TV inventory for a time when people are home and watching TV because itās too cold to do much outside.
In general I donāt think a two loss, third best team in their division deserves the chance for a natty. That would be Arkansas in 2011 or Penn State this year.
But ādeserveā aināt got nothing to do with it, as they say
First round (unless something has changed, these will be played on campus or at a site of the host schoolās choosing; somebody might choose a dome, for instance):
5 seed vs 12
6 seed vs 11
7 seed vs 10
8 seed vs 9
Second round:
4 seed vs Game 1 winner
3 seed vs. Game 2
2 seed vs Game 3
1 seed vs. Game 4
How were the Dodgers and Braves rewarded for their incredible effort over 162 games? By getting short seriesād by two teams they vastly out performed and owned for a full season.
Under this new format, we would have been in the playoff in both 2010 and 2011, and it wouldnāt have been a close call. We were 8th in the final BCS standings in 2010 and 6th in 2011.
BCS rankings were a different deal, with more weight given to computers, but here were the top 12 rankings for those two seasons (with records; CC indicates conference champs)
2010
Auburn 13-0 CC
Oregon 12-0 CC
TCU 12-0 CC
Stanford 11-1
Wisconsin 12-1 CC (yes that was Bielema)
Ohio State 11-1
Oklahoma 11-2 CC
Arkansas 10-2
Michigan State 11-1
Boise State 11-1 CC
LSU 10-2
Missouri 10-2
2011
LSU 13-0 CC
Bama 11-1
Okie Lite 11-1 CC
Stanford 11-1
Oregon 11-2 CC
Arkansas 10-2
Boise 11-1 CC
Kansas State 10-2
South Carolina 10-2
Wisconsin 11-2 CC (still Bert)
Virginia Tech 11-2
Baylor 9-3
The sixth conference champ would have been Clemson (#15) which beat VT in the ACCCG.
Exactly. Iāve never once thought āhmmm, I wonder if that 12th best team couldāve beat the National Champion?ā The BCS didnāt have too many years with an argument of who was in as the Top 2.
Hereās a scenario for you. Letās say LSU beats Georgia in the SEC Championship and Purdue beats Michigan in the Big Ten Championship. TCU beats Kansas State in a close game. TCU jumps to #1 and Kansas State (currently #10) falls only two spots to #12. Kansas State then goes on to beat the #5 team in the first round, then plays TCU again in the semi-finals??? Gross. Itāll be the third time they play this year. (And I just realized this couldnāt happen in the semi-finals, that theyād have to beat the #4 and then meet TCU in the finalsā¦which might be even more gross)
I could see the CFP committee do some shuffling of rankings to avoid this scenario, but isnāt that simply what we already have with the bowl system?
Iād much rather see a game between two really great teams for the National Championship with the possibility that someone was left out as opposed to the possibility of a crappy game because too many were let in.