Poll: Should the CFP expand?

I know I'm in the super minority, or possibly alone, but I'd like to see it all go back to the old bowl tie-ins.

81usaf92 said:

The Giants were the 3rd best team in the NFC, but rewarded the hardest road to the Super Bowl. Sounds a lot like Alabama in 2011 and 2017. But I don't think you were boohooing for LSU and UGA those years.

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They were, at best, the 7th best team in the NFL. Alabama was not the 7th best team in college football. Your analogy would hold if you were to say that Alabama was the 3rd best team in the SEC and still given a shot, but that hasn't happened yet.

DogPatch said:

I know I'm in the super minority, or possibly alone, but I'd like to see it all go back to the old bowl tie-ins.

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I think that illustrates one of the unique qualities of college football....The need of controversy.

Personally I wouldnt mind a BCS-plus 1 system over the CFPC- plus 1 system that we have. But I guess more folks in power wanted more human control over it than computer

DogPatch said:

I know I'm in the super minority, or possibly alone, but I'd like to see it all go back to the old bowl tie-ins.

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I love you, man, but that is just crazy.

:cheers2:

Keep it at 4 teams. The cream has been in the selection committee’s top four every year. The quality of decision making by the committee has far exceeded my pre-CFP expectations. I’m happy with it.

81usaf92 said:

1) 16 games is bound to produce 3-4 losses minimum in any format in football. If Alabama went to a 13 game SEC schedule then I guarantee you that we aren't coming out of there with 0-1 losses

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Past a certain point we're going in circles and just repeating past conversations but let's go with this. The Patriots, yeah easier n' what not but they also beat the Giants in the regular season, and they did in fact go 16-0. You went into an explanation of why a 10-6 champions vs. a 16-0 team is ok and you just skip the part where the Patriots played them and beat them! That's the absurdity of all of this. It wasn't just that one team was 16-0 and the "champion" had 6 times as many losses, it was that the Patriots had already beaten the Giants! Furthermore, your example about the inevitability of losses vs. tough competition is why long playoffs often don't produce deserving champions. The odds are against every team, a long playoff just makes the process random. But yeah, I get it. You love playoffs, I don't.

DogPatch said:

I know I'm in the super minority, or possibly alone, but I'd like to see it all go back to the old bowl tie-ins.

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If I had to choose between the old bowl format and an 8 team playoff, I would take the old format.

Anyway, just to get back on track here. Does anyone really think the 5th and 6th teams this year are deserving of being #1? I'm a big Alabama fan, but I wouldn't rank Alabama #1 right now. I don't think anyone would rank them higher than #3 with a straight face. So, when we discuss expanding, we're not really talking about #1 anymore at all.

KrAzY3 said:

Does anyone really think the 5th and 6th teams this year are deserving of being #1?

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If they can win 3 games in a row against that level of competition - YES.

B1GTide said:

If they can win 3 games in a row against that level of competition - YES.

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That's creating an entirely different process though, one in which the regular season performance takes on secondary importance (I should add that at that point Ohio St. should have played Penn St. and Minnesota and LSU should have played Texas A&M and Georgia). That's what gets back to the point that 81 made. If you play enough tough games, inevitably you will lose one. That's why I find the Patriots loss to the Giants so tragic. If that could have been the regular season Giants game instead, they're looked at as one of the best NFL teams of all time. Instead? They're in this no-man's land of all time great regular season teams with the Warriors, and it begs the question of just how important those games are when it all comes down to the last game you played.

One thing that really solidified my take on this was the 2009 Alabama team. They statistically speaking had the best season in BCS history. They ran through a tough schedule, they were undefeated, but GMac broke his ribs in the Florida game and was severely limited in the championship game (imagine having to play Florida again, but with broken ribs). Fortunately this was pre-playoff, but as great as that team was, an injured GMac has far worse odds against one more team, much less two.

Playoffs create a false sense of accomplishment that makes sense if you don't look at it too closely. Someone has to win right? So we go hey this team won, they're the best. That's not really how it works, and I gave some specific examples that demonstrated that. A larger playoff creates such an obstacle that getting past them involves luck more than ability. Is your team healthy? Did you get the right calls? Did the ball bounce the right way? 1 vs. 2 tells you a lot more than 1 vs. 8, 4, and 2, because other factors are more likely to manifest themselves over the course of three very tough games vs. one. That's one reason that Nick Saban was so dominant in the BCS era. He had one game to focus on and he was especially good at blocking out the noise.

KrAzY3 said:

That's creating an entirely different process though, one in which the regular season performance takes on secondary importance.

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Nope - remember, you first have to make the field of 6, and you also strive to make the top 2 to avoid the 3rd playoff game. The regular season is just as important because of the small field and the added importance of being in the top 2.

First goal - make the CFP. Second goal - win it. You are not changing anything that was not already changed when we went to the BCS system.

Even though I am for 8 teams, I hope no 2 loss team gets in if we stay in the current format.

4 or 6 is fine with me, if we go to 8 I'm afraid that will open the door for automatic bids which will render the regular season worthless to an extent.

Plus you run the risk of a 6-6 Pitt team going to the Playoff.

KrAzY3 said:

That's creating an entirely different process though, one in which the regular season performance takes on secondary importance (I should add that at that point Ohio St. should have played Penn St. and Minnesota and LSU should have played Texas A&M and Georgia). That's what gets back to the point that 81 made. If you play enough tough games, inevitably you will lose one. That's why I find the Patriots loss to the Giants so tragic. If that could have been the regular season Giants game instead, they're looked at as one of the best NFL teams of all time. Instead? They're in this no-man's land of all time great regular season teams with the Warriors, and it begs the question of just how important those games are when it all comes down to the last game you played.

One thing that really solidified my take on this was the 2009 Alabama team. They statistically speaking had the best season in BCS history. They ran through a tough schedule, they were undefeated, but GMac broke his ribs in the Florida game and was severely limited in the championship game (imagine having to play Florida again, but with broken ribs). Fortunately this was pre-playoff, but as great as that team was, an injured GMac has far worse odds against one more team, much less two.

Playoffs create a false sense of accomplishment that makes sense if you don't look at it too closely. Someone has to win right? So we go hey this team won, they're the best. That's not really how it works, and I gave some specific examples that demonstrated that. A larger playoff creates such an obstacle that getting past them involves luck more than ability. Is your team healthy? Did you get the right calls? Did the ball bounce the right way? 1 vs. 2 tells you a lot more than 1 vs. 8, 4, and 2, because other factors are more likely to manifest themselves over the course of three very tough games vs. one. That's one reason that Nick Saban was so dominant in the BCS era. He had one game to focus on and he was especially good at blocking out the noise.

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Oh come on. Then I suppose you find LSU’s loss to Alabama in 2011 tragic too after they played one of the hardest schedule and beat Alabama in Alabama. This is more about you being mad about you not being able to say that you didn’t see an undefeated NFL team and fearing that it’s going to happen to Alabama one day if the playoffs expand than making a real argument. If anything is tragic about that year it’s that the Giants had to go to Tampa Bay first round instead of hosting Tampa Bay.

In a playoff system, the goal is to get to playoffs and survive a championship tournament. It’s a fact of life, but it’s the best way to determine a champion because you can’t hide after a crap regular season schedule. In the BCS and The plus 1 system you can. Look at Clemson last year.

There are problems with the NFL playoffs, but a 10-6 team beating a 16-0 team in the Super Bowl isn’t one of them.

B1GTide said:

first have to make the field of 6

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I'm not trying to ignore you, but I pitched a 3 team field thing here but it might as well have been to me, myself, and I before they made the playoff. A 6 team playoff is at best halfway down the slippery slope, that's not what they want and it would be a gateway to 8 teams. I said all along that playoffs are always moving the target (first it was about 1, then 3, now 5, then 7) and trying to expand because they want to be inclusive.

81usaf92 said:

This is more about you being mad about you not being able to say that you didn’t see an undefeated NFL team.

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Do I presume to understand what you're thinking? If so I apologize.

81usaf92 said:

I suppose you find LSU’s loss to Alabama in 2011 tragic too after they played one of the hardest schedule and beat Alabama in Alabama.

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I was actually right here posting that I didn't think it was fair they had to play the extra game. They deserved to be #1, right up until that forced rematch. Even then, if we're being honest they deserved a two out of three (same with the Patriots). I think Alabama would have won, but they played a very, very tough schedule, beat Alabama the first time, won the SECCG and it wasn't fair they had to play them again. I'm happy for my own personal reasons, but that is one scenario in which the old bowl games would have been better.

That's one reason I stuck with the BCS. I know it wasn't perfect. It wasn't fair in 2011, but how would it have been any better if LSU had to play Stanford before they played Alabama? Or better, yet, Kansas St., then Stanford, then Alabama.

DogPatch said:

I know I'm in the super minority, or possibly alone, but I'd like to see it all go back to the old bowl tie-ins.

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I don't.

Nothing more frustrating than, "Nebraska and Texas are 1 and 2, but they can't play each other."

And watching Miami win an undeserved national championship for no other reason than, "Well, Nebraska HAD to go to the Orange Bowl and Texas HAD to go to the Cotton Bowl and Auburn HAD to go to the Sugar Bowl and Illinois HAD to go to the Rose Bowl.......hell, let's let Miami play Nebraska on Miami's home field. Then let's pretend when the game is over that this was a national championship game."

I'll pass, thank you.

KrAzY3 said:

That's creating an entirely different process though, one in which the regular season performance takes on secondary importance (I should add that at that point Ohio St. should have played Penn St. and Minnesota and LSU should have played Texas A&M and Georgia). That's what gets back to the point that 81 made. If you play enough tough games, inevitably you will lose one. That's why I find the Patriots loss to the Giants so tragic. If that could have been the regular season Giants game instead, they're looked at as one of the best NFL teams of all time. Instead? They're in this no-man's land of all time great regular season teams with the Warriors, and it begs the question of just how important those games are when it all comes down to the last game you played.

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But - respectfully - I think the inherent flaw in your argument is the assumption that simply because we're talking football playoffs that the comparison is apples/apples.

It isn't. We've had several NFL teams have records like 6-10 and 4-12 one year and then win it all the next.
Why? Because the gap between the first and worst team in the NFL is quite miniscule. The 1993 Atlanta Falcons went 6-10 and weren't very good.....but they beat the two best teams in the NFL (Dallas and San Fran) in a one-month span.

How many CFB national champs do we have that were basically 3-9 teams one year and won it all the very next?
It might have happened but I don't know off the top of my head.

As far as the Patriots-Giants in 2007, well, I watched that regular season game as I'm sure you did.
The Giants led at halftime, 21-16, at the end of the third by 28-23, and the final score was 38-35.

So the gap even in the regular season game between those two teams was a field goal.

By contrast, the gap between Alabama fully healthy this year and Utah is the size of the Grand Canyon.

KrAzY3 said:

Playoffs create a false sense of accomplishment that makes sense if you don't look at it too closely. Someone has to win right? So we go hey this team won, they're the best.

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Well, if we're foolish we say that. "Best", no.
CHAMPIONS? Yes.


1985 Villanova is a good example of a team that wasn't the best (even they would admit that) but were champions. 1983 NC State, 1988 Kansas (in b-ball), and I saw one of the 1990 Giants on ESPN years ago admit that they were maybe the 5th best team in the NFL that year. But they DID beat THREE of them in three consecutive weeks (Chicago, San Fran, and the Bils).

There's no way on the planet that the 1987 Twins or 1988 Dodgers were the best teams those years, but let's grant baseball is different and heavily dependent upon pitching so that a team with no bats can offset the advantage if they've got one superstar or two above average pitchers plus a closer.

KrAzY3 said:

That's not really how it works, and I gave some specific examples that demonstrated that. A larger playoff creates such an obstacle that getting past them involves luck more than ability. Is your team healthy? Did you get the right calls? Did the ball bounce the right way? 1 vs. 2 tells you a lot more than 1 vs. 8, 4, and 2, because other factors are more likely to manifest themselves over the course of three very tough games vs. one. That's one reason that Nick Saban was so dominant in the BCS era. He had one game to focus on and he was especially good at blocking out the noise.

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I will actually grant you all of those points, and I'll even cite a voice in your favor. At some point during the 1993 Sugar Bowl, they were musing about a future playoff. Dennis Erickson, the Miami coach, had coached at Idaho at the lower level where they have a 16-team playoff. Erickson was defiantly AGAINST a large playoff with his stated reason being (I'm paraphrasing) "A 16-team playoff winds up being won by the team that has the fewest major injuries and the greatest depth."

Where I divert from you is solely in the interest of never having a situation like 1966 Alabama or (to a lesser extent) 2004 Auburn. That's why I'm willing to tolerate four - to ensure "the team we think is third" is not hosed.


To be fair, I think we're all colored by our experiences in viewing through the years. The night of the 1987 Fiesta Bowl was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw, and I didn't even like either team. But we knew - WE KNEW - that when the winner walked off the field that they were going to be the champions. I got ticked at all the drama.

1983 - five teams in the hunt
1984 - but BYU doesn't deserve it!
1985 - how did OU get in over Miami???
1987 - and then there's Syracuse.....
1988 - "if West Virginia beats Notre Dame (and winds up undefeated), then Miami should be #1 (despite a loss)" - yes, Jimmy Johnson actually tried that one, which is why I always considered him a joke.
1989 - Miami played pretty much nobody but hey, head to head against Notre Dame at home (and the Irish played a murderous slate)
1990 - Fifth Down, Tech didn't play nobody, Miami was the real best team, no Notre Dame was blah blah blah
1991 - "let's duck Florida and rout Nebraska at home and then dare the polls to drop us" - Miami
1992 - Texas A/M still hates Corso over that one
1993 - anyone want to tell me how FSU's loss to Notre Dame meant nothing but the Irish losing the next week to BC (26 years ago today) was everything???
1994 - we were one play from Alabama wreaking havoc and three unbeatens
1996 - two one-loss teams get a shot because, agreements!
1997 - I've hated Scott Frost since he was a jerk at the time

In all those years.....we got ONE good title game and a snoozer (1995 Nebraska over Florida).


I'll read the next few days but my posts may be limited; taking my annual trip up to Duluth tomorrow morning.
RTR

In the various playoff systems around the world, we crown champions. I think that we all understand that the best athlete/team does not always win, whether we are talking about an individual game or a playoff. No matter what system we devise, we are going to crown champions, and often those crowned are not going to be the best. They are going to be the individuals/teams that win at the right time.

If a great sprinter pulls a muscle during a qualifying heat and doesn't make it through to the finals, is the gold medal won by another sprinter in some way tarnished? What if that sprinter makes it to the finals but trips or missteps, leading to a victory by someone else? So I am okay with the idea that the best team is not going to win the CFP every year. But I don't want a pool so large that the regular season is diminished.

B1GTide said:

Automatic qualifiers are a horrid idea. They would kill inter-conference play and reward weak teams that get lucky in conference championship games after putting together a regular season W/L record that would otherwise disqualify them.

Horrid idea. It is horrid in the NFL. It is horrid in MLB. It would be horrid in the CFP.

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I don’t care whether or not there are automatic qualifiers.

B1GTide said:

In the various playoff systems around the world, we crown champions. I think that we all understand that the best athlete/team does not always win, whether we are talking about an individual game or a playoff. No matter what system we devise, we are going to crown champions, and often those crowned are not going to be the best. They are going to be the individuals/teams that win at the right time.

If a great sprinter pulls a muscle during a qualifying heat and doesn't make it through to the finals, is the gold medal won by another sprinter in some way tarnished? What if that sprinter makes it to the finals but trips or missteps, leading to a victory by someone else? So I am okay with the idea that the best team is not going to win the CFP every year. But I don't want a pool so large that the regular season is diminished.

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8 teams would represent 6% of the FBS teams, still the smallest percentage of any major NCAA or pro sports playoff. Not only would it not diminish regular season, it would encourage more top 25 OOC matchups, which IMO makes reg season better.

B1GTide said:

Automatic qualifiers are a horrid idea. They would kill inter-conference play and reward weak teams that get lucky in conference championship games after putting together a regular season W/L record that would otherwise disqualify them.

Horrid idea. It is horrid in the NFL. It is horrid in MLB. It would be horrid in the CFP.

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Yes. That stupid extra wildcard game in MLB was the dumbest idea in a history of bad ideas. It is all money driven. If they think they can make more money, the playoffs will expand. We can hate it all we want. They do not give a damn what the fans think.

DzynKingRTR said:

Yes. That stupid extra wildcard game in MLB was the dumbest idea in a history of bad ideas. It is all money driven. If they think they can make more money, the playoffs will expand. We can hate it all we want. They do not give a damn what the fans think.

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Also known as the “backup plan to ensure Boston, NY, and Los Angeles make the playoffs.”