re: I miss poll era football.

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don't want CFB to be like the NFL

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Wouldn’t cfb need a 64 team playoff to be similar to the nfl?

I remember a Mizzou fan complaining about LSU being a 2 loss champion in 2008, while overlooking Kansas being the only 1 loss team, but clearly not SEC caliber. However KU won the Final Four later that year. Great time for LSUjhawk

NYD was a blast under the pre-BCS system. That said, I prefer the current model. Four teams is perfect and it makes the CFP more prestigious.

Those wanting an 8-team playoff are misguided. Why would I want to see an 8 seed Washington play at Alabama or Clemson?

Is the current way we do the CFB postseason perfect? No. Is it better than the poll system? Absolutely.

Any system that ends with none of the championship-level teams actually playing each other and a bunch of newspaper writers “voting” on who is the champion is just plain stupid. Add to that the fact that there were multiple polls and the whole thing was so inherently compromised that you have teams that didn’t finish #1 in any poll claiming national titles because frankly it was as legitimate as anything else going on back then. It was a farce.

The main issues with the current system are teams not caring about bowls and conference championship games (really just the SEC) being occasionally counter-productive to a team trying to make the playoffs. Those are much smaller issues IMO than not actually knowing who won the championship of the sport.

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At the end of the day, there's still subjectivity to it.

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Of course, but the more you can buffer the subjectivity involved with actual football games, the closer you come to a legitimate result. Is it better to play the “eenie meenie minie moe” game before or after the games are played? Obviously before, because it allows the stakes to be clearly and consistently defined.

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it's true #1 vs. #2 rarely collided in those match-ups, but did that really matter considering how subjective those rankings were to begin with? Almost all of those games were match-ups between Top 5/10 teams. So either way, you were getting a high-stakes game between two teams that were very good.

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If you’re arguing that a game between #2 and #8 is just as good a finalè as a game between #1 and #2, you’re fooling yourself out of pure nostalgia.

Also, you had no control, even if you were number 1 going into the bowl game, of actually being able to decide your championship. If you got stuck in a bowl game against #9, #2 could beat #3 by 20 and sorry you lose because........reasons. But then you just claim the natty anyway because nothing is actually real.

And guess what? That ultra-meaningful bowl you played in was actually meaningless.

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If you’re arguing that a game between #2 and #8 is just as good a finalè as a game between #1 and #2, you’re fooling yourself out of pure nostalgia.

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I mean...the 1980 Sugar Bowl featured #2 Alabama (11-0) vs. #7 Arkansas (10-1). While Arkansas wasn't ranked in the Top 5, they were still a 1-loss team with a potential to move up if things broke their way.

I think the BCS made sufficient adjustments to get it "right enough" for selecting the top 4 after the 2004 debacle. There is no perfect solution, but I think the CFPs would be just as good or better had they kept the BCS polling model and gone to a 4 team playoff.

The Harris Poll replaced the AP poll in 2005 and was very similar to the design to the current committee.

If they brought back the computer polls, threw out the garbage Coaches Poll, and replaced the Harris with the current committee, I think they would have it just about right.

The bowl season for me became garbage slowly overtime with the continual expansion of the bowl games. Too many crap and overlapping matchups with odd airing times. Most are playing in virtually empty stadiums.

But, this is hardly a new complaint, and it is only going to get worse. From an interesting SB nation article on it... People have been complaining about too many bowls for at least 88 years:

"Minnesota coach Bernie Bierman...said in 1937, “This matter of bowl games is getting beyond control, however. If it keeps up, there will be so many of them it will be a joke.”

Cartoon pic of bowl exhaustion after expanding to 5 New Years Day bowls in '38

1938 sports editorial opinions:
"-They are okay if we don’t get any more.
-Personally, I dislike the hypocrisy connected with the games, but they do help liven up the sport pages during the dull holiday season.
-Two or three are all right, but too many of them cheapen the sport."

Like the article says, TV has been the driver behind the expansion from the 70s forward, and it isn't going to slow down. The postseason has jumped from an avg of 16-19 bowls in the 80s and 90s to 25 in 2000 and ballooned to 40 by 2018, with an expectation of more growth in 2020 featuring who knows how many teams with losing records.

All that said, the article supports that people will complain, but we will still watch.

In the 2016 bowl season:

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Every bowl game was in the top five in sports for the day save for one and all of them made the top 15 on cable overall. 2.5 million viewers for a football game between Troy and Ohio! That’s just a ridiculously good number for those two teams in that bowl game.

The only other sports programs to make cable’s top 10 during the same period? Two were NFL games and NFL related programming for Monday Night Football on ESPN and Thursday Night Football on NFL Network. Another was the Kentucky-Louisville college basketball rivalry game.

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I think you just made my point for me.

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I don't think I did.

My point is, the number in front of the team is kind of useless in a subjective system no matter what system you use. I mean...did Texas really deserve to be ranked #1 in 1977 going into the post-season? They were undefeated, sure, but they got the breaks blown off of them by #5 Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl (the final score was 38-10). Not only that, #2 Oklahoma was blown out by #6 Arkansas that same day, 31-6.

Now...according to you, #1 Texas and #2 Oklahoma should have played each other in a re-match - that is if we're going by the BCS standard. But if we go by the CFP standard, the eventual national champions of 1977 don't even make the final field. The four teams would have been #1 Texas vs. #4 Michigan (a team that lost in the Rose Bowl to #13 Washington) and #2 Oklahoma vs. #3 Alabama. Of the four teams that make it in this hypothetical, Alabama was the only team that actually won its bowl game in reality. Notre Dame, the national champion of 1977, is on the outside looking in at #5.

But who cares? It's #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3, with the winners advancing to the national championship game.

In the end, my point is this: until college football is reshaped dramatically and fewer teams are competing at the FBS level, you are never going to be able to produce a true champion, no matter the format.

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How is that any different from the system we have now?

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At least the actual title is won on the field during the BCS/CFP. A team has to actually earn it.

You're kind of being a little misleading in your argument. USC also played Virginia Tech who, while unranked at the time, finished #10 in the final polls. Oklahoma also played Texas Tech who, while unranked at the time, finished in the Top 20 of both major polls.