re: Upcoming battle for Slive: College football playoff?

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I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure it is up to the conference's on how they award their automatic birth.

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Too lazy to verify this but that sounds right to me.

I believe the NCAA just says you are guaranteed one team per conference (and the conference decides who that one team will be). From there, it's up to the tournament committee to decide what, if any, at large teams are invited from each conference.

This is one reason why the NCAA tournament is now up to 68 teams. By pleasing every conference with at least one team selected, they create more demand for at large berths.

If you make the whole tournament at large and by invitation only based on selection committee criteria, you could cut the field in half or better yet -- down to 16 teams.

Football should start small and STAY small. Just take the top 4 per whatever metric they want to use. BCS rankings are fine by me. We don't want March Madness for football. A 4 team playoff would be 3 games and done in 2 weeks. It would be a ratings bonanza and would probably give the Super Bowl a run for its money.

I give Slive credit for not being as short sighted as his peers and seeing the potential gold mine out there waiting to be mined. Once again, the SEC is leading the way and the other conferences are belatedly seeing the light.