12 Team Playoff Language

The power 5 champs are getting, they just put the highest ranked conference champions to add one group of 5 team.

You can't give automatic bids to the power 5 champs and not to the other conferences.

That is why that language is it there.

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Yes, it's a auto bid for the Power 5 and leaves a spot for the best of the rest champion.

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Also leaves room for a weak power 5 champ to be left out if two higher ranked non power 5.

When only 2 teams got in, the third team complained. In basketball 68 teams now make it in and the 69th team complains. It is going to happen no matter where you put the number. There is no perfect amount that will apply to every year. In my opinion 24 is the right amount, because you can include most of the bowl games, and most any team can still make it in with one loss.

People who complain that it cheapens the regular season seem to think placing more importance on the end of the season is a bad thing.

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Let's walk through this language.

1. No automatic bids for conference champions.
(Clears the pathway to remove the conference championship games.)

2. 12 team bracket to include the 6 highest ranked conference champions. (This language only makes sense if you are taking multiple division champions form the same conference. Why would ranking even come into play if you were taking the conference championship game winner.)

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CCGs rarely pit the best two teams against each other, as there is no round Robin, and divisions are typically unbalanced.

Going to a pod system like basketball and simply agreeing to a tie breaker system with poll position as final tie breaker after records and head to head results would be better.

In any case, a definitive conference champ is required in the language of the expanded playoff. So, Big 12 with their round Robin and tie breaker could likely scrap their game.

Personally, I'd like a return to the BCS system for polls. Keep the committee (essentially replacing the Harris poll component of BCS) and weight it heavier; throw out the meaningless coaches poll component (ceding it's weight to the Committe poll). Then, add back computer polls for ranking.

After top 6 conference champs (no matter what conference and where they rank) are taken, I like the idea of taking 6 highest ranked non-conf champs.

That said, I still think 12 is TOO many and completely diminishes the regular season and kills the bowl season tradition of FBS.

If they kept the same idea and took top 4 conference champs and next 2 highest ranked non-conference champs, I think it would be a better product that eliminates a lot of risk and best helps protect some other traditions.

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People who complain that it cheapens the regular season seem to think placing more importance on the end of the season is a bad thing.

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A college football national champion used to be the champion of the entire season. The expanded playoffs will replace that with the team that got hot at the right time.

Perfect example, the 2001 LSU team started out 4-3 got red hot at the end of the year, finished 8-3 and won the SECCG then won the Sugar Bowl. That team could have easily won a playoff tournament.

Under the expanding playoff system (may not even end at 12 teams) there will be a 3, 4, or even 5-loss team that does this and ends up winning the playoff tournament.

That changes the face of college football and destroys what many fans, including myself, believed was a big reason why the sport was far superior to the NFL, or any other sport for that matter.

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Same could be said for the playoffs.

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No, it doesn't. In 2011, Oregon played a 6-6 UCLA team in the Pac 12 CCG. This meant that Stanford, led by Andrew Luck, and sporting an 11-1 record had to sit at home and watch that abortion of an effort because the top 2 teams weren't invited.

That is the CCG.

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How does that disprove that the playoffs, like the CCG, are nothing but money grabs?

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Didn't I just say that the 12 team increase was about greed?

What I'm now saying, specifically, is that the CCG doesn't guarantee the 2 best teams play one another. The Playoff does that. At least.

Let me help you even more fully. The CCG is tits on a bull.

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What I'm now saying, specifically, is that the CCG doesn't guarantee the 2 best teams play one another. The Playoff does that.

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Wrong.

The playoffs will allow for a team to stumble out of the gate and get hot at the right time to play for a championship. As I stated in my previous post, we will see 3, 4, and even 5-loss teams get hot at the right time and win the playoff tournament.

It will be much more like the NFL where teams that get hot at the end of the season have the best shot of winning the Super Bowl. They aren't necessarily the best teams, but they're the teams playing the best football in December and January.

That's not what made college football the greatest sport on Earth.

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The playoffs will allow for a team to stumble out of the gate and get hot at the right time to play for a championship



Wake me when a 6-6 UCLA team makes it? Wake me when a 6-6 GaTech team makes it in the Playoff as they did in the CCG when much better ACC teams were watching at home.

The playoff committee hasn't even come close to that nonsense and you know it.

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I just gave an example of the 2001 LSU team that started out 4-3 and ended up winning the SECCG and the Sugar Bowl and could have easily won a playoff tournament.

You are naive if you think a playoff tournament automatically means the best teams will play for a championship. And if a playoff automatically means the best teams play for a title, then what's the point of the tournament. Just pit the No 1 vs. No. 2 and be done with it.

You are also naive if you don't realize that this, like CCGs, are nothing but a money grab.

Furthermore, if a 12-team tournament makes big bucks, it will further expand eventually.

There will come a time when that 6-6 UCLA team wins the CCG and gets an automatic berth into the playoffs. It's just a matter of time.

This is why college football "old-schoolers" like myself were against a playoff way back when the BCS was first introduced. Anyone could see it would lead to this.

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I just gave an example of the 2001 LSU team that started out 4-3 and ended up winning the SECCG and the Sugar Bowl and could have easily won a playoff tournament.

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But would that team have even made the 12-team CFP under the proposed rules? They were #13 in the final BCS rankings that season, even after their upset win in the SECCG.

Projecting that into the potential future, what would the significance of what was once considered a crowning achievement - SEC Champions - be if your team missed the CFP? The conference crown becomes an afterthought, and the regular season essentially meaningless.

As I’ve stated before, the passion and pageantry of CFB has been destroyed by money. It was inevitable, I suppose, but the expansion of the CFP will just make it worse.