Would you prefer college football return to the bowls-only era?

[whuggy]

ESPN has reduced the entire CFB season to an elaborate ad campaign for its playoff spectacle. All the oxygen gets sucked up by the top 8-10 teams, and the committee intrigue. The other 90+% of the sport--where most of the fun happens--gets drowned out.

College football is never going to be the NFL. It's inescapably lumpy and provincial and full of inequities and biases. That's what makes it great. Because there are so many teams, and so few games, you will never design a playoff format that can escape the influence of polls and computers and committees and subjectivity.

The playoff, like the BCS before it, has proved great for the profiteers and terrible for the sport. In fifty years, tOSU and Bammer fans probably won't even remember which of their teams won the 2015 beauty contest. But you can bet your ass BYU and UW fans will still be debating who should have been the mythical National Champion in 1984. Gimme back my Rose Bowl, dammit.

I'm curious. So why does every other NCAA sport have a playoff and it works, yet you think football is the one exception? Honestly interested in where people are coming from. An 8 team playoff just seems the simplest thing in the world to me and it would greatly improve the regular season. That's my motivation. Getting the regular season
back to interesting games instead of scheduling walkovers that you can beat by 50.

I’ve already explained it: Too many teams, too few games. In basketball, you have a 68-team tourney to mitigate the influence of subjectivity. But you can’t do that in football.

An 8-team tourney solves nothing. The selection process and seeding would still be heavily dependent on subjectivity. There’s always gonna be a #9. And no fanbase can possibly travel cross-country in stadium numbers on short notice three weeks in a row. So you’re either going to play first-round games in half-empty neutral stadiums *or* you’ve going to bestow home field advantage in the selection process—thus even further compounding your subjectivity problem. There’s no escaping it.

The bowls were perfect for everyone but the profiteers. The Playoff, like the old BCS, is a solution in search of a problem.

So why does it work for Division 3 with 16 teams? And what's the incentive to win your conference if it doesn't guarantee you a spot? And why risk a loss in regular season by scheduling strong? And why not try to eliminate the ESPN/SEC bias in selecting the four?

 

[TTJ]

Axe John Carroll University how well the D-III selection process works:https://www.news-herald.com/sports/...cle_560f8ffe-0999-11ea-94ef-ab258a7f28f3.html

Also, they don’t play neutral site games in the D-III tourney. And the incentive to win the Pac traditionally was the Rose Bowl. Thanks for proving all my points, though.

 

[whuggy]

Axe John Carroll University how well the D-III selection process works:https://www.news-herald.com/sports/...cle_560f8ffe-0999-11ea-94ef-ab258a7f28f3.html

Also, they don’t play neutral site games in the D-III tourney. And the incentive to win the Pac traditionally was the Rose Bowl. Thanks for proving all my points, though.

Actually you haven't convinced me in the least. I'm even more leaning to an eight team playoff. And you pretty much didn't answer any of the questions I posed so there is that.

 

[RoadDawg55]

I’m not sure an 8 team playoff would really solve the non conference scheduling. A little bit, but these coaches also pad their record with easy wins in order to get extensions.

The NCAA needs to put their foot down and not allow teams to schedule more than one game against a non P5 team. College football would be so much better for everyone if there weren’t so many useless games.

 

[Kaepsknee]

We don’t have a playoff now. We have a popularity contest in which 1 or 2 teams clearly deserve their spot and the rest win a political, popularity contest.

I don’t care whether a teams fans can travel to 3 or 4 playoff games. But if you are gonna have a true playoff, that’s what needs to happen.

And fuck a conference champion auto bid. You are just rewarding potential mediocrity with that.

And for those that say that not having auto bids for a conference champion takes away the meaning of it. Tell me you guys weren’t excited after you recent P12 titles.

Because you were. As you should have been.

 

[dtd]

45 boomers identified.

 

[RoadDawg55]

We don’t have a playoff now. We have a popularity contest in which 1 or 2 teams clearly deserve their spot and the rest win a political, popularity contest.

I don’t care whether a teams fans can travel to 3 or 4 playoff games. But if you are gonna have a true playoff, that’s what needs to happen.

And fuck a conference champion auto bid. You are just rewarding potential mediocrity with that.

And for those that say that not having auto bids for a conference champion takes away the meaning of it. Tell me you guys weren’t excited after you recent P12 titles.

Because you were. As you should have been.

There is no way to completely get rid of the popularity contest. Even with 8 teams, the 3 at large’s would be debatable. It would water down those complaints tho because winning the conference would get you in.

I disagree that winning a conference championship rewards mediocrity. Don’t care what conference it is, winning it is tough and deserves to be rewarded.

 

[RoadDawg55]

Keep the playoff system at four teams to keep it elite. Auto bids for conference champions is dumb. Having only 4 spots ensures only the teams who play the best ball are represented in the final four at the end of the season. It's a big motivation factor.

If a team can win the conference and get through the 3 games in the playoff they deserve it. Yes, every couple of years a 9 win team would win their conference championship game and make the playoffs. Once in the playoffs, they would have to beat 3 really good teams to win the natty. I don’t see how that story would be a bad thing.

 

[DerekJohnson]

ESPN has reduced the entire CFB season to an elaborate ad campaign for its playoff spectacle. All the oxygen gets sucked up by the top 8-10 teams, and the committee intrigue. The other 90+% of the sport--where most of the fun happens--gets drowned out.

College football is never going to be the NFL. It's inescapably lumpy and provincial and full of inequities and biases. That's what makes it great. Because there are so many teams, and so few games, you will never design a playoff format that can escape the influence of polls and computers and committees and subjectivity.

The playoff, like the BCS before it, has proved great for the profiteers and terrible for the sport. In fifty years, tOSU and Bammer fans probably won't even remember which of their teams won the 2015 beauty contest. But you can bet your ass BYU and UW fans will still be debating who should have been the mythical National Champion in 1984. Gimme back my Rose Bowl, dammit.

That second paragraph is a thing of beauty

 

[Emoterman]

ESPN has reduced the entire CFB season to an elaborate ad campaign for its playoff spectacle. All the oxygen gets sucked up by the top 8-10 teams, and the committee intrigue. The other 90+% of the sport--where most of the fun happens--gets drowned out.

College football is never going to be the NFL. It's inescapably lumpy and provincial and full of inequities and biases. That's what makes it great. Because there are so many teams, and so few games, you will never design a playoff format that can escape the influence of polls and computers and committees and subjectivity.

The playoff, like the BCS before it, has proved great for the profiteers and terrible for the sport. In fifty years, tOSU and Bammer fans probably won't even remember which of their teams won the 2015 beauty contest. But you can bet your ass BYU and UW fans will still be debating who should have been the mythical National Champion in 1984. Gimme back my Rose Bowl, dammit.

I'm curious. So why does every other NCAA sport have a playoff and it works, yet you think football is the one exception? Honestly interested in where people are coming from. An 8 team playoff just seems the simplest thing in the world to me and it would greatly improve the regular season. That's my motivation. Getting the regular season
back to interesting games instead of scheduling walkovers that you can beat by 50.

I’ve already explained it: Too many teams, too few games. In basketball, you have a 68-team tourney to mitigate the influence of subjectivity. But you can’t do that in football.

An 8-team tourney solves nothing. The selection process and seeding would still be heavily dependent on subjectivity. There’s always gonna be a #9. And no fanbase can possibly travel cross-country in stadium numbers on short notice three weeks in a row. So you’re either going to play first-round games in half-empty neutral stadiums *or* you’ve going to bestow home field advantage in the selection process—thus even further compounding your subjectivity problem. There’s no escaping it.

The bowls were perfect for everyone but the profiteers. The Playoff, like the old BCS, is a solution in search of a problem.

So why does it work for Division 3 with 16 teams? And what's the incentive to win your conference if it doesn't guarantee you a spot? And why risk a loss in regular season by scheduling strong? And why not try to eliminate the ESPN/SEC bias in selecting the four?

See attached for 99.9% of sports fans' opinion about DIII playoffs. The other response to your post shows you it apparently doesn't work.

What mouth-breathers on here think March Madness (ILTCIMM, ILTDT) really selects the best team?

 

[Southerndawg]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

 

[RoadDawg55]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

 

[creepycoug]

We don’t have a playoff now. We have a popularity contest in which 1 or 2 teams clearly deserve their spot and the rest win a political, popularity contest.

I don’t care whether a teams fans can travel to 3 or 4 playoff games. But if you are gonna have a true playoff, that’s what needs to happen.

And fuck a conference champion auto bid. You are just rewarding potential mediocrity with that.

And for those that say that not having auto bids for a conference champion takes away the meaning of it. Tell me you guys weren’t excited after you recent P12 titles.

Because you were. As you should have been.

This is more or less how I see it. In some respects, it's not all that different in that your admission ticket is a product of 'eye test'. Sometimes eye test is great: SOS, margin of victory, etc. etc.

Sounds an awful lot like how we filled spots in many of the bowls.

 

[Southerndawg]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

You've missed the point, your argument is facile.

Here's another example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Sugar_Bowl

The Cheerios Bowl. 9-3 vs 10-1. 9-3 for the win. The game didn't suck and neither did the 9-3 team.

And by the way, the Rose Bowl mattered prior to the BCS era. Now it doesn't. That's not nostalgia, it's simple fact. Without a "true" playoff, my preference is to go back to the bowl system. New Year's Day was a lot more fun under that model. And yes, that part is nostalgia.

 

[Gladstone]

 

[RoadDawg55]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

You've missed the point, your argument is facile.

Here's another example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Sugar_Bowl

The Cheerios Bowl. 9-3 vs 10-1. 9-3 for the win. The game didn't suck and neither did the 9-3 team.

And by the way, the Rose Bowl mattered prior to the BCS era. Now it doesn't. That's not nostalgia, it's simple fact. Without a "true" playoff, my preference is to go back to the bowl system. New Year's Day was a lot more fun under that model. And yes, that part is nostalgia.

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

You've missed the point, your argument is facile.

Here's another example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Sugar_Bowl

The Cheerios Bowl. 9-3 vs 10-1. 9-3 for the win. The game didn't suck and neither did the 9-3 team.

And by the way, the Rose Bowl mattered prior to the BCS era. Now it doesn't. That's not nostalgia, it's simple fact. Without a "true" playoff, my preference is to go back to the bowl system. New Year's Day was a lot more fun under that model. And yes, that part is nostalgia.

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

You've missed the point, your argument is facile.

Here's another example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Sugar_Bowl

The Cheerios Bowl. 9-3 vs 10-1. 9-3 for the win. The game didn't suck and neither did the 9-3 team.

And by the way, the Rose Bowl mattered prior to the BCS era. Now it doesn't. That's not nostalgia, it's simple fact. Without a "true" playoff, my preference is to go back to the bowl system. New Year's Day was a lot more fun under that model. And yes, that part is nostalgia.

My point was that nobody, or at least very few, want to watch the #1 team face a 2-3 loss team in their bowl game, which happened with the old system.

If it were the first game of an 8 game playoff, that would be fine, but not to end the season like that.

I never said teams needed to be undefeated for the games to be entertaining.

 

[DerekJohnson]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

UW was 10-2 after the Mississippi State and UCLA forfeits

 

[Houhusky]

I have already given you all the best system and you all know it.

5 auto bid from each conference makes the conference championship game actually matter
6 teams in 3 play-in games hosted at higher ranked team so the rankings still matter even if you dont win your conference or are a non P5 team.

8 team playoff with first round hosted at highest seeded home field still heavily rewards winning out
final 4 and championship hosted at traditional bowl sites

removal of pointless div2/fcs dreck games
requirement of cross conference P5 OOC games
requirement of conference championship game

The playoff is still simple and exclusive
MAJOR homefield games for good teams/fans
Still have neutral/historic bowl games
Still allows for ESPN and self important fucktards on some committee to wank itself off about who is in or not.

Dont want to care about being subjectively ranked? Win your conference
Didnt win the conference AND you werent in the next 6 highest ranked teams you cant really complain about being left out.

Im right, and its too good of a system to ever be implemented.

 

[oregonblitzkrieg]

Going back to the Bowls would be lame now after we’ve already had the playoff. The bets should play the best.

With the old bowl system an undefeated team would sometimes play a team with 3 losses. Ohio State being undefeated and playing a 2-3 loss Oregon or Utah team would suck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Rose_Bowl

7-4 vs 10-1. 7-4 for the win. The game didn't suck. Neither did the 7-4 team.

That’s a nostalgic memory for you. The rest of the country doesn’t want to see that. Not sure what you think you have proven.

You've missed the point, your argument is facile.

Here's another example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Sugar_Bowl

The Cheerios Bowl. 9-3 vs 10-1. 9-3 for the win. The game didn't suck and neither did the 9-3 team.

And by the way, the Rose Bowl mattered prior to the BCS era. Now it doesn't. That's not nostalgia, it's simple fact. Without a "true" playoff, my preference is to go back to the bowl system. New Year's Day was a lot more fun under that model. And yes, that part is nostalgia.

The Rose Bowl matters every other year now, whenever it hosts a playoff semi-final. Whether or not a PAC 12 team is represented there. So it means more now than it used to. The old Rose Bowl you repine for is now a second tier consolation prize for the first losers out of the playoffs. Who wants to play a stupid BIG 10 team every year, besides.