There should be consistency. There has been no consistency as long as I have been on this earth.
The Excitement Over The NCAA Tournament (Big Dance) Foreshadows What Will Result In The Coming Expanded College Football Playoffs.
- Thread starter gamecock stock
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I think it would be surprising, not so much shocking. The NCAAT has the potential to deliver historic upsets. A top 25 ranked team beating a higher ranked top 25 team wouldn't be historic I don't think.
I can't imagine anything more dismal than if a 4-loss San Diego State into the title somehow, but I guess it's thrilling to some.
2 out of 14 get a buy in the NFL, and it's just the team with the best records in the NFC and AFC. FCS has 8 byes, and it's just based off of seeding, not conf affiliation. It would make ZERO sense for a #14 ranked 9-3 clem team to get a bye just b/c the won the worst conference in the country. That is going to happen. Might not be clem...might be Utah, or OKST, or some decent team that just happened to run into some luck that not only get into the playoff, but get a bye b/c their conference sucks and is not competitive. I don't mind the 4 byes, I do mind how they are giving them.
Both of us agree that college football and college basketball are apples and oranges. What works great for basketball isn't necessarily the best approach for college football. And you are right, we will never see the equivalent of FDU over Purdue in college football. Even if the CFP is expanded to 64 teams, we still won't see it. And that's just fine.
What the CFP can give us is an anti-climactic 65-7 blowout waste-of-time championship game that occurred because an inferior team upset a contender who would have likely made the game more interesting.
I agree as you allude to clemson. They have a huge advantage playing in an inferior conference.
I haven't watched enough div 2 football to even know, bit do they play 12 (and 13 with the conference title game) games in a regular season?
Would we be better off bringing the season back to 11 games if it meant expanding the playoffs?
Edit: Okay, I looked up last years division 2 winner, they were 15-1. Our current winner in top level would play 15 games to win the title. (Including conf title)
That's actually a good argument for expansion. This would have been TCU's road if it were a 12 team playoff this year:
TCU vs Tulane
TCU vs Utah
TCU vs Georgia/KSU/Tenn (likely UGA)
Assuming they would have gotten past Utah, which I think was unlikely, they would have been stopped in the semifinals. The flip side is a 2 loss clem team and a 3 loss Utah team would have gotten byes b/c of the stupid conf championship criteria.
This past season a 16-team CFP would have had Toledo as the MAC champion playing UGA (I speak of the 16-team playoff b/c that's what's inevitable). What on earth is the point of that game? UGA's backups would steamroll Toledo. You're not "giving them a shot at the title" by matching them up with UGA. How does it help Toledo to make a playoff only to get vaporized by 40+ points? Is that gonna help their recruiting?
I don't why any Gamecock fan would be in favor of expansion when it absolutely guarantees Clemson a spot, most likely with a bye.
It generates excitement on the Toledo campus. It might even make a good case for a mid-major playoff.
Similar to USC Women's hoops steamrolling Howard in round 1 of 2022 March Madness.
B/c it makes it more likely for us to get in. Let's not cut our nose off to spite our face here. I'd rather meet them in the playoff and whoop their *** like we did in Omaha 2010.
well, that gets back to the lowering the bar argument, but i know i'm a lone voice in the wilderness on that one. What was once a B is now called an A but people think they're actually doing better.
I don't like the byes, which is why I would not be opposed to a 16-team playoff. I said that from the get-go when a 12-team play off structure was announced. clemson has an advantage in getting in the playoffs with the current set up because they are in an inferior conference. At least with a 12-team set up, though not ideal, we have a chance to get into playoffs, which should negate somewhat the advantageous recruiting pitch clemson currently has over us.
A 12-team playoff would certainly create more excitement in the areas of the 8 additional teams.
I'm not really sure I understand this rationale. For one, how many times would we have made a 12-team playoff in our program's history? 4? I just don't see it helping us that much. Yeah, lowering the bar theoretically helps, but practically it's still a longshot for us 90% of the time.
As to recruiting, if we're making the playoff, a number of other teams who we recruit against are also making the playoff, so any benefit is probably offset by other teams getting the same benefit. As far as Clemson, they'll be able to sell recruits a 100% guarantee of making the playoffs, which is something they don't have now. Right now they can promise recruits a pretty good shot at the playoffs, but that'll be come a virtual guarantee with expansion.
So it's at-best an outside shot at the playoffs vs a virtual guarantee. I don't see how that helps our recruiting against them.
I saw a bit on TV last season and they showed a map of the last 15 or champions and the hosts were grimly bemoaning the fact that the west coast hadn't had a champion since whatever year. One of the hosts somberly stated "that simply needs to change" and, of course, all the others eagerly agreed.
My question is: why?
Of course, they offered no explanation for their rationale other than "it's not good for the game" That's a funny statement to me because college football has become a financial juggernaut in the period of time they were referring to. The game seems to be doing quite alright.
The #1 seed would have a bye, so that scenario would in all likelihood not happen. Not to say that is not impossible.
The 16 team playoff is in the distant future, so discussing teams from this past year and projecting 5-10 years from now is a fools errand.
But to your point, in the final 2022 regular season poll LSU was #16 (AP) and Oregon #16 (Coaches), and Toledo was not ranked in the top 25.
https://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaaf/polls/coaches-poll/
It's adding an additional recruiting pitch. Right now, Beamer can't go to a recruit and seriously say "come here and compete for a national championship". Clemson has that on us. We still have to go win games to get in, but it's much more of a possibility that Beamer can actually use on the trail. That's why Dabo is criticizing it so much. He doesn't want to lose the advantage he clearly has over USC in that regard.
2 times according to On3. That is compared to 0 in the current system. Thus the new set up is increasing our chances and gives us an additional recruiting pitch. As long as clemson is in an ACC that cannot commit to football like clemson does, clemson will always have a clear path to the playoffs. Us beating them this year probably knocked them out. But they still won the ACC and probably always will in the foreseeable future making them a lock for the playoffs if the set up had stayed at 4 teams only, unless they unexpectedly lose like they did to us. If we had a weak SEC to play in, I might think differently. But the chances of a weak SEC in the future, as the ACC is, is zero. Thus the new set up will give us a recruiting pitch that we do not currently have.
Because college football just can't do anything simple, in addition to conference champs getting a first round bye regardless of ranking, the top ranked non P5 team is an auto qualifier. That's why Toledo would be #12 in that scenario.
I was going based on this:
I believe Toledo would have gotten an automatic bid for being the MAC champion, irrespective of their ranking as a 5-loss team.
You raise an interesting issue, though. How is it gonna make folks happy when an unranked 5-loss MAC team gets in over a 3-loss P5 team with a far tougher schedule and top 20 ranking? If you think there are cries of unfairness now, just wait.
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My financial investments are doing quite alright too. But, they certainly have the potential to do better.
As are my financial investments (33% average annual increases in the past 4 years). But still have the potential to do better.
But, anyway, back to football. You're hard-pressed to make any cogent argument that the game is in any way struggling right now because it hasn't had a west coast champion in a while. This is evidenced by the fact that those who always speak/write on this issue simply just say, with no support, "it's not good for the game" and "we need those teams more involved". But nobody ever says why.
Where did I say it was struggling? I said there is always the potential to do better. It really does not matter because the 12 -team playoff is coming.
I understand your point, However, in the Atlhon article you referred to, they used Tulane as the #12 team. who finished at 12-2, (and defeated USCw in their bowl) not Toledo.
Regardless, this is all academics since we are dealing for the foreseeable future of 12 teams.
Actually no, the team that the article 1818 used as reference had Tulane @ 12-2 the number 12 team, that would have made the playoffs this year.
That is a significant difference.
We all know the 12-team playoff is only a gateway to the 16-team playoff.
Regardless, the example your provided was using the theorized 16 game playoff format and used a 12-2 team and not the 5 loss team, that you were using as an example to show a serious flaw.
Again, this is all academics, however I have been on record for some time that the playoffs would expand. Where the final demarcation will land is merely speculation at best.
I apologize...I meant Tulane...then realized I didn't even read the article that referenced Toledo, so I had no idea what I was even talking about. haha Carry on.
I don't care about other divisions, especially since there isn't a real bowl component in those.
FCS schools play one fewer regular season game and have no meaningful bowl outlet. The only bowl game involving FCS schools is the Celebration Bowl, which features two HBCU teams. In view of that, the larger playoff in that division is less impactful and more understandable.
One thing to add about the coming 12-team playoffs. It is coming at a great time for SC. We have a young coach who certainly has done better on the field in his first 2 seasons than anyone could expect, having grown up around one of the best game day coaches of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And right now he is working on a Top 10 recruiting class. He appears to be a strong recruiter, kind of like Dabo. So I do not think this class would be a "one-off". Spurrier produced 3 straight Top 10 teams on the field. Once he got it going, we became nationally relevant. However, he was ready to retire after that 3rd Top 10 team.But he was talked out of it.Let's face it, he mailed it in during his last 2 seasons. And Muschamp was over his head as a Head Coach. Shane is about 20 years younger than Steve was during his last Top 10 season. If Shane's first 2 seasons and this recruiting class are any indication, we are going to often make the 12-team playoff. And when they inevitably expand to 16 teams, we will be in just about every year.
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I'm in favour of a playoff structure for FBS like all other NCAA divisions and the NAIA. Bowls which survive it, that's nice.
They have a 12-game regular season (with increasingly more conferences adopting nine game league slates) and championship Saturdays for a reason, and the reason is to cull these pretenders. Maybe it's the FCS that has it wrong - because they have no bowls to which to aspire.
Don't need bowls. Aspire towards a playoff championship.
I do agree that a major impediment to implementing a true playoff in FBS would be reducing the regular season schedule back to 11 games. What P5 AD wants to give up the $$$ associated with a home date?