New CFP Format...

[Dugan15]

It is difficult to claim "We're determining the national champ" when Indiana is on the field... or SMU or Clemson or Arizona State. None of those teams is deserving of an opportunity. So credibility is lost immediately.

What happened was that the major conferences looked at the economics and came up with something that addressed all of their monetary desires. We want to protect the conference championship games. We want guaranteed money for as many of the major conference teams as we can get. They left out the previous requirement "We want each team to have a legitimate argument that they are the best team."

And once you do that, you easily can expand the tournament to include a lot more teams - that is the obvious plan.

If Indiana or SMU goes on a 4-game heater, then yes, they do deserve to be National Champions.

 

[Just Gary]

What it seems like (as opposed to fair) is that the conferences are trying to force Notre Dame to join a conference and share their revenue.
Fair has ZERO to do with it.

The only people who would think it is unfair for ND not to get a bye while all the other bye teams had to play one more game to win that bye is a Notre Dame fan. As someone who didn’t care two shits about ND, I am glad they don’t get special treatment over conference teams.

 

[Styre]

The 4 best teams in MLB were Atlanta, Tampa, Los Angeles and Baltimore in 2023.
If I were going to determine the best team, I'd put those 4 in a playoff.

That's not what I asked you.

Look, I agree completely that the champion of a given league is not always the best team when that champion is determined by a playoff tournament. But that's true of any tournament, whether it's 2 teams or 68 teams, as the best team does not always win every game or series. (Among those 4 MLB teams, one of them was, by definition, the best team in the league over 162 games.) So if you're going to have any playoff format at all, you're conceding that the best team in the country may not become national champions.

But there are really only two ways to determine the best team: have everyone play everyone else (as with most soccer leagues) and give the trophy to the team on top of the table, or have a bunch of experts get in a room together and announce the best team. FBS college football is the only sport I know of that embraced that second option, and most years that led to people screaming that the experts had chosen the wrong team. And that's why I like the playoff: we can still argue about who was the best team in college football in 2024, but there will be no argument about who won the national championship.

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

That's not what I asked you.

Look, I agree completely that the champion of a given league is not always the best team when that champion is determined by a playoff tournament. But that's true of any tournament, whether it's 2 teams or 68 teams, as the best team does not always win every game or series. (Among those 4 MLB teams, one of them was, by definition, the best team in the league over 162 games.) So if you're going to have any playoff format at all, you're conceding that the best team in the country may not become national champions.

But there are really only two ways to determine the best team: have everyone play everyone else (as with most soccer leagues) and give the trophy to the team on top of the table, or have a bunch of experts get in a room together and announce the best team. FBS college football is the only sport I know of that embraced that second option, and most years that led to people screaming that the experts had chosen the wrong team. And that's why I like the playoff: we can still argue about who was the best team in college football in 2024, but there will be no argument about who won the national championship.

In the old days, when baseball was very important, the National League had a champion and the American League had a champion.
Those teams did not play each other in the regular season. The regular season determined the two league champions.
The two league champions played a series to see who would be "World Champion."
That made sense. Baseball expanded to two divisions in each league. The playoffs pitted the 2 division champs in each league against each other, with the winners playing to determine the World Champion. That made sense.

Football had a very similar situation. AFL had two division winners play each other. NFL did the same. League champs met to determine the world champ. That made sense.

Even when I was a kid playing Little League, we had a regular season champion and then (for fun) there was a playoff and eventually a Playoff Champ. Kids on that team got token trophies. Kids on the regular season champ got the real trophies. If you won both, you got 2 trophies. And no, nobody else got a friggin' trophy for showing up.

The first NIT tournament (in 1938) invited 6 teams after the regular season had concluded. Two teams got byes. Temple, coached by James Usilton, defeated Colorado led by Frosty Cox. The NCAA tournament started in 1939. They allowed no more than 1 team from each conference. That rule was lifted in 1975 as part of an effort to bankrupt the NIT.

The point is - everybody knows what goes into being a true national champ. Start by winning your conference or league - win something. If you can't do that, then you are out of luck. Let the deserving teams play each other in a tournament to decide which is best.

But then there is "making money." - and that explains all the bs.

 

[Styre]

The point is - everybody knows what goes into being a true national champ. Start by winning your conference or league - win something. If you can't do that, then you are out of luck. Let the deserving teams play each other in a tournament to decide which is best.

But then there is "making money." - and that explains all the bs.

There's also "there are more teams now" which explains it.

And winning a title of some kind is the most important thing? So if we still had the four-team format you'd want Boise and ASU in there instead of, say, Texas and Notre Dame? Do you feel that the 2022 division champ Buccaneers (8-9) were more deserving of a shot at the title than the 12-5 wild card Cowboys?

 

[PurpleWhiteBoy]

There's also "there are more teams now" which explains it.

And winning a title of some kind is the most important thing? So if we still had the four-team format you'd want Boise and ASU in there instead of, say, Texas and Notre Dame? Do you feel that the 2022 division champ Buccaneers (8-9) were more deserving of a shot at the title than the 12-5 wild card Cowboys?

I wouldn't give a team with a losing record a playoff berth in any sport.

Oregon is the only unbeaten. Georgia, Texas, Boise and Notre Dame have an argument that they are worthy of playing them.
Nobody else does.

All I want is a legitimate process that makes logical sense.