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Question about this 24 [playoff] team absurdity.

Cane_Mutiny said:
One of the defining characteristics of college football is that the regular season is high stakes. This would effectively sacrifice that to create more high stakes playoff games.
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This is bull****.

The ONLY reasons for the college football regular season being "high stakes" were that there were fewer regular season games of any sport at any level, and because there was no playoff system. All we had were 10 or 11 or 12 regular season games and then a never-ending landscape of ****** bowl games. Therefore, you "had to" go undefeated, because it was nearly impossible for the two best teams to play each other, due to conference-mandated bowl tie-ins.

The game that changed everything was the 1987 Fiasco Bowl, when Miami played Pedo State. Outside of Halley's-Comet-frequency 1 vs. 2 matchups, this was the first intentionally engineered "championship" game between a 1 and a 2, including moving the game away from its normal day and timeslot.

The bowl system has always been, and will always be, a joke. The motivation levels have never been there, and it's being made worse with player opt-outs, the Portal, and coaching changes.

The best way to crown a champion is, and always has been, on the field of play. Let the players play, and if there are some upsets, so be it.

The regular season will continue to be high stakes, especially since more and more of the regular season has become "conference games". Those games matter for conference standings, and for seeding. As we have seen, seeding makes a huge difference. Matchups make a huge difference. The best way to insure one's chances in the CFP is to win as many regular season games as possible.

In every sport, at every level, both the regular season and the playoffs are high stakes. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would argue for making "regular season" more important than "the playoffs". Quite frankly, it's un-American.

But, yeah, maybe we should go back to the "good old days". Grind out that regular season, and then send all the best teams to contractual-matchup bowl games. What an idiotic idea.

Somehow, every other football league at every other level manages to have multi-round playoffs. And football is pretty much the most popular sport in America (discounting the interminable 162-game MLB schedule, which is gross quantity over quality).
 
Bringing up the Big Four playoff formats to support a 24-team CFP expansion is a weak argument. People forget these are professional leagues made up of the best players in the world, where the talent gap between the best and worst teams is much smaller than it is in college football. In college football, the gap between the top 5 teams and the 20th-24th ranked teams can be massive.

At the end of the day, my opinion doesn’t matter. Whether we like it or not, this is likely the direction college football is heading. I’m still going to watch my Canes every Saturday
 
CaneinBroward said:
That's my point, the $EC wants a 16 team playoff and all the other conferences want 24 teams now. The $EC knows they will get the lion's share of at-large bids. The ACC & Big XII know they will get 1 participant in most years in a 16 team playoff and the B1G knows they will more often than not have fewer participants than the $EC.

Frankly, I'm surprised the B1G would even sign off on a 1+23 model if they thought about it because $EC dominance through media bias will appear more often than not. As an example, the $EC would have had 8 participants in a 24 team playoff this past year.
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SEC would’ve had 7 last year, and only two extra who didn’t get into the 12 team playoff (Texas, Vanderbilt). B1G would have gone from 3 to 6 (USC, Michigan, Iowa). Texas and Vandy would’ve gotten in at 16 teams; none of the B1G teams would’ve (ND, BYU, Texas, Vandy, and Utah were the next 5 up; possibly ACC champion Duke ahead of USC too).

B1G wants 24 because Fox can bid on the games and more of their teams will get access. The extra revenue will be good for them as costs go up. And moreover, after going on three straight seasons of B1G national champions without an SEC team even making the game, the facade of it just means more is meeting reality.
 
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ICANEDOIT said:
24 is too many. I like 12. Regular season still matters, and rematches are reduced. No one cares about #24 vs. 13 in round 1.
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While I agree on your points, one thing I think expanding to 24 may allow is some marquee out of conference games to be brought back. Scheduling for most team OOC has become a joke for fear of a lose costing a playoff berth. If they go to 24 it may bring back the big matchups because that possible loss won't mean missing the playoffs.
 
kill the regular season (or NFL-ify it, whatever your POV is) and you effectively kill the sport. or at best, take away what makes it's regular season so passionate and special compared to every US sport

F@(K Tony Petitti and anyone who lets this 24 team playoff team
 
Comparing college football to Pro sports is comparing apples to oranges.

The NFL for the most part has parity. Yes, there are 2-3 teams per year that are clearly weaker than the rest of the league, but overall, it’s any given Sunday. And they all play an almost equal schedule.

CFB does not. There is no parity. When a bottom 70+ team beats a top 20 team it’s a fluke. Unlike the NFL, the strength of schedule is not even remotely similar.

These are also college kids. We’ve already seen the attrition on playing 16 games. Add two more games and it’s going to be not necessarily the best team winning the Natty, but a Top 10 team avoiding injuries.

There is no reason for a 4 loss team to be in a playoff.
 
cookies said:
SEC would’ve had 7 last year, and only two extra who didn’t get into the 12 team playoff (Texas, Vanderbilt). B1G would have gone from 3 to 6 (USC, Michigan, Iowa). Texas and Vandy would’ve gotten in at 16 teams; none of the B1G teams would’ve (ND, BYU, Texas, Vandy, and Utah were the next 5 up; possibly ACC champion Duke ahead of USC too).

B1G wants 24 because Fox can bid on the games and more of their teams will get access. The extra revenue will be good for them as costs go up. And moreover, after going on three straight seasons of B1G national champions without an SEC team even making the game, the facade of it just means more is meeting reality.
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Ok, good to see we agree the $EC would get more spots in most years, like last year. :cool:
 
Memnon said:
It should be 112 teams.

That way it's fair.
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No **** that. 766 team playoff. EVERYONE IN THE PLAYOFF. If you advocate for a 24 team playoff and disagree, then you're a ******* coward that's afraid of playing the U.S. Coast Guard in the first round of the playoffs. Bill Connelly has already set this in motion by doing yearly rankings of the Top 766 teams in the country. Pandora's Box has been opened and cannot be closed.



docs.google.com

2025 SP+

docs.google.com docs.google.com

If you don't think 10 rounds/weeks of playoff football wouldn't be a gold mine of game inventory for the networks, then you're just a god**** communist.
 
"I just felt like if messages were getting out of one part of the country and not the other part of the country, some of the things that we wanted to share that we really believe in was getting missed," said Washington football coach Jedd Fisch, who advocated for more coverage of the meetings.

Fisch rattled off the names of the past six football teams to play for the national championship -- Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Indiana and Miami. None are in the SEC.

"I think if we continued to not express that," he said of the Big Ten's message, "it was going to be much harder for the whole nation to understand where we're coming from."
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www.espn.com

At Big Ten spring meetings, coaches lobby for 24-team playoff

It's clear from early conversation at the Big Ten spring meetings that coaches remain adamant about moving to a 24-team College Football Playoff, an idea that began less than a year ago and has gained support across the ACC and Big 12.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
 
Thoughtsoncanes said:
assuming this monstrosity goes into effect. What’s the timeframe? Obviously not this season but maybe 2027? 28? I am hoping espn and the sec are powerful enough to block it.
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Why block it? Now good teams that may have 2 or 3 losses from playing good teams get a chance to compete for a title.
 
Does moving to 24 teams eliminate the automatic ND spot bull**** that goes into effect this year?
 
Cane44 said:
I think it's F*tarded and greedy AF........ unless they are getting rid of all Conference championship games andddd 1-2 regular season games.. the brutal run teams would have to make is malpractice for a game like football.... IMO

even after our glorious run, when you think of it, it was brutal as ****.... A&M / OSU / Ole Miss / then Championship.... after a full season??? even that was insane to me.
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little league, High school, lower divisions and NFL do it with no problem. Why would you frown upon possibly making a playoff run every year?
 
CBurrr93 said:
16 is the max it ever needs to be. But that would make too much sense. 24 is getting to point of no return territory
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Agreed
16 is where it should be set and locked

B10 and SEC want HALF their conference in playoffs annually and 2-3 from ACC and B12 plus BD and G5

That is exactly how they see it playing out
It’s and ing joke because then they circle jerk it all year based on preseason rankings, they churn teams but all of them stay in top 25
Ie Missouris of the world who don’t beat ANYONE but somehow stay ranked
 
Cane_Mutiny said:
A 24-team playoff means that 8-4 Iowa, the sixth best team in the B10, would have been in the field with a chance to win the national title last year.

For most serious programs, the regular season wouldn't matter anymore. Just sleepwalk your way to 9 wins, lock up a playoff spot, and then try to make a run in a single-elimination tournament.

One of the defining characteristics of college football is that the regular season is high stakes. This would effectively sacrifice that to create more high stakes playoff games.
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Nope it will settle it on the field instead of voters
 
dccane06 said:
I agree the "monstrosity" reaction is overblown, but these cross-sport comparisons obscure the one thing that makes college football structurally different from every league on that list. Every NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and MLS team plays a largely common schedule against the same pool of opponents. A 40-win NBA team and a 50-win NBA team have both been tested by the same competition. College football doesn't really have that. A 10-2 G5 champion and a 10-2 SEC or BIG or even ACC team have not been measured on anything close to the same standard. Strength of schedule varies so much across 138 teams that comparing participation rates to the NFL includes teams whose entire body of work is structurally incomparable to the programs at the top.

The 12-team field is, IMO, defensible because it still preserves most of the regular season's weight. At 24 teams, mediocre regular seasons become survivable, which weakens the stakes of each game. The champion will still very likely come from the same 8-10 programs it always has, so you're not adding legitimacy or genuine competition at the top. I feel like the 24-team playoff just adds rounds while slowly converting college football's most beautiful feature into something that looks like every other sport.
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12 teams is best if you put in a stipulation for a G5 team that doesn't guarantee them a spot
 
As long as teams are ranked, the specific system used to crown a national champion doesn’t really matter.

You can be sure that whatever system the NCAA adopts will end up carrying plenty of P2 bias anyway.
 
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