re: Per The Athletic: Pressure building for an 8 team playoff from conference/school admins

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Why even have conferences like the AAC, MAC, Mountain West, C-USA, and Sun Belt participate in FBS level football if their conference champs never get a shot at a National Championship?

maybe they shouldn't be FBS

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Relegation!

1) P5 conferences each have 12 teams.
2) 12 game schedule with 11 conference games and one “rivalry” game.
3) 8 team playoff with qualifiers being P5 champions, two at large, one G5 (at large and (G5 determined by BCS type system).
4) Each P5 conference is tied to a G5 conference.
5) At the end of the season, the bottom two finishers in each P5 conference are relegated to their corresponding G5 conference, and its top two finishers move up to their corresponding P5 conference.
6) Require conference affiliation.
7) Year 1, relegation based on previous season’s standings. Notre Dame and BYU start in a G5, but are eligible for at large playoff bids.

I wish they would keep it at 4, but decide the matchups after the traditional bowls. Bowls would mean something and give some matchups to put prospective playoffs teams seasons in context by playing a good team from another conference.

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Ridiculous. Not all schools play conference games, and we aren’t going to require teams to be in conferences.

It’s appalling that people are still discussing auto bids for this.

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Tough shite. The auto bids go to five conferences. If you want an auto bid, join one of those conferences.

We're trying to whittle 130 teams down to 8. Giving auto bids to roughly half the teams in the field seems reasonable to start. If you don't win your conference with an auto bid, be very, very good instead.

ETA - let the conferences work similar to NCAA regional play in basketball and baseball in the past. Be the best team in the Midwest before we discuss whether or not you're the best team in the country.

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I was responding to a post that said:

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It doesn’t matter what you were responding to. The fact remains you are stating losing to a team like the citadel should kill a team’s playoff hopes.

In a system with no auto-bids, losing to the citadel does kill a team’s playoff hopes. In a system with auto-bids like you are arguing for, losing to the citadel could have literally no effect on a team making the playoffs.

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My point was that either system has a freak win element. That poster said auto bids mean freak games decide things. Well, so does the current system.

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Yes, but in literally the opposite way you are arguing they do.

In the current system, 5 loss Pitt does not make the playoffs if they upset Clemson in the acc championship, and big 10 champion Ohio st gets left out of the playoffs 2 years in a row because they suffered an embarrassing loss each year that rightfully did keep them out.

In the system you are arguing in favor of, 5 loss Pitt makes the playoffs if they upset Clemson in the acc championship, and big 10 champion Ohio st makes the playoffs each of the last 2 years despite suffering an embarrasssing loss that, according to you, should have kept them out.

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I was never arguing one system changes fluke losses. I was pointing out why fluke losses matter in both systems, and thus aren't much of a factor in assessing whether to switch over.

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You’re just completely wrong. There’s nothing left to be said about this.

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Flukey stuff is a wash. Then you come to the actual points I have about why I think auto bids are better.

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You literally do not have any actual points.

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That's what I'm saying, not how you're spinning it.

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I am quoting you directly in every response. What exactly am I spinning?

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I does matter what I responded to because I responded to someone saying auto bids would determine a champion by freak results.

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It doesn’t matter what you are responding to, because you said this:

“The Citadel example is about how fluke losses always would and should be able to kill a team's hopes.”

This is you saying losing to the citadel should prevent Alabama from being in the playoffs. And then you turn around and argue in favor of a system in which losing to the citadel would not prevent Alabama from being in the playoffs.

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You're correct there. The "new" system trades one element of unpredictability for another. Both new and old have a freak element, and you seem to agree.

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The difference is the current system uses fluke losses to differentiate between teams with similar resumes, not reward shitty teams for fluke wins. The system you are arguing for would do literally the opposite of each. That’s neither logical nor good for the sport. The fact that you apparently can’t see the distinction between the 2 doesn’t man they are equal, and really just says a lot about you.

If that's not an LSU response I don't know what is.

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frick that

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SEC odds would be 1 in 7.

Typical G5 odds would be 1 in 60+.

You maintain the advantage earned by having the bigger fanbase.

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we should simply focus on putting the best teams in regardless of conference and have a consistent way of evaluating those teams. we should go back to the BCS polls and just put the top 4, or in this scenario top 8, in the playoffs. i dont like the idea of giving spots to teams just because they were the best team in the conference when the conference was garbage like the pac 12 this year

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Yep

And giving an auto bid to the best group of 5 team is an even worse idea

First...

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consistent way of evaluating those teams.

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Then...

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we should go back to the BCS polls

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We're trying to whittle 130 teams down to 8

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I disagree and I think most people have the same thought as you.

The ultimate problem is we're taking a regional sport and trying to make a national league. It's impossible with our current structure. Being 'national champion' back in the day was largely symbolic, akin to UCF claiming the 2017 title. Over the years, we've driven the train so that we've conflated 'national champ' to Super Bowl Champ or World Series Champ.

Teams from the south generally only play other teams from the south. Same for the midwest, southwest, along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. There just isn't a lot of intersectional games and certainly not enough to reasonably determine a national champion, regardless of any type of post-season structure (BCA, BCS, CFP, expanded CFP). We're still slaved to significantly disproportionate schedules. According to Sagarin, Georgia played the #6 schedule playing primarily southern teams. Only one other team in Sagarin's top 10 played a scheduled ranked better than 30th. Yet, Georgia is left out of a playoff and it's due almost entirely because of its schedule difficulty.

If you're going to nationalize major college football and do it fairly, then you have to bring in the programs under one umbrella, cull the fat (drop some low-end P5 teams and most G5 teams), streamline the schedule and set it up like a giant NFL. Otherwise, we're just kicking the can further down the road.

For the record, I'm against nationalizing the sport. I think everyone is too wrapped around the axle about determining a 'true champion' that we've lost sight of what's supposed to make college football so great.