TomRollTideRitter

I do think every team in playoff contention should have to play on conference championship week, but I wouldn’t tie it to conferences and wouldn’t allow rematches.

Oregon-Utah
Ole Miss-USC
Texas A&M-Vanderbilt
Oklahoma-Miami
Notre Dame-Texas

My fear with this would be that it would become a de facto 16 team playoff whereas I’d want to it to be treated as just an extra resume point.

USC for example wouldn’t deserve to get into a 12 team field even if they beat Ole Miss.

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Aside from the extra practices, which some coaches now say aren't as value-added in the present day because they would rather be shoring up their roster with who's coming back, hitting the portal, what's out there, etc., is it bad to decline?

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I think it speaks volumes about the current state of college football if developing players isn’t important to the coaches.

It’s bad from a culture/morality standpoint. Would you teach your kids that when faced with adversity they should just quit?

From a strategic standpoint, I don’t see how playing in a bowl would be harmful for a program.

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Does more teams declining lead to change for the better?

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I’m not sure what that change would be. I don’t think more playoff expansion is better especially with how terrible the playoff calendar is. This season has pretty clear more deserving 2 team or 4 team setups.

I’ve never been able to understand why bowl games are meaningless, but no one says this about NCAA tournament games where neither team has a realistic shot at a national title. If it’s all about national championships, most games are worthless period.

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but G5 clowns cried " muh we can never make the top 2 or top 4 so we must have autobids" f all those schools. should be top 12 teams using old BCS formula.

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If we aren’t going to let any G5 teams in, why do we need 12 teams at all?

UGA vs Indiana in the BCS or Indiana vs Texas Tech and UGA vs Ohio State in a 4 team playoff would both be a better setup.

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Ah how cute. Bama fans think if they don’t back into another playoff the SEC is cancelling the SEC title game after multiple previous teams have been screwed by it. But now that Bama couldn’t even have the decency to keep the game respectable, the game should be eliminated if they don’t make the playoffs.

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Bump.

If you think about it from a business perspective, who gets in is much easier to predict.

If it was truly about “best teams” or whatever. They’d have stat nerds and analysts on the committee, but they have athletic directors who are there because they know how to negotiate with TV executives.

It’s fair to argue that Bama shouldn’t be in, but McElroy was pretty adamant SMU should stay over Bama last year, so I think it’s just his consistent opinion - not a homer take.

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B10 is not as strong as folks make it out to be. If Indiana had our schedule, not sure Cignetti would have won 10 games.

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I agree, but Indiana is far more used to losing to MAC schools than beating Ohio State.

Ohio State has almost twice as many 5 stars as Indiana has 4 stars. Indiana is historically the worst power conference program.

I think what Cignetti has done at Indiana might be the most impressive coaching accomplishment in CFB history.

They are 72nd and dead last in the B1G in team talent this year on 247.

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Then Coke entered with these rival commercials like the LSU fan walking against a crowd of Bama fans holding a coke and then they have a Ohio St Mich, and USC ND one trying to cover all geographic areas of the US.

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Something about these doesn’t work for me. The LSU-Bama one looks like an NFL scene with the demographics of the fans, the way they are dressed, and the truck rolling right up to the stadium with just a parking lot backdrop.

Fansville seems like they at least consulted some actual CFB fans.

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You want to stay in one time zone the whole time ideally. They're doing their pre-World Cup camp in Irvine

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Fair enough, but I’m worried about road crowds in California (not so much Seattle).

I also just find it a bummer as a fan. All west coast would have been one thing, but repeating stadiums as the host in a country our size seems lame.

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Oddly enough, the US is in the second 'toughest' group, but that's because we are ranked 14 ourselves.

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I keep hearing people say we got an easy group, and I have to wonder if people are still thinking in the context of the 32-team format.

By historical standards, this is a very easy group, but by the standards of the other groups this year, it’s not great.

I also don’t like that our whole path is on the west coast.

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Why be an athletic donor?

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There are certainly personal reasons, but you also get a ton of kickbacks or perks that help you make money.

If you’re ever in charge of a vendor contact in a college town, you can bet everyone local that is bidding will offer you perks like meeting the football coach.

Imagine you run a construction business that operates in Baton Rouge. You may not even want to denote to the university, but if you don’t, when the university wants to build a new student center, you can bet they aren’t gonna pick you to do that work.

It’s basically a form of lobbying. It gets you access to power and influence. This is why you can never truly separate the athletic department from the government funded university even if the budgets are separate.