BigSoxFan said:
Your Big 12 comment makes absolutely no sense.
Well, let's be fair, lots of his comments make absolutely no sense:
TomRicardo said:
there is still no reason to believe that 4 teams was not enough to determine a national champion.
TCU and Baylor had legitimate gripes about being left out of the opportunity to contend for that championship. TCU then absolutely destroyed Ole Miss in their bowl, 42-3. You still think they wouldn't have beaten, say, FSU?
TomRicardo said:
What did the Big 12 do at all this year to make anyone think they belonged in any shape or form in a conversation for the National Championship. Big 12 was awful.
TCU demolished Ole Miss, and Baylor would have beaten Michigan St soundly but for a last-minute comeback; they ended up losing by one point. #11 Kansas State lost a similarly close bowl game to UCLA. The Big 12 was top-heavy, and had no other ranked teams besides those three, but at various points in the year, Oklahoma was #4 (before TCU beat them), OK ST was #15 (likewise), WVU was ranked late into the season, etc. This statement is either dumb, biased, or both.
TomRicardo said:
The reason why college football's regular season is so interesting is that one loss can ruin your season. Every single game matters. I am sitting watching SEC games I never would watch this season to see if Mississippi St loses or if Michigan can upset Ohio St. Hell I watched the Arizona Arizona st game. I don't watch any of those if it is a 8 team system. It is too watered down for me to care. Plus I get annoyed if in some crappy Quarterfinal game Mariotta gets hurt. I just don't have a ton of interest watching Alabama - Michigan St a week after Thanksgiving the way I did to watch the Rose Bowl with implications on New Year's Day.
I don't see any way that a 6- or 8-team playoff would make the regular season not matter. There are 128 FBS teams; currently 4 (3%) of them make the playoffs. Doubling that would not materially change that ratio. Whereas, the NBA or NHL playoffs have over half the teams make the playoffs, which lends a farcical air to regular season contests - "just get in, and stay healthy" is all teams care about. Individual losses matter less to them if the bigger trend is a winning one - they'll still put their best foot forward for the title. CFB can't and won't ever be like that, because there are too many teams, and too few games between them, to have teams' relative position sorted out by the regular season.
If you're any kind of college football fan, you're going to watch a (hypothetical) game between conference powerhouses like Alabama-Mich St. Every win and loss still matters, because there's still very few playoff spots available, and any given loss can easily knock an otherwise good team out of contention.
If Mariota gets hurt in a playoff game, that's shit luck for the Ducks, but their opponent would in that case probably be a serious contender for the national title. The same is true in a QF as it is in a SF. I don't see how this is an argument in any way. "Sometimes shit happens! Therefore, smaller playoff." You left out collecting underpants.
TomRicardo said:
College Football is the high stakes regular season in sports. Why would you want to water it down more than you had to? The reason the four team playoff makes sense is because there are years (this one included) that you have three teams you would consider national champion at the end of the season. Seriously if there was no playoff this year who is left out of the Championship Florida St, Alabama, or Oregon?
No one thinks Michigan St should have been named National Champion. By increasing the teams to 8 you are saying 10-2 Michigan St should have the same claim as Alabama. After their regular seasons that is a ridiculous statement.
The bolded is
precisely the argument for expansion. This year, there were 6 teams who could make a credible case that they deserved a shot at the national title. Ergo, we ought to include more than 4 teams.
In 2013, there was FSU, and a 12-1 Auburn team that looked great, but you also had one-loss teams in Alabama, Mich St who had just beaten previously-undefeated Ohio State, Baylor, and that Ohio State team who had previously run the table. You also had four 1-loss teams from other conferences, including a UCF team that beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl, and a Louisville team that destroyed Miami. It was a mess.
In 2012, you had undefeated Notre Dame, who nobody believed in, and then five one-loss teams to pick from: Alabama (beaten by #9 Johnny Football), Florida (beaten by #7 Georgia), Oregon (beaten by #6 Stanford in a weird, low-scoring, OT game), Kansas State (beat 4 ranked teams, but an embarrassing loss to Baylor), and then Northern Illinois. Maybe in a 4-team playoff you keep ALA, FLA and ORE and toss KSST and NIU, but they all had decent arguments.
In 2011, the one-loss contenders to face undefeated LSU included 11-1 Alabama (whose only loss was to LSU, but who got a rematch because SEC!), OK ST (a 2-OT loss to an unranked Iowa St, but won their conference and beat 4 ranked teams), Stanford's Fightin' Lucks (lost to #5 Oregon, who themselves had 2 losses but won the Pac-12), and Boise St (a 1-point loss to TCU), not to mention 12-1 Houston. Maybe you leave out Boise State, but frankly Oregon and Arkansas (lost @Alabama and @LSU) had decent arguments too.
In 2010, undefeated TCU got screwed, and there were 5 good teams from P5 conferences with 1 loss.
In 2009, there were 5 undefeated teams (!), but one-loss Florida was probably better than several of them. The championship that year was decided by conference favoritism.
There's basically never a year where there are two clear-and-obvious favorites to play for the national title, which is why they went to 4 teams. But the problem is, there are frequently good arguments for more than 4 teams. Some years it's 5, some years it's 6, it's rarely more than that. Going back through the entire history of the BCS, it's never been more than 8, so I don't think you'd find any support for expanding beyond 8. But to expand beyond 4 teams, to at least 6 (and probably 8), is the only way to ensure that every team who has an argument that they ought to be up for the national title is given a shot at it.
The goal isn't to give some teams who have no credible argument some sort of consolation prize, i.e. "here you go, thanks for coming, you get a participants' ribbon and get to be blown out by Alabama". It's to put everyone together who didn't have a chance to prove their relative worth on the field, and let them sort it out. There are too many FBS teams and conferences, and too few games in a season, to get a real handle on which teams might really be the best. You can't do that, fairly and completely, with only 4 teams. 4 is way better than 2, don't get me wrong. But 6 or 8 would be optimal.