TomRicardo said:
Five? I have Penn St., USC, and Texas. TCU and West Virginia had one loss. I accidentally omitted it (it was a long list and I forgot about the vacated wins).
Huh? In 2009, the teams that went undefeated in the regular season were Alabama, Texas, TCU, Boise State and Big East champ, Cincinnati. Florida had one loss, in the SEC title game to Alabama. Texas got to play Alabama for the championship (even though Cincinnati was ranked higher by the computers), while the rest were on the outside looking in, including the Boise State team that went to the Fiesta and beat undefeated TCU. Cincinnati ended up playing in the Sugar Bowl against one loss, Florida and got spanked. If there has ever been a season that absolutely screams for a playoff that is more than four teams, that's the one.
And no one at all cares about the FCS regular season. I honestly don't give much of shit about NCAA basketball season. There isn't a single sport in America with a more interesting regular season week in and week out than College Football. Without fantasy football, the NFL would not even come close. Playoffs are great but they cheapen the regular season. The more inclusive they get the less important the regular season is.
Your whole let be decided on the field thing is bullshit. You will never have a round robin of every team. So you have to seed and figure out where they are going to play. Playoffs are just as much a crapshot as evaluating a season. The whole "who are we to decide" is idiotic. It is what has been done forever. It is beast that was created because people liked it. The fact is CBS, NBS, and ABC have zero desire to expand the playoffs because it would hurt the regular season ratings
What is this "No one cares about the FCS regular season or the NCAA regular season" bullshit and where does it come from? You may not care about it, and frankly, that's fine, but there are plenty of us, millions of us in fact, that watch and pay attention to them. Whether or not they "matter" as much when crowning a national champion might be a better argument for you to make, but I guess it's tough when you want to argue from a place only you care about. If you honestly believe that the regular season will be cheapened by expanding the college football playoff, or that less people will tune in, if there is an 8 team vs. a 4 team playoff, I have a bridge to sell you. It's not even remotely a concern for anyone who isn't looking for reasons to not have a playoff. Likewise, if you reduced the number of teams that made the playoffs in the FCS or the NCAA basketball tournament, I can guarantee there would be no more interest in the regular season than there is now. If I had time right now, I'm pretty sure I could find some evidence to prove that interest in the FCS as a whole, including the regular season, has increased since they went to the playoff system that they have now, not the other way around.
Come March, why are there so many arguments about where teams end up seeded in the basketball tournament? I mean, it must not matter. It's just the result of a meaningless regular season. Duke or Kentucky would have the same shot to win the championship this year as the 15 seed as they would as the 1 seed, right? Makes no difference, the regular season doesn't matter and nobody gives a shit, so just throw the 64 teams into a hat and pull them out and seed them that way.
I already acknowledged in my first post that you can't have a round robin in college football and that at some point, you do have to have a vote or a system to pick the playoff teams, but it is idiotic and arrogant to think that anyone can figure out who the only 4 teams are that "deserve" a shot to play for a title after 12 or so games. It's too small a sample. So, you expand the playoffs to account for that. It's been done forever and it's sucked forever, and that's why the times, they are a changing, and they will continue to change. After it was announced that there would be a four team playoff this season, how much did the regular season ratings fall because of it? I guarantee very little, but would bet none at all. I would wager the same thing if it went to 8 teams, and I would bet a lot of money that if it went to 16 teams, the money the networks would make on just those games would absolutely dwarf any potential losses they would see from the regular season not mattering (your words). It's not the networks fighting this battle, it's the bowl committees, but when the NCAA figures out a way to include them all and make them see the light (like they did this year with three of them), it'll happen, and as a fan of sports and seeing teams get a shot to play for a title, I can't wait. More importantly, I'm a fan of not seeing teams that have earned the right to play for a championship relegated to the East Bumfuck Bowl sponsored by Vagisil. You're so concerned about cheapening the regular season. Who cares about the regular season when the teams that perform the best end up playing in games in December and January that truly nobody gives a fuck about. That's what we have now.