No CFP Expansion Until 2026 At Earliest
February 18th, 2022 at 4:36 PM ^
And also lucky that MSU, OSU, and eventually Wiscy weren't. We might have made the playoff if all our opponents had been awful but we wouldn't have been a 2 seed (not that that ended up mattering).
I agree that things are a popularity contest to a certain degree, particularly when it comes to seeding, but not (usually) when it comes to making it in. That is usually pretty grounded in wins/losses and strength of schedule. But more to the point, a bigger playoff doesn't solve these issues, it only shifts them down to murkier arguments. With 12 teams the argument is between say 10 1-2 loss P5 schools and a few 0-1 loss G5 schools few of whom have head-to-head results. Bigger playoff makes for a bigger "popularity contest" problem not a smaller one with more difficult to resolve arguments. This though, I think, oddly, is part of the appeal of the bigger playoff from an NCAA perspective (more fans are engaged and enraged which means more dialogue and more eyeballs and more money).
The only solution to this, I think is auto bids for P5 conference champs and 1 auto bid for a G5 school. Win the conference and you're in. Only the seeding is subject to politics in that case.
February 18th, 2022 at 3:36 PM ^
Figures. And none of the conferences outside of the SEC realize they are shooting themselves in the foot by doing nothing. They are only concerned about money and not having the best product they can have on the field. They all (everyone but the SEC who wanted the status quo maintained) should have insisted that if they were to keep the current four team model, that only one team per conference get in, and that one team must be the conference champion, assuming they were ranked high enough.
You want to win the national championship? Win your conference first. That puts way more emphasis on that game in your season if you make it there. It also creates more drama over the season and especially at the end, even if there is the possibility of controversy. For example, does Georgia finally get over the hump and beat Alabama? Or do they lose again, like they did, and get heartbreakingly shut out of winning a national championship? The big 12 game becomes much more important than it was, with them knowing that the winner makes it into the playoffs. The ACC game could also, then, become an important game for Pitt, if Michigan had lost to Iowa.
February 18th, 2022 at 4:18 PM ^
Every year there are one or two teams clearly better than the rest of the sport. That's why the semifinal matchups are frequently blowouts.
There's certainly no competitive reason to expand the CFP.
February 18th, 2022 at 4:28 PM ^
Other than 2014 and maybe 2017, there's never been any question of whether the best teams were in the playoff. I guess 2020 too but really even then it was clear Ohio St and Bama belonged, and everything else about that season was so gimmicky that I don't really know how much it should count.
February 18th, 2022 at 7:31 PM ^
If your goal/hope in expanding the playoff is to see another team outside the SEC win, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
As you said, most years it’s so painfully obvious what teams are the best teams in the country and what conference they come from. I hate that the SEC rules the roost, but if your goal is to crown the best team, then you’re crowning the SEC at least 75-80% of the time.
I remember when Oklahoma State fans were absolutely pissed when they got left out of the BCS title game in 2011. I remember thinking to myself after they lost to a lowly Iowa State team “do you really think you belong there?” You would’ve gotten curb stomped by LSU or Alabama and the game would’ve been over by halftime.
February 18th, 2022 at 7:19 PM ^
I don’t know, friends. I’d love to see expansion and see more teams beyond the usual suspects get in, but the CFP has only further highlighted the divide between the haves and have nots. There’s a reason that I can probably count on 2-3 fingers how many semifinal games were actually good games to watch. Georgia-Oklahoma was a classic, and OSU-Alabama 2015 and OSU-Clemson 2019 were close, but they’re almost always otherwise complete snoozers or total bloodbaths.
The CFP expanding certainly introduces variability, but I’d tell you that at least four times out of five, we’re still seeing an SEC team in the title game. There really isn’t a question, to me, what conference the best teams are coming from in any given year. No matter how much it pisses me off to say.
Call it a defeatist attitude, but if your personal hope in seeing the playoff expanded is to see someone outside the SEC starting to win, then prepare to be disappointed most years.
While I still prefer college football to the NFL, the NFL’s ability to interject true parity into the league and a true sense of any given Sunday, any team can be beat, is something that college in its current state will never be able to match.
February 19th, 2022 at 4:25 AM ^
What if the purpose of the committee wasn't just to pick the 4 teams in the playoff each year, but instead to pick the NUMBER of teams in the playoff each year?
Almost every year sees a different number of teams that seem deserving of a spot. This year, it was lucky that 4 worked out pretty well. But really 6 teams could have made a case.
Instead of the committee trying to figure out how to squeeze some random number of teams into 4 spots, let's task them with figuring out how many spots there should be.
Their selections could have been:
2021: 6 teams. Bama, Michigan, Georgia, Cincy, Baylor, ND.
2020: 8 teams. Bama, Clemson, OSU, ND, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Cincy, Coastal.
2019: 5 teams. LSU, OSU, Clemson, Oklahoma, Oregon.
2018: 6 teams. Bama, Clemson, ND, Oklahoma, OSU, UCF.
2017: 8 teams. Clemson, Oklahoma, UGA, Bama, OSU, Wisconsin, USC, UCF.
2016: 6 teams. Bama, Clemson, OSU, Washington, PSU, Oklahoma.
2015: 7 teams. Clemson, Bama, MSU, Oklahoma, Iowa, OSU, Stanford.
2014: 6 teams. Bama, Oregon, FSU, OSU, TCU, Baylor.
February 19th, 2022 at 12:02 PM ^
Please, never expand it, unless it's conference champions only.