12-Team Playoff On the Way; 14-Team to Follow

If you remove money, the right answer is 6 teams.  All power 5 champs and the top rated non-power 5.  Absolutely no reason to go beyond that number imo other than money.  

 
Hilltop said:
If you remove money, the right answer is 6 teams.  All power 5 champs and the top rated non-power 5.  Absolutely no reason to go beyond that number imo other than money.  
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I agree but part of me likes a bracket without any byes. I would go with a 8 team setup. P5 conference championship get auto bids and highest ranked G5 gets a spot. Two at large bids and everyone must be in a conference with a balanced schedule. 

 
I think 8 teams is that sweet spot imo.  When I read Thamel's story about a possible 12 team playoff yesterday my first immediate thought was it will never happen.  

 
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This could pair in nicely if conferences did what the B1G did last year with the final games. Just take out one "regular season" conference game and match everyone up cross division for championship week. A lot of the teams making the playoffs are gonna play in the conf championship regardless so that means one less game for them and this gives one final good matchup for a team that may be on the bubble for the playoffs but not in the conf championship. 

 
jaws said:
I agree but part of me likes a bracket without any byes. I would go with a 8 team setup. P5 conference championship get auto bids and highest ranked G5 gets a spot. Two at large bids and everyone must be in a conference with a balanced schedule. 
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That makes sense but I hate allowing in teams that didn't win their conference.  I don't think any team should have an opportunity to play for a national championship if they couldn't first win their own conference.  

 
Personally I'd love eight teams with every P5 champion and the highest-ranked G5 champion getting autobids with two at-larges. Makes the regular season important, only adds potentially one more game for player safety, and I think the middle-seed games would be extremely fun.

 
J-MAGIC said:
Personally I'd love eight teams with every P5 champion and the highest-ranked G5 champion getting autobids with two at-larges. Makes the regular season important, only adds potentially one more game for player safety, and I think the middle-seed games would be extremely fun.
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Was more or less thinking along those same lines as well.

 
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Hilltop said:
That makes sense but I hate allowing in teams that didn't win their conference.  I don't think any team should have an opportunity to play for a national championship if they couldn't first win their own conference.  
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I take it you are not a fan of Notre Dame? That would almost force them to fully join a conference. I am not a big fan of only conference championships because most teams don't play everyone in their conference every year and conference divisions can be unbalanced. 

 
JJ Husker said:
but personally Ive had enough of seeing Bama, Clemson and tOSU curb stomp other teams. Lack of parity would seem to be a larger concern than feeding more teams to the lions
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Parity - how do we get it and sustain it?  I wonder if the parity was an issue in the 90s when Neb and FSU were let college football in wins?    I have the same sentiment.  Tired of seeing primarily the SEC and Clemson dominating and OSU dominating the Big 10 and playing 2nd fiddle to SEC or Clemson.  Include Okla in that as well as they have been very involved in the playoffs.  

Does it come down to recruiting restraints of some kind - limit gray shirts or limit the # of 5 stars on a team?   It would make college football  resemble the Chinese govt wt that kind of control.  Sabin signs a contract extension to 2029 - that means more Bama for the foreseeable future.  Just think if Tom coached until he was 79 instead of retiring at 62.  (may not be a good comparison - but Tom went out on top and could have kept the ball rolling for another 10 years I would think. )

 
TGHusker said:
Parity - how do we get it and sustain it?  I wonder if the parity was an issue in the 90s when Neb and FSU were let college football in wins?    I have the same sentiment.  Tired of seeing primarily the SEC and Clemson dominating and OSU dominating the Big 10 and playing 2nd fiddle to SEC or Clemson.  Include Okla in that as well as they have been very involved in the playoffs.  

Does it come down to recruiting restraints of some kind - limit gray shirts or limit the # of 5 stars on a team?   It would make college football  resemble the Chinese govt wt that kind of control.  Sabin signs a contract extension to 2029 - that means more Bama for the foreseeable future.  Just think if Tom coached until he was 79 instead of retiring at 62.  (may not be a good comparison - but Tom went out on top and could have kept the ball rolling for another 10 years I would think. )
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College football has never had parity. However, I think there needs to be universal rules for NIL and maybe a monetary cap for programs? I don't want to get in a way of a guy trying to make money but at some point enough is enough. I am sure schools would figure out how to compensate in other ways. I don't think we want to limit the number of recruits based on rankings. You would basically hurt a school based on a hand full of 3rd party publications and it isn't an exact science. 

 
jaws said:
I agree but part of me likes a bracket without any byes. I would go with a 8 team setup. P5 conference championship get auto bids and highest ranked G5 gets a spot. Two at large bids and everyone must be in a conference with a balanced schedule. 
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This ^^^ is the correct answer. 8 teams, no byes.

 
To be fair, I was not clamoring for parity in the 90’s, and I wouldn’t be today if Nebraska was even remotely involved in this discussion. But Ive never been a big proponent of a playoff in CFB either. Regular season, polls and bowl games did a pretty darned good job of settling the issue. And on the rare occasion they didn’t, it fueled lively off season discussion. I’ve just never seen the need for a playoff when it comes to college football. It sure has given rise to even more meaningless and terrible bowl games though.

 
The 1-8 and 2-7 games would probably be blowouts most years, but the 1-16 and 2-15 games in the basketball tournament almost always are and nobody ever hand-wrings about them. I also think opening up the Playoff to more spots might actually help decrease parity in recruiting (i.e., more teams can sell the experience of consistently playing in the Playoff to prospective big-time recruits than only Alabama, OSU, Clemson, Georgia, and OU).

To me, the biggest question that needs to be answered regarding the Playoff is still: What are the priorities for having it? Does this exist to determine the best college football team with an eye toward keeping the regular season important? Or does this exist to make Disney Corp. advertising money by playing as many marquee games as possible? Because those are competing interests, though I have a feeling I know which will win out. 

 
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