Should College Football Have A Playoff System?

[ragecage]

Totally in agreement with justane

[justanewguy]

Honestly, the problem I see with a playoff system, being a college basketball fan, is someone is always going to claim to be the odd man out.

Which situation is better:

1) 5 or so teams claim to be the "odd man out" in regards to a national title game. All these teams, along with the top 2 ranked teams, have good arguments for having a chance to play for the national championship. The title game is played, one team wins unconvincingly. Another team, perhaps the third ranked team, destroys another top team but is lucky to end the season ranked second. Another 5 to 10 teams claim they're talented enough to be in the championship game, or at least one of the four other big games. These teams play in a bunch of meaningless bowl games, and their seasons end with them trouncing crappy .500 teams, or 2nd or 3rd place teams from conferences like C-USA.

2) 1 team, perhaps Ball State, perhaps a fourth place team in the Big 12 or SEC, complains about being left out of a 16-team playoff.

Situation 1 has been the norm for years now. Situation 2 is the potential "downfall" of a playoff system. I'll take Situation 2 without hesitating. Give me one odd man out of a large playoff over several odd men out of ONE game... any day.

[flapper]

I believe there should be a playoff system. I like the idea of a 16 team playoff. 1-aa uses it so I know it works. If the problem stems from odd man out like has been mentioned, please make it a 32 team playoff. Use the BCS rankings as a seeding system.

Before you state that they would be playing too many games. If the season was shortened back to 11 games, then the two teams going all the way would play 15 games total in a 16 team playoff, 16 games in a 32 team playoff. Teams that play in conference championship games now already play in 14 game seasons, including bowl games.

Also, take the div1-aa games off the schedule. It makes for a little better scheduling. In most cases they would play tougher schedules.



Why did they make it a 12 game regular season?

[OregonDuck1989]

Which situation is better:

1) 5 or so teams claim to be the "odd man out" in regards to a national title game. All these teams, along with the top 2 ranked teams, have good arguments for having a chance to play for the national championship. The title game is played, one team wins unconvincingly. Another team, perhaps the third ranked team, destroys another top team but is lucky to end the season ranked second. Another 5 to 10 teams claim they're talented enough to be in the championship game, or at least one of the four other big games. These teams play in a bunch of meaningless bowl games, and their seasons end with them trouncing crappy .500 teams, or 2nd or 3rd place teams from conferences like C-USA.

2) 1 team, perhaps Ball State, perhaps a fourth place team in the Big 12 or SEC, complains about being left out of a 16-team playoff.

Situation 1 has been the norm for years now. Situation 2 is the potential "downfall" of a playoff system. I'll take Situation 2 without hesitating. Give me one odd man out of a large playoff over several odd men out of ONE game... any day.

I'm in total agreement.

[etothep]

This is exactly the reason why I think the conferences should play each other at the beginning of the season. It ends some of these arguments. At the beginning of the year imagine Texas had to play Alabama, USC besides playing Ohio State, which was good, had to play Florida. Ball State had scheduled LSU, Kansas and a WAC school, how much better there argument would have been if they had then gone undefeated. The NCAA lies when it says there is no preseason. Teams playing all these tune up games is exactly that. If you want to be a national champion man up and play the toughest schedule you can get.

College Football schedules are made years in advice. This means that even if Texas scheduled Bama, nobody at the time it would have been scheduled would have really viewed it as a real big-time OOC matchup, same with Kansas (who had always been somewhere in the 5-7 to 7-5 ranger for awhile before just 2-3 years ago, and if LSU had scheduled Ball St, the odds of them getting a 12-1 Ball St are slim at best. I agree for the most part (about not just scheduling a bunch of DII teams, but USC scheduling tOSU was supposed to be the big early season OOC matchup. USC has done a great job in recent years scheduling strong OOC foes (UVA, nebraska, va tech, arkansas, tOSU, auburn, colorado, kansas st).

And there are many who think it was Oklahoma's OOC schedule that gave them the nod over Texas (Oklahoma's 2 best OOC wins were against TCU & Cincy opposed to Texas' best 2 being against FAU & Rice).

Honestly, the problem I see with a playoff system, being a college basketball fan, is someone is always going to claim to be the odd man out. It happens in March Madness all the time. Remember a couple of years ago when Syracuse was left out. There was talk that the tournament should be expanded to 128 teams. 128 teams! Why not just expand it another round and you could include practically all of the Division 1 teams. Then guess how many people besides students and a few alum would watch regular season games, exactly 0. I can see the same thing happening in College Football once Pandoras Playoff Box is opened. BTW, I agree there are way to many Bowl Games. The prestige of going to some of these bowl games is nil.

I completely agree that the prestige of a good chunk of these bowl games is nil. Especially considering that over half the DI teams are playing in a bowl (68 of 120), so trying to claim wanting to keep the prestige of the bowls (from the vaunted papjohns.dot bowl to the one we always want to see our favorite team playing in, the Meineke Car Care Bowl) is a rather weak argument in my opinion.

[reflections]

YES.

Also like said before, NO MORE DIV II games scheduled, they should be docked whatever points for scheduling these games. Also being a Trojans fan, I would love not being so locked into having to play every team in the conference. This year we especially got docked for it having the grand ole teams from Washington on our schedule. With only so many Out of Conference games to play, and the way they are done in advance, I would love to have us play some Big 12 or SEC team, but by the time we play them, they would probably be in a down year (Nebraska, Arkansas).

[dps]

Yes, but we also need scheduling reform, and if I had to pick between the 2, I'd take scheduline reform.

[filihok]

I agree. NO NATIONAL CHAMPION.

Have a Rose Bowl Winner
and an Orange Bowl Winner
And a Fiesta Bowl Winner

That's good enough.

There are too many teams, playing too many levels of competition to realistically name ONE as the best

[ragecage]

Y is this brought up again?

[Slingshot]

Y is this brought up again?

Utah?

[Swampdog]

Its the only major sport where there really is no champion. The bowls are way, way outdated. 8 team playoff, 16 team playoff...something, anything makes sense. There have been too many split championships and other injustices in college football.

As for the "someone will always be left out" argument. Thats inconsequential. Choosing two teams to play in the ultimate game often eliminates a third team which seems to have as much right to be there (see LSU, Oklahoma, and USC in 2003, and THREE undefeated teams in 2004, with Auburn drawing the short straw). The #3 team in these two years could just as easily have been voted #2 or #1. Its just too close to call, and these teams are too close to the top.

If there existed an 8 team playoff, the #9, #10, etc., teams would certainly cry, but who cares? Their claim would be that they were as good as the #8 team in the country. So what? Many would contend that the #8 team shouldn't be in the hunt anyway. Its like college basketball where 65 teams are included in the tourney, and there is always some 19-14 team that whines about it. Nobody cares that those teams fail to get in, and no one would really care about the football teams that would miss out on an 8 or 16 team playoff.

I understand all the arguments for not having a playoff. They just make no sense to me.

[Clay Dreslough]

Y is this brought up again?

Y is a mouse when it's spinning.