Running CFB playoff thread

Bowl season used to be like the MLB All-Star Game was. It was a chance to seem teams and players you'd never get a chance to see. Now that every game is available to watch, and they've bastardized both products so much, the specialness and mystique is gone. They are just another game.

I say it every year, but some of my fondest memories as a child was watching the Blue-Gray Game on Christmas day with my dad at my grandmother's house.

 

The opening round of the CFP was not good. I frankly didn't expect it to be, but the problem surely wasn't the presence of Indiana in it.

 

The thought "with the bowl system, half the teams get to end their season with wins" is the last refuge of scoundrels.

 

It's not necessarily a demand (or even a desire) to go back to that system, only pointing out that there were some fond memories associated with it.

The college football title game is largely an afterthought for much of the country --- and this goes for basketball, too, which manages to decline in interest the deeper you go into the event.

It's just not, nor ever will be, the weeklong event that the Super Bowl is.

 

I had not heard about the T-shirt and now I’m ready to cut throats.

 

In part because, thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the NFL playoffs, the CFP championship game will never be played on a weekend.

 

What we wanted was a true playoff to determine a national champion.

What they wanted was a television show that will generate the most ratings.

Here's the thing, and I've been pounded on here for saying this and I don't care: college football is a niche sport. You're never making it a national draw.

New York is the biggest television market and they don't GAF about the CFP.

Same with Los Angeles when Very Big Deal USC isn't involved.

I'm not saying it won't draw any eyeballs, but it will never be in the same stratosphere as the NFL.

 

They’ll remedy that one.

 

And here's the giant flaw in that: there is no such thing as a true playoff to determine a national champion. If that's what you wanted you were kidding yourself.

There are 130+ teams. It's absurd. It's impossible. Hell, you can barely determine a champion in the Big Ten now. There were three great teams in the conference and Indiana only played one of them (and lost, soundly).

You want to know who the best team in college football is? You already know that. One team is 13-0 and has beaten three other playoff teams. The second ranked team has two losses. And this season isn't unusual. (And to be clear -- I have made this exact same argument in past seasons, when the best team was not my alma mater.)

All this is, and all it ever could be, is television programming.

 

The result would not have been the same in a warm Dome on SEC land.

 

In college sports - and for the love of god motorsports - playoffs don't determine a season champion. They determine a tournament winner.