College football 2016 Week 14/championship week running thread

I'd rather see it be six auto bids (P5 champs and the best G5 champ) and two at-large bids.

Otherwise, tell the G5 schools to form their own division and hold their own championship, like FCS. No point in playing at the "top level" if you have zero access to the championship.

 

That's a fair proposal. I prefer it, come to think of it. It'd also give the playoff an annual possibility of a Cinderella story. ESPN would love that.

 

Nah, four teams and no more. Just winning your conference should not be enough to get in. If your conference is dogshit and you happen to win it while going 8-4, you don't deserve a shot at the national title.

 

"Deserve." Another word making the playoff a matter of some kind of abstract right or wrong. It's not. It is a means of settling a mutually-agreed upon national champion and to make a lot of money in the process. The keywords in my last sentence are "mutually-agreed upon." The more stakeholders who participate, the more mutual agreement.

 

One reason you won't see an expansion to eight anytime soon is that it would keep the Big 12 alive past 2025, when the grant of rights expires and the PAC-12 and SEC (and possibly Big 10) will swoop in to carve it up and leave the remainders to rot in the American or whatever has taken its place by then as the Oriental Avenue of college football.

 

Every league/sport I can think of has a playoff system with too many teams. College football's not there with four; it most certainly would be with eight.

 

"Too many." Another value judgment. Playoffs expand because that means more money for the participants and for no other reason. If eight makes more dough for more schools, it'll happen.

 

I'm good with that.

 

College football socialists, all of you.

 

Eight would be the absolute max that I would like to see. That 16-team playoff, yuck. No offense to App State or Western Kentucky, but I think you need to have a special season (like a 13-0 Western Michigan or one of the past undefeated Boise teams) to have an argument for playing for the national title. Eight gives you a chance to reward that special G5 team or reward a team like USC that had a rough start to the year but got hot at the end and racked up quality wins.

The FCS expanding to 24 has been a disaster. A 6-5 team is getting in every year now along with a bunch of 7-4 teams. Gross.

 

Anything where the big conferences are like colonial powers, pillaging and marauding, has to be great.

 

I give it about five more years until I am as disgusted with college football as I am the NFL.