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Posted
1 minute ago, gernblansten said:

Yeah, what we really need are the 9-3 teams that lost conference games to the 3 best teams they played to prove again in the playoffs that they can't beat them. I have no idea why people want to watch Ole Miss lose to UGA a second time instead of watching UGA play Arizona State in a lose and go home game. Just admit you want CFB to be the NFL and create an all SEC/Big 10 CFB Big Boys Division that copies the NFC/AFC model and an Everyone Else CFB Division that operates in a manner more closely resembling CFB than the NFL. 

I don't think many people watch college football want that.

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Posted

I'm would love more games, but there comes a point where we have to be considerate to the 90% of student athletes who did in fact come to play school and don't get any NIL money.

If there are no more CCGs, and all of the teams that qualify for the playoffs are equally depleted, then that resolves one of the complaints I have. I still think automatic berths are arbitrary as hell and will invite intra-conference controversy about who would get in and who would be left out. This season it would have been Bama vs SCe vs Ole Miss. The two who get left out would then feel a perhaps unwarranted sense of entitlement to one of the at-large berths, and it would fuck up the chances of a possibly more interesting team like UNLV or a 1-loss MAC or Sun Belt team. Teams like Wichita State, St Louis, and Northern Iowa are what make March Madness so fun and we should be trying to replicate that with CFP.

Posted
4 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I don't think many people watch college football want that.

I think the people who want the 9-3 or 8-4 SEC/Big 10 teams automatically in the playoffs because they're the best teams at the expense of every other conference's 11-1 or 10-2 team that is clearly not as good because they're not SEC/Big 10 want it. It's the next step to just creating the two mega conferences model. They argue the NFL has rematches in the playoffs so its fine for CFB, while completely ignoring the current vast differences between CFB and the NFL. I haven't looked past the SEC portion of the play-in situation you posted above, but I assume the other conferences will look the same.

For the play in scenario you posted, Bama gets to play LSU, who they already beat 42-13. Assuming the higher seeds win the opening games, Tenn gets to play UGA again, who they already beat 31-17. Assuming the higher seeds win that round, UGA gets to play UT who they already beat 30-15. 

One of the differences between CFB and NFL was if you lost in the regular season it really, really mattered. NFL you can lose to the same team twice in the regular season and beat them in the playoffs and that's the way it's always been and everyone understands that the model when you have 32 teams. Everyone can argue all they want about how expanding the CFB playoffs made more regular season games important because more teams have a chance. That's great and I'm fine with it. But, expansion and more automatic bids to the "good conferences" just guarantees yearly rematches. CFB was about losing to your rival and having to eat it for a year that it killed your season. tOSU loss to Michigan used to be devastating. That loss went from really bad to who gives a shit we're NC in less than two months. So, yeah, I'll complain about more "good" football when more "good" football is watching the same teams play each other twice a year. 

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Posted
2 hours ago, chainsaw said:

I'm would love more games, but there comes a point where we have to be considerate to the 90% of student athletes who did in fact come to play school and don't get any NIL money.

If there are no more CCGs, and all of the teams that qualify for the playoffs are equally depleted, then that resolves one of the complaints I have. I still think automatic berths are arbitrary as hell and will invite intra-conference controversy about who would get in and who would be left out. This season it would have been Bama vs SCe vs Ole Miss. The two who get left out would then feel a perhaps unwarranted sense of entitlement to one of the at-large berths, and it would fuck up the chances of a possibly more interesting team like UNLV or a 1-loss MAC or Sun Belt team. Teams like Wichita State, St Louis, and Northern Iowa are what make March Madness so fun and we should be trying to replicate that with CFP.

As has been shown time and time again, people root for those cinderella's, and they may pick them in a bracket...but they don't watch those games.  Unless it's super close and they tune into the last 2 minutes, maybe.  Having the SD State Aztecs make the F4 was not great for ratings. Ratings drive money, and money drives both realignment and the CFP structure.  Why is anyone surprised by any of this?

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Horn of Gabriel said:

As has been shown time and time again, people root for those cinderella's, and they may pick them in a bracket...but they don't watch those games.  Unless it's super close and they tune into the last 2 minutes, maybe.  Having the SD State Aztecs make the F4 was not great for ratings. Ratings drive money, and money drives both realignment and the CFP structure.  Why is anyone surprised by any of this?

I'd still watch.

Posted (edited)

It’s so goddamned simple to me. It’s always been an “invitational” and is unavoidable the way CFB conferences are set up. If it’s 16 the 5 highest ranked champs are in and just seed them straight up like CBB. If it’s 12 the 4 highest rated champs get a bye and seed the “play in” contenders (including the 5th highest ranked conference champ), then reseed for the second round and go from there. And no need to reserve spots for conferences, BIG and SEC will always get the majority of spots which is fine. Stop overthinking this shit. 

Edited by 'stache
Posted

I’d add that conference championship games are going to continue to be a problem. If you go to 16 that makes up the revenue from the CCGs. Award the conference trophy based on tiebreakers.

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Posted
On 2/18/2025 at 11:17 AM, statsman said:

Auto bids are needed, because we have a quarter century of evidence that committees rate college football teams, first, by looking at the loss column helmet sticker, and there is so much variance in schedule quality that will never change.

Fixed that.

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Posted
2 hours ago, satyanash said:

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Inevitable, and it will expand again. Lots of money being left on the table by not expanding. 

And please have all first round games on campus. That was amazing.

2 hours ago, TrashMaster G said:

In any given year there are not more than 12 teams that deserve a shot at the championship 

FCS playoffs has 24. Gimme more football.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I still say the top 4 conference champs should be guaranteed a top 8 seed (but not a bye in a 12 team format). They should get first round home games if they don't earn a bye. 

I like this. 

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Posted

Seth Emerson: SEC, Big Ten discussing new formats for football championship weekend

Quote

NEW ORLEANS — The SEC is talking about “re-imagining” its football championship weekend into a series of play-in games to the College Football Playoff. That includes the somewhat radical possibility of the eighth-place team getting a chance to earn a bid by knocking out the top seed. The idea of play-in games has been floated since last fall, as part of a proposal where the SEC and Big Ten would get four guaranteed bids to an expanded 14-team Playoff field. The most-discussed proposal has been to have the two top seeds meet in the SEC Championship Game as usual, both teams ensured a Playoff bid but playing for a bye, and two play-in games, matching the No. 3 and No. 6 seeds and No. 4 and No. 5 seeds.

But the SEC has discussed a more radical idea: four play-in games, matching No. 1 and No. 8, No. 4 and No. 5, No. 2 and No. 7 and No. 3 and No. 6. “It’s one of the ideas on the table,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said Wednesday as he left New Orleans, where SEC and Big Ten athletic directors met to discuss several issues. This isn’t the only idea, and there doesn’t yet appear a consensus. But it shows how far the conference is going to rethink championship weekend. “We’ll see what happens,” Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne said when asked if that format was in play.

The Big Ten’s discussion has swirled around the top two teams playing for a championship, while No. 3 would face No. 6 and No. 4 would play No. 5 in CFP play-in games. Nothing is finalized, but there’s potential for the games to take place on campuses or even all three in two days at one venue. “One of the things that we’re going to continue to prioritize is trying to find ways to make our regular season as exciting as we possibly can,” Illinois athletic director Josh Whitman said. “How can we keep as many fan bases engaged into November? How can we create meaningful football games in November? So, any ideas that strike at that are things that are going to be worth having conversations about.”

Whitman’s Illinois team would have entered that discussion last year. The Illini finished 9-3 in the regular season and tied for fifth alongside Iowa in the Big Ten standings. Illinois would have faced Ohio State in a game pitting No. 4 vs. No. 5 with an opportunity to qualify for a CFP spot. Indiana would have played Iowa for another CFP berth. A play-in loser would then contend for an at-large spot outside of the guaranteed allotment. The value of conference championship games has taken a hit in the expanded CFP era. All five conference champions who made the field lost their first game, including the top four seeds who had byes: Oregon, Georgia, Boise State and Arizona State.

But the SEC will be reluctant to just do away with its championship game. It was the first conference to create one, in 1992, and it has become very lucrative. This past year’s game, when Georgia beat Texas in overtime, drew the highest ratings for any non-Playoff college football game last season. Still, the notion of a play-in weekend has gained steam, especially with the chance for the extra games to bring in more revenue. The Big Ten floated the idea first, and while the SEC has been slower to get on board, many in the league now believe some sort of change is coming. “The conversations were really creative and innovative and robust and ended up with several suggestions that we could provide our leadership, our commissioners, as they go forward with a couple of key meetings in the next couple weeks,” Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione said.

 

Posted

The biggest problem is deciding between 11-1 team not from the top 2 conferences and 9-3 from a top 2 conference because of the difference in the schedule difficulty. One way to resolve this would be to have a, say, last five year ranking of all teams in CFP conferences and then have two of preseason games that elevate/deflate each team’s difficulty based on their, say, last 5 years of schedule ranking. This means Georgia would have gotten G5 teams to balance their very tough conference schedule last year and Texas would have got someone from bottom half of big 12. ASU and ISU would get Washington or Kentucky. This will provide cross-referencing and take away Alabama and Ole Miss whining about SMU and Indiana. 

Posted

What's the point of that if you're going to have 4 conferences with multiple automatic bids?  Wouldn't that just inherently result in straight seeding?

My assumption is that we wouldn't even really be determining conference champions any more.  Just playing for the bids.

Posted

One model might be that the SEC would send four, based purely on the results of a nine game league schedule. Out of conference results would only factor in CFP seeding. That way, there is more incentive to schedule marquee non conference games. 

Posted

Fucking clown show. It's gonna get to a point where casual fans won't know whose playing for what in any given weekend. Win and advance is easy to comprehend. Not so much "the top two teams of the conference have received a bye and the next four teams will be seeded 3-6 and will play for a chance to receive an automatic bid to the playoffs but the losers can still receive one of the 3 at large spots if they can convince the committee that their loss was close or that they had a strong out of conference schedule, then once the playoff teams are selected, the seeding will be based on where each ended up in their repsective conference standing and tie breakers will be determined by who Kirk Herbstreit thinks is best using the eye test but can be overturned if Paul Finebaum speaks louder or if his callers agree with him . . . . . . . . . . .

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Posted

It's already professional ball at the top level, so a 64-team major league with relegation is the answer.

Eight regional conferences of eight teams. Conference round-robin plus three out-of-conference (10 games). Top two from each conference qualify for playoffs, plus eight at-large bids. No conference championship games -- just trophies at the end, with lots more co-champions and occasional tri-champions (some who might get left out of the playoffs). Tiebreakers suck, but very few deserving teams would be left out of the running. 

Straight seeding at the end, with top eight getting a bye in the first round. Five playoff rounds with a max of 15 games for the eventual champ and runner-up.

Eighth-place finisher in each conference drops down and the top regional finisher from the next level moves up for the next year. Rinse and repeat with playoffs at lower levels.

Bowls should fold themselves into the top-level playoff structure or die. They're relics anyway, with only a few historic or geographically sensible ones worth saving.

Fights and playoff unfairness to some teams in the 15-30 range, but that's better than controversy in the 8-15 range. And relegation allows the James Madisons to move up if devoted to it. The TCUs and Rices of the world have faced de facto relegation for more than a couple of decades, so let's just get on with it. This way, folks in relegation territory have more control over their own destiny and some clarity on how things happen.

Moving upward from the second level would get pretty interesting and controversial, but playoffs there should help clarify who's most deserving.

This would work for a few years, until society utterly breaks down or until technological Utopia arrives, the AI bots decide the playoff participants, and we're all too mellow to really take it seriously anyway.

 

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Posted
7 minutes ago, statsman said:

Two auto bids for the B12 and ACC are generous. They should say, “Thank you” and agree

The Big 10 doesn’t historically deserve 4 bids either.

The Big 12 and ACC will get a few spots because losing their viewers will cost the SEC and Big 10 viewers too.  Same logic with guaranteeing the G5 a spot.

This isn’t clemency.  It’s good business.

Posted
2 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

The Big 10 doesn’t historically deserve 4 bids either.

The Big 12 and ACC will get a few spots because losing their viewers will cost the SEC and Big 10 viewers too.  Same logic with guaranteeing the G5 a spot.

This isn’t clemency.  It’s good business.

The B12 doesn’t have viewers. Not in any numbers. Sure, there’s Colorado, but I imagine that will regress to the norm once Deion moves on. 

Posted
3 hours ago, Hayduke said:

It's already professional ball at the top level, so a 64-team major league with relegation is the answer.

Eight regional conferences of eight teams. Conference round-robin plus three out-of-conference (10 games). Top two from each conference qualify for playoffs, plus eight at-large bids. No conference championship games -- just trophies at the end, with lots more co-champions and occasional tri-champions (some who might get left out of the playoffs). Tiebreakers suck, but very few deserving teams would be left out of the running. 

Straight seeding at the end, with top eight getting a bye in the first round. Five playoff rounds with a max of 15 games for the eventual champ and runner-up.

Eighth-place finisher in each conference drops down and the top regional finisher from the next level moves up for the next year. Rinse and repeat with playoffs at lower levels.

Bowls should fold themselves into the top-level playoff structure or die. They're relics anyway, with only a few historic or geographically sensible ones worth saving.

Fights and playoff unfairness to some teams in the 15-30 range, but that's better than controversy in the 8-15 range. And relegation allows the James Madisons to move up if devoted to it. The TCUs and Rices of the world have faced de facto relegation for more than a couple of decades, so let's just get on with it. This way, folks in relegation territory have more control over their own destiny and some clarity on how things happen.

Moving upward from the second level would get pretty interesting and controversial, but playoffs there should help clarify who's most deserving.

This would work for a few years, until society utterly breaks down or until technological Utopia arrives, the AI bots decide the playoff participants, and we're all too mellow to really take it seriously anyway.

 

College football - with a huge number of teams of widely varying quality - is absolutely tailor-made for a system with multiple tiers and promotion/relegation. I mean, there’s no comparison whatsoever between Georgia’s program and Kennesaw State’s. If Kennesaw State insists that they need to be in the same division as Georgia, fine, let them earn it and stay there. 

Not to mention the relegation battles would be epic and generate huge interest. Can you imagine beating your rival toward the end of the year to literally banish them to another division?

Unfortunately it’s never gonna happen for the same reason that it’s a nonstarter in North American pro sports. Money. We’re moving away from a world in which that might conceivably ever be on the table at breakneck speed. 

Posted
College football - with a huge number of teams of widely varying quality - is absolutely tailor-made for a system with multiple tiers and promotion/relegation. I mean, there’s no comparison whatsoever between Georgia’s program and Kennesaw State’s. If Kennesaw State insists that they need to be in the same division as Georgia, fine, let them earn it and stay there. 
Not to mention the relegation battles would be epic and generate huge interest. Can you imagine beating your rival toward the end of the year to literally banish them to another division?
Unfortunately it’s never gonna happen for the same reason that it’s a nonstarter in North American pro sports. Money. We’re moving away from a world in which that might conceivably ever be on the table at breakneck speed. 

This has been impossible since the OU v NCAA tv decision in the early 80’s and probably before even then.

If you’re Texas…heck if you’re TTech, your whole athletic department is funded off football. Football is funded by TV money. Can you imagine being the AD whose budget goes from $70MM to $35MM or from $25MM to $4MM because the football team got relegated? At that point not only are you gone, you probably have to cut almost all sports.

Promotion/relegation is a message board fantasy.
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Posted
10 hours ago, statsman said:

The B12 doesn’t have viewers. Not in any numbers. Sure, there’s Colorado, but I imagine that will regress to the norm once Deion moves on. 

Big 12 CCG beat the ACC by a million viewers.

It has less viewers than the SEC and Big 10.  It has more than everyone else.  

2/14 bids reflects that accurately 

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Posted
3 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

Big 12 CCG beat the ACC by a million viewers.

It has less viewers than the SEC and Big 10.  It has more than everyone else.  

2/14 bids reflects that accurately 

Season stats show that ESPN badly overpaid for the B12. Unless it was really that important to them to get a Texas (and OU) on the air against other good draws a little earlier. 
 
What we have learned is:

Tech doesn’t bring the state of Texas

TCU (and SMU) don’t bring DFW viewers

UH doesn’t bring Houston. 
 
Baylor doesn’t bring central Texas. 
 
Phoenix may be the fastest growing city. ASU doesn’t bring its viewers. 
 
I would seriously advise B12 schools to adopt extreme frugality in advance of a new contract in 2031. 

Posted (edited)
12 hours ago, thunderlounge said:

I think the first two rounds should be on campus, three would be awesome. 

Here's a thought:  16 teams, no byes, first two rounds on campus, and the losers of those first and second round games can be paired off to play in mid-tier bowl games once they are out of the playoffs.  More TV product, more local revenue, a lower seed that gets thumped by a higher seed still has something to look forward to as a reward, better product in those bowls.

Edited by SurlyGator
spelling is hard
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Posted
7 minutes ago, statsman said:

Season stats show that ESPN badly overpaid for the B12. Unless it was really that important to them to get a Texas (and OU) on the air against other good draws a little earlier. 
 
What we have learned is:

Tech doesn’t bring the state of Texas

TCU (and SMU) don’t bring DFW viewers

UH doesn’t bring Houston. 
 
Baylor doesn’t bring central Texas. 
 
Phoenix may be the fastest growing city. ASU doesn’t bring its viewers. 
 
I would seriously advise B12 schools to adopt extreme frugality in advance of a new contract in 2031. 

You're fairly obsessed with trying to make this claim, but all evidence suggests ESPN and Fox have gotten exactly what they expected (and paid for) from the Big 12.

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Posted
5 hours ago, Al_4_ISU said:

You're fairly obsessed with trying to make this claim, but all evidence suggests ESPN and Fox have gotten exactly what they expected (and paid for) from the Big 12.

vinyl-records-record-collection.gif

Not even worth discussing anymore, not sure what their obsession is with hyperbole, but whatever. 

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Posted
18 hours ago, Horn of Gabriel said:

Can you imagine being the AD whose budget goes from $70MM to $35MM or from $25MM to $4MM because the football team got relegated? At that point not only are you gone, you probably have to cut almost all sports.

Promotion/relegation is a message board fantasy.

Moving from eighth place in one top-level football conference to a lower level of competition the next year won't drop anyone's budget that dramatically. If your budget is only $70 million one year, you're not competing with the big boys very often anyway, but the fans (and TV) have brought you $70 million despite that. 

The top 20 NCAA programs in valuation all generated $151 million or more in revenue last year, and that low figure of $151 belonged to Oregon (valued at No. 17). 

Over time, that can certainly erode. But enough television money and attendance will remain at the "next 64" level (or whatever it is) to keep schools' budgets relatively stable from one year to the next. Easy enough to bake some revenue-sharing into the system, just like it's there now.

Most revenue goes to the  big two, of course, with the rest of the P5 getting the next level of money.

So the revenue inequalities likely won't change much just because of relegation.

And relegation might be "fantasy" for American football message boards, but it's absolute reality for the rest of "world football" and makes a whole lot more money that CFB does. The Premier League alone generates about twice the revenue of P5 football and the EFL adds more than another billion -- all in one little kingdom.

Works great for soccer because, despite the intellectual inferiority of the rest of the earth to America, they've figured out how to make gazillions at the top level. Yeah, it flows down less and less as it goes. It barely trickles to the virtually amateur Wrexhams of the world, who remain Wrexham only as long as some famous guys don't figure out how to help them compete.

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