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Dawgs would be a big beneficiary of expanding the College Football Playoff
Dawgs would be a big beneficiary of expanding the College Football Playoff
There was a lot of talk this week about the College Football Playoff expanding, possibly as early as 2023, after the CFP committee revealed that it has been studying six-, eight-, 10-, 12- and 16-team formats.
Comments
I think you over-estimate the incentive of earning a bye home field in the playoff as a trade-off for losing the current “do or die” nature of the regular season, which is what gives college football the best regular season of any sport on earth.
The same “seeding” argument could be made for college basketball, but nobody really cares about the hoops regular season, and all anybody remembers is the 3-week tournament at the end of the year.
I am in favor of an 8-game football playoff, but we need to be more realistic about the downside, which would be, like it or not, the diminution of the regular season to a certain extent.
With an 8-team playoff the “kick six” return by Auburn in 2013 doesn’t end Alabama’s national title hopes. It merely knocks the Tide back a couple spots in the playoff seeding.
Just something to consider.
Great article Bill and I sincerely hope we see an expansion. If they go to a 12 team playoff then the first and second rounds could utilize bowl games like the Citrus, OutbacK, Gator, etc. It would certainly increase attendance at all those games. I also disagree with the argument that the regular season schedule would need to be decreased in length due to the physical stress of the game. I don’t disagree that it’s a tough game, but the other divisions in college football seem to handle the stress of 16-17 or more games if a team makes the playoffs. In Georgia the HS kids have to play 15 games to make the state championship. Also, the NFL has a 16 game regular season and then 4 more playoff games to make the Super Bowl. If those 20 games aren’t enough then throw in the 4-5 NFL preseason games. I have trouble buying-in to the “players need a break” argument made by Division I college presidents. Go Dawgs!!!
I totally agree, except that I think you might be understating the issue. Overall, I think the diminishing of the regular season's significance isn't taken nearly seriously enough by expansion proponents - at least based on the arguments that I've seen from them. There is seldom even any acknowledgement of it (again, that I've seen). Add to that, that expansion won't necessarily address the main complaint with the current system, i.e. the flawed selection process. Either there's still going to be a committee selecting all 8+ teams - which puts us in the same position we're in now, having to rely on them to get it right from top to bottom - or we're going to resort to automatic bids, which requires acceptance of either a) the egregiously flawed premise that every power 5 champ automatically has a case as possibly being the best team in the country, or b) the idea that playoff simply isn't about determining who the best team in the country is. On a related note, people (understandably) complain about the playoff blowouts, but somehow the solution is to have #1 play #8 instead of #4? And even with automatic bids, there would still be a need to select the remaining wild cards, meaning there will still be a cutoff, and that determination will be in a committee's hands.
So whether the playoff expands or not, the solution to producing a tournament worthy of the sport is always going to be a selection process that produces sound, defensible results. And even when that generally happens, there will always be room for debate to some extent. These fundamental issues aren't going anywhere with an expanded post-season.
This reads like a strawman argument. High schoolers aren't going against opponents that run, block and hit like power 5 athletes on a week to week basis. NFL players are working a full time job - a career - for which they are paid lots of money. College players are not. But even putting aside the differences in the scenarios that you liken to each other, there are more fundamental issues with playoff expansion that go to the quality and nature of the sport itself. It seems like you're picking out what is probably the weakest and least-often made anti-expansion argument and holding it up as a core issue.
@E_Roc,
Most of the playoffs would take place in December and early January when the football players are out of school.....so I guess you are playing the “strawman argument” yourself. BTW.... When did the other college division players quit having classes during the season?
There have been years when it seems it has been difficult finding 4 quality teams for the playoffs. The idea that expansion to pick a number is some how going to improve this is ludicrous. Probably one of the most exciting games of the year is the SECCG. It is also one of the most watched. It is why it is such a valuable broadcast event and brings in huge amounts of money for the conference. The winner gets a bid to the playoffs. It is the same for the ACC and thr Big10. Where there is competition is the fourth seeding Pac12, BIG12 or a second SEC team.
So it would seem what is what is not being given much value are the regular season, conference championship games, the bowl games and the health and well-being of the players.
No one has identified what the additional value of adding more teams would be.
👎👎👎👎👎 to playoff expansion.
What have we Georgia fans turned into now, supporting an expanded welfare state in order to have a chance at winning a Natty?
Because, and this is my opinion which has the same value as yours, it’s sounds to me that is what Bill King and some others are saying.
”Well we would have possibly got into this playoff or that playoff if only”....
Seriously?!? That is your argument? A hypothetical hodgepodge of what if’s and selective memory?
And let’s play hypothetical: so Georgia gets into the expanded playoff in 2007: Then Georgia would have to go on the road and play a playoff team at their place because UGA had a lower seed: Who says they win?
That 2007 team that King and others seem to bring up so much got blasted @ UT by 4 TD’s!!! DAWGS were down 28 to ZERO at halftime of that game. Oh, and same year, they had to kick a FG at the end of the 4th quarter to defeat Vanderbilt by a whopping 3 points!
Expand the playoffs so Georgia can get a better chance of getting in doesn’t guarantee anything as far as our Dawgs winning a Natty. They have shown that over the last 5 seasons because when they do get into position to make a playoff or win a Natty, what happens? They give up a lead in the second half to Alabama (twice) or get absolutely stomped by LSU.
And don’t even let me get started on another reason not to expand, again in my opinion: You completely ruin any regular season game truly mattering because all the pressure will be applied at the end of the season for the last few games because the teams that have more than 1 loss going into weeks 10 and 11 will not have a chance if they take another loss. And then the SEC Championship game, which is the holy grail as far as I am concerned, will be taken down a notch because the loser of that game can still make the playoff with expansion.
And what about the winner of the SEC Championship game? Oh yeah, you’ll be knocking down their glory of winning that game because they may have to defeat the team they just defeated AGAIN if that same team makes the playoff. And no matter what way you want to look at the situation, that clearly makes the SEC Champion less of a triumph and takes away form the clout and traditional triumph that comes with winning that game.
If they expand the playoffs to more than 6, I firmly believe that College football popularity and attendance will decrease to a level that it, as a whole, will never recover from, especially in the SEC and ACC.
Regular season attendance and championship conference games will plummet more than they already are and the disparity in money between the haves and have-nots will grow even wider.
The NCAA football teams won’t be defunct or go bankrupt, but it will destroy what exists as we currently know it. It will never be as popular as it is right now if they go to more than 6, and all of the whining and complaining for the teams ranked outside the top 4 will just be replaced by teams and Athletic Directors whining for being outside the top 8 or whatever they expand it to.
I have an idea: how about win the regular season games you are supposed to win? Like when you play a SC team at home when you are favored by 22 points and they are starting a 2nd and third string QB in the game? How about win THOSE games?
And then we don’t have to worry about lobbying for the expansion of the playoffs? We don’t have to worry about making excuses for why the head coach of our Dawgs can’t seem to do what the head coach’s of other teams out there have been able to do?
Everyone doesn’t deserve a trophy, Dawg fans. Only the team’s that Win all of their games deserve it.
Just based off the set up of college football (so many teams & lack of parity) there is no system imaginable that could arrive at a true champion. Since no one wants to go back to a computer model of selecting the teams, the human element is always going to come into play.
Will it devalue the regular season, I don't know. What it will give us is more college football, and I am all for that.
All the talk about a playoff with seedings, byes, home- field advantage, cutting regular season schedules to me seriously detracts from the college football environment and tradition, and just makes it "NFL Light" which is the last thing i'd want. Go back to major bowl auto tie-ins to the four traditional majors (Orange, Rose, Cotton, Sugar) then make second round next two majors (Fiesta, Peach) and finally NCG at a rotating site.
I don't see how this addresses what I said, which had nothing to do with a class schedule.
Here's my take...
Does anyone think Eli Manning's 4-5 loss Giants team was a better team than Brady's undefeated Pats bunch several years back? That playoff system DID NOT hand the trophy to the best team in the league that year. That Pats team was historically good, obviously better than any other team. And it was not rewarded for their SEASON LONG excellence.
In my opinion...
There are not enough games played in a football season to determine who the best 8 teams are. There's just not enough data like there is in basketball and baseball. 8 is much harder than 4. Add to that the issue of ONE GAME deciding who advances in football playoff. Looking at an ENTIRE season is a better measure of the better team when so few games are involved.
Opening it up to 8 teams - thus adding a round to the playoffs - opens up the sport to the possibility that the BEST team doesn't win a national championship. 4 almost does that already.
And, yes - I am a basketball guy who loves March Madness. But I think that should be a 16 team tournament that plays 2-out-of-3. TOO MANY YEARS the best team does not win the national championship in basketball.
Your last sentence captures what's best about March Madness. The best team does not win it all the time. Maybe we need a new definition of best...best meaning who best handles the current format i.e. wins the tournament. There are of course other ways to define "best". What is your preferred definition?
I don't think our thoughts are mutually exclusive at all...
One of the "most attractive" parts of March Madness is the chance to see a "david" beat a "goliath," and a chance to see a non-blueblood win the championship. That is fun. That is exciting. People love that theatre. it is entertaining.
On the other hand, it DOES NOT determine who the best team in the nation is. It often shows who was playing the best over a 2-3 week period. Or it lets so much "good fortune" decide a winner.
I can speak practically to this point - the years where our team is just better, I am always scared of a one-and-done, traditional tournament. But the years when I know we are not as talented, I welcome the same format because it gives us a puncher's chance.
The present format - 4 teams - is, IMO, the perfect blend of a ranking system and a playoff for FOOTBALL. I don't think an 8 team tournament would give us the "best" team any more than the old poll system did.
Exactly! College football already has its March Madness - the regular season. What we have is the sweet spot in protracted entertainment value that allows for the intrigue of one or more possible season-changing upsets every week over a stretch of months, while at the same time providing a large sample size from which to identify the few elite teams that have the most legitimate case as being the best in the country and letting them settle it on the field.
Yes, some of the committee's decisions have left people justifiably upset. But anyone who thinks expansion will eliminate any potential issues in the selection process is kidding themselves. Go with automatic bids and you're still going to end up with teams that nobody thought should be there. Then you've got the wildcards, who will still need to be hand picked. It's just going to result in a different version of the same issues everyone is complaining about now. Only we will have diminished the significance of every game leading up to it - and thus the sport itself - in the process.