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Mark Richt: ‘Seismic shift’ of 32-team playoff could help college football amid changing landscape

SystemSystem Posts: 7,416 admin
edited May 2021 in Article commenting
imageMark Richt: ‘Seismic shift’ of 32-team playoff could help college football amid changing landscape

Bowl games becoming more irrelevant with players opting out

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  • dawgfan623dawgfan623 Posts: 110 ✭✭✭ Junior

    Seriously, 32 teams. There would be an inordinate amount of blowouts that would be worthless games. No team ranked outside of the top 8 or 10 that I have seen yet had looked like they had a legitimate show to win a Natty, in reality no one outside the top 6 or 8 does.

  • DDAWGDDAWG Posts: 5 ✭ Freshman

    Expand it to 10, with playoff games to be Orange, Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton. Top 2 get a bye. That would put importance back in those bowl games, & would expand playoffs to additional 2-3 weekends. $$$ & all happy !

  • UGADad20UGADad20 Posts: 1,692 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    32 teams are too many. You would have to cut 3 games from the regular season so non playoff teams would lose revenue. I used to think 8 was the ideal number. But now thinking 16. The bowl games lose a lot with the best players opt'ing out. Put the additional playoff teams in the bowl games regionally (and by rankings). The downside? You still may get the best players on the #16 ( down to 10?) seed opt'ing out rather than take a beating against a Bama or UGA.

  • BEACHDAWGBEACHDAWG Posts: 3,232 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Expand to 6. 1 & 2 get a bye. There is always going to be a debate, but there is rarely more than 6 teams that are legit. Being a media darling doesn't necessarily make a team legit.

    Strength of schedule has always played a part and would become even more important with six. Just on old man's opinion, but 32? Nah

  • Dawg365Dawg365 Posts: 1,109 ✭✭✭✭ Senior

    32 is, frankly, absurd. If you are not in the top twelve then you are clearly not one of the better teams in the nation. I would vote for top twelve but think we need to try expanding to a smaller number first. My vote is for the top eight teams to make the playoff. I wish my vote mattered!

  • kirkhilleskirkhilles Posts: 1,084 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    LOL, yeah, 32. So that's 32 teams (Game 1), 16 teams (Game 2), 8 teams (Game 3), 4 teams (Game 4), 2 teams (Game 5). That's half a football season. I don't mean to be mean, but when you say something like that your comment is laughed at and it just lowers the possibility for going beyond 4 teams.

    Saban's comment doesn't really make sense as if you went from 4 teams to 8 teams, then that means that 4 MORE BOWL GAMES are now playoff games which makes them MORE important.

    Look, I think fans are sick of the BS. Nobody cares about the Rose Bowl parades anymore and every fan knows that it's ALL ABOUT THE ADVERTISERS. Just look at the logos of the events. The "Capital One" logo is 2x the size of the "Orange Bowl" text. It's not the Orange Bowl anymore, it's the Capital One Orange Bowl. For the Gator Bowl, the Tax Slayer logo not only is 2x the size, but has swords on both sides. And that's not to mention all the new Bowls. It's ALL a money grab.

    But what REALLY gets me is how the Advertisers CHOOSE the teams. How is it a "reward" if a team gets a bowl game after losing as many games as they've won. The Bowls aren't selected by finding 2 evenly-matched teams, instead the advertisers pick the conferences based on their market. And THAT is why it'll never expand beyond 4 teams. Advertisers aren't going to pay (or risk paying) $$$ to show a highly ranked Cincinnati (unless they have been bumped to be a sweetheart team) or a Coastal Carolina, Iowa State, Louisiana (Raging Cagins), San Jose State, etc. Why would they? They know that even a beaten down Tennessee or Auburn has a solid fan base and will have enough viewers.

    I stand behind the TV show "Baller's" view that the NCAA is the most corrupt sports organization in the world. It is always going to be about maximizing revenue. Period.

  • reddawg1reddawg1 Posts: 3,593 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    The easy way to fix it is to incentivize the bowl games. Pay the players for making a Bowl game and reporting for duty. Call it whatever you want- Not many going to sit out for say a 1500 dollar payout. The winning team get's say 2000 each.

    8 team playoff, with money incentives for making it there in the form of winner and loser share. Sadly, I think this is where we are.

  • stonestone Posts: 399 ✭✭✭ Junior

    Have to ask if your team captains op out of playing were they really the best players to be captains. Seemed they cared about themselves than the team.

  • budknox310budknox310 Posts: 812 ✭✭✭✭ Senior

    8 team is ok. There should never be teams that get a bye. But the whole problem is the committee doesn't do what they say. 4 of the 5 major conference champions should get in. Period. Make ND join a conference. 1 conference champion will have more losses than the rest. Leave them out. I am sick of this talk, about how teams "deserve" to be in. If you earn it, then you deserve it.

    GO DAWGS!!!!!

  • E_RocE_Roc Posts: 1,218 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate
    edited May 2021

    More teams than are even ranked playing for a championship. Why not just skip the regular season altogether? Honestly, what would it even mean at that point? And the thinking that leads to bowl game opt outs? What would stop half the country's teams/players from applying that to the regular season under such a system? Richt's assessment is entirely upside-down, which is not surprising considering the flawed premise that it seems to be built on. The playoff did nothing to diminish the other bowl games. For as long as the post-season has existed, there have been games that factored into naming a champion and games that didn't. That didn't change in any way with the advent of the playoff. PEOPLE DECIDED to stop caring about non-championship related bowl games. That's not going to change by expanding the playoff. Yeah, there would be more playoff games to watch, following a pretty meaningless season. As I've said before in other threads on the topic, playoff expansion isn't going to fix the sport. It will just be an exercise in trading one set of problems for another.

    We have a pretty good system as it is. The problem - and obviously there IS a problem - is in the execution, i.e. the selections that are made. But fundamentally, having a 2-round playoff at the end is the closest we're going to get to an exciting and fulfilling post-season that doesn't chop the sport at the knees by degrading the intensity and significance of the regular season. As for the UCFs of the world, why not give them their own division with its own championship? That seems to me like a very simple and effective solution to a problem of perception.

    Anyway, yes, apathy toward non-championship-track bowl games is a problem. But it seems to me like a problem that people just kind of came up with one day (see argument above). So I don't know what the solution to such an arbitrary societal problem may be, but I have yet to see an argument for playoff expansion being the answer that doesn't read as a cure worse than the disease.

  • E_RocE_Roc Posts: 1,218 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I do think that getting the shameless corporate vanity out of the bowl naming process would be a big step in the right direction. But Jim Chaney will run a 4.4 before that happens.

  • JayDogJayDog Posts: 5,558 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    Ridiculous! 32 team playoff? This is not "March Madness".

    I like the thought of the conference champs from P5 playing conference champs from the Group of Five (G5). Ten games with no committee. Seeding done by records and selected stats. I don't like the idea of the best two teams getting a bye, though.

    To avoid a bye and to shorten the playoff (while keeping a longer regular season) we could do 8 games with 5 P5 conference champs, plus top 3 conference champs in the from among the G5 teams (selected by a committee comprised of G5 representatives). The majority of G5 teams are those people in the SEC lovingly call, "cupcakes" so limiting to three should give us the best that group has to offer. My guess is the G5 committee would be motivated to choose the top three champs that give them the best chance to win a playoff game.

  • reddawg1reddawg1 Posts: 3,593 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I don't like the Conference champ automatically getting in idea. SEC, and Big 10 sure, but we all know a runner up SEC team could be better than some conference champ in a weak conference. In some years you could actually have 3 SEC teams that could beat a PAC 10 champ or even the ACC champ if Clemson has a down year(ever).

  • MontanaDawgMontanaDawg Posts: 1,831 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    WOW....32 teams. That's the first time I've heard anyone go that high. I don't agree with that. 12 teams at most which is usually where the FCS and Div-II usually land on team playoff numbers. And guess what? Those FCS and Div-II teams play just about as many regular season games prior to their playoffs as Div-I does.

    Yes, as myself and many others have said for years....the bowl system has become mostly irrelevant. 30+ bowls is crazy, especially when you give mediocre teams and sometimes teams with barely .500 records a bowl bid. Ridiculous. Over 50% of the bowls are irrelevant and a waste.

  • WCHWCH Posts: 474 ✭✭✭✭ Senior

    From what CMR is saying, this is about money, the dissolution of Bowl games as they are now and keeping the players attention to their home team throughout the completion of the season. HIs recommendation would make more sense if the 32 teams were cut down to to 8. Those 8 would play in 4 "bowl games" that would end up with 4 teams playing in the 2 semi-final bowl games that would give us the the remaining 2 teams to play in the ultimate bowl game for the National Championship. This system would add 3 games to the regular season, playoff #1 which eliminates 4 team, playoff #2 which eliminates all but the final 2 teams who will play for the national championship. This system will add three weeks to the season and preserve the bowl games' involvement. Conference championship game could be a victim, but there are ways to solve this as well.

    This seems to make sense.

  • DallasDawgDallasDawg Posts: 1,262 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate

    I like your idea. I, too, believe an eight-team playoff works best, but I still say that ALL FIVE Power 5 champions deserve an automatic bid. Otherwise, where's the "power" in being Power 5? Only the "major" bowls have true relevance anyway, so use them as a stepping stone to the National Championship. The other bowls can disappear for all I care. They're just there to make ESPN money.

  • Oldddawg76Oldddawg76 Posts: 393 ✭✭✭✭ Senior

    I'm old enough to remember when bowl games were just fun to watch (especially when there were no other games on TV) and when the players seemed to enjoy playing the games.

    I get that it's all about the championship run, but for a lot of these teams, the students and the fans, playing in the weedeater bowl was a big deal.

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