(11-15-2019, 10:46 AM)Cleatwood Wrote: (11-15-2019, 09:19 AM)rfc17 Wrote: 4 seems to be working in the sense that we haven't had many, if any, examples of a team being left out that everyone thought might be the best team in the country.
I think 8 could work (5 major conference championship + 3 more with maybe one of those 3 being best non major team). The downside is the more you expand the playoffs, the less meaningful regular season games become. We've already seen that with the expansion to 4. The biggest games have lost a little luster. Two years ago when undefeated Bama played Auburn at the end of the year and lost, you knew the game didnt really matter for Bama. This years LSU-Bama game, meant more for Bama. LSU losing that game on the road probably wouldnt have knocked them out of the playoffs. Had more meaning for Bama but they are still right there. Penn St losing to Minnesota last week didnt really do much to derail them as if they win out (beating OSU and then rematching Minnesota in the Big10 title game) realistically they are in. Same with Georgia losing to South Carolina. Their season doesnt really change with that loss.
Anything more than 8 and you may as well not even have a regular season. LSU, Alabama, Ohio St, Penn St, Oklahoma, etc... they are all in. Conference championship games become essentially meaningless. The LSU-Bama game this year would be meaningless. The Ohio St - Penn St game in two weekends becomes basically meaningless. I suppose Penn St losing could knock them out but probably not. It would be too much like the NFL. I know the Patriots, Ravens, Niners, etc... are making the playoffs this year. Not being a fan of either team, why would I have any interest in their remaining regular season games? Am I supposed to care if they get homefield advantage or what their playoff seeding is? I don't. Just fast forward me to the playoffs at this point.
Except having 8 doesn't diminish the regular season at all. It just allows for the SEC bias to be diminished and gives another team a shot. What if Baylor, Clemson, OSU and LSU run the table? Are all 4 in? So that leaves out 1 loss Bama, 1 loss Oregon, 1 loss Georgia?
You guys have both spotted the problem of pro-SEC bias.
But there's two simple solutions staring you in the face: 1) only the SEC champ gets in, essentially one spot per conference.
2) let an algorithm that doesn't consider last year's results pick the playoff teams - no humans, no bias.
And you're both like, nah, it's either leave it alone or add four more teams.
I also think judging the current system by "we haven't had many, if any, examples of a team being left out that everyone thought might be the best team in the country" is laughable. "Everyone" has to think so?! The system works until we have unanimous agreement among the tens of millions of college football fans that it doesn't work?! To me, the CFP was created to eliminate shared titles. And it hasn't, as 2017 shows.
The simple solution is to go back and say, did they pick the right four teams in 2017? Colley Matrix says they should have picked Clemson, UGA, UCF, and Wisconsin. Conference championship games say they should have picked Clemson, UGA, UCF, and Ohio State. But they invited Bama and Bama won their invitational. You say, that proves me wrong - how can I argue that the team that won the invitational shouldn't have been invited? Easy. You admitted yourselves, the game at Auburn that year was meaningless for Bama. But if Bama knew that they needed either a conference championship or a high algorithm ranking to get in, it would not have been a meaningless game. They would have tried harder. They would have gotten to the SEC championship, and won it. The result would have been a 4 team playoff of Clemson, Bama, UCF, then some team that wasn't undefeated.
My fellow southpaw Mark Brunell will probably always be my favorite Jaguar.