SEC
The latest College Football Playoff decision brought the usual grumbling from those left out, but this year’s controversies appear to have struck a serious chord among college football decision-makers.
On Wednesday, The Athletic released a report claiming that some top administrators are pushing for an eight-team Playoff sooner rather than later.
EXCLUSIVE: Major college football power brokers like Bob Bowlsby, Barry Alvarez and Gordon Gee tell @TheAthleticCFB that it's time to start talking about an eight-team playoff. As soon as 2020? It's possible: https://t.co/80Iaar3BrH
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) December 12, 2018
This discussion comes after two Power 5 champions — Ohio State and Washington — failed to qualify for the Playoff thanks to Notre Dame snagging a spot following an undefeated season. Add in two-loss, non-SEC champion Georgia being the highest-ranked team outside of the Playoff and UCF missing out again despite a 25-game winning streak, this season set the stage for the fiercest expansion debate yet.
Naturally, many in the media weighed in on the report, with a wide range of reactions. Many oppose the idea of expansion for various reasons, while others think it would be beneficial, even for the SEC.
An 8-team playoff would only be approved if the five conference champions, top Group of Five team and two at-large teams get in.
Should Northwestern, Pitt, Utah and Washington have the same access to a national title as Alabama, Clemson, Notre Dame and Oklahoma? Nope.
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) December 4, 2018
I do not understand how these “perceived” issues with the playoff format get solved with expansion?
Lack of consistent criteria, the southeastern region winning everything and treatment of G5s ain’t getting fixed with expansion.
— Braden Gall (@BradenGall) December 12, 2018
They complained when it was an all SEC final in 2012, so we got a CFB Playoff.
They complained when it was all SEC final in 2017 & when they were left out in 2018, so now they want to expand.
They’ll complain when we eventually go to 6 or 8 as well. https://t.co/8LY3m0M39B
— Peter Burns (@PeterBurnsESPN) December 12, 2018
Big 12, Big 10 and Pac12: MAKE THE PLAYOFF 8 TEAMS!
(SEC gets three teams in)
Same bunch: CHEATERS— Mark Passwaters (@mbpRivals) December 12, 2018
Reminder: @dannykanell is ALL IN on an 8-team playoffpic.twitter.com/qYlJgfT9TM
— CBS Sports CFB (@CBSSportsCFB) December 12, 2018
The all SEC title game between Bama and LSU got us a four team playoff & Bama and Georgia playing for the playoff title may get us eight teams. But an 8 team playoff means many years will have three SEC teams so it’s great for SEC. Makes SEC titles even more likely, not less.
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 12, 2018
The year is 2022. Sportswriters across the nation are demanding a 16-team playoff after the SEC gets four teams into the 8-team playoff for the second year in a row.
— Matt Scalici (@MattScalici) December 12, 2018
Stadium Network’s Brett McMurphy even contributed to the reporting by sharing how the SEC currently views an eight-team Playoff.
Would have to end conference title games. I asked an SEC AD, what percent chance there is SEC would end title game for 8-team playoff: “Less than zero” https://t.co/LZPgtwRr08
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) December 12, 2018
This is all just speculation at the moment, but it’s a conversation worth having if college football’s leaders are indeed pushing for Playoff expansion. So, do you think an eight-team Playoff would be good for the sport?
There should never be any automatic bids in the CFP, period.
I’m down for 8 teams but keeping the selection process the same.
There will always be flaws in any and every plan. People will try to manipulate the system for self gain and doing so will create new rules to extinguish those people’s manipulations..its an never ending cycle. Football has evolved so much and not always for the better cause we can keep something the same because somewhere out in the wide world somebody is not happy.
8 team playoff problem #1) rankings would matter more than ever. Why? Cause the first 2 teams are usually unanimous but when you start ranking 4-8 you get alot of arguments. People will be angry, if LSU one year loses to Bama and loses to A&M in 11th OT lol..they should be ranked in top 8 in my opinion cause you almost should almost not count the Bama loss, cause who wouldn’t lose to Bama 9/10 times(besides UGA/Clemson) so LSU would get left out of the 8 while UCF or worse like Washington makes it cause they get beat twice like LSU(in my scenario) and LSUs losses are against tougher opponents…nope I would not like 8 team playoff..cause human error is always present and people are anti SEC and ignore the fact that going 10-2 in SEC is much more difficult than going 10-2 in any other conference. 10-2 in the SEC, to me is equal to, 12-0 in PAC 12, or Big 12..11-1 for BIG(or whatever Big 10) the non power 5 would have to play somebody big like UCF playing OU in the season and winning…anyways, that’s my thoughts
1) Stop saying people will still complain if we have 8 teams.
2) Stop dividing conferences into divisions and you solve the Northwestern/ Pitt problem. Best teams and champions get in.
3) G5 must be undefeated to be considered, must have beaten a ranked team during the season.
4) If the SEC, or any other conference, gets 3 teams in, so be it. Why is it a bad thing if the best teams happen to be from the same conference? They still have to play 4 other conferences in the playoff. Let the bodies fall where they fall.
Conference are to big now to not have divisions
Big 12 doesn’t have divisions.
They don’t have 14 teams…
And? Neither does the pac 12. You said conferences are too big to not have divisions. So 14 is too big to not have divisions but 12 is not big enough? The SEC had divisions at 12..
What are you even saying?
You replied to TigerTD saying conferences are too big too not have divisions.. I said big 12 doesn’t and you said they don’t have 14 teams..
Well before A&M and Missouri joined the SEC had 12 and were in divisions.. so is 14 teams the requirement to have divisions or is it 12?
That has nothing to do with my point or what I said. The B12 has 10 teams and plays all the conferences teams. You can’t do that with 14 teams which is what the SEC has.
But conferences aren’t to big to have divisions. You can have 14 teams with no divisions. The big 12 can have 2 five team divisions also
The point was the conferences need divisions to determine champions since there is to many teams to play everyone in the conference. If you don’t have divisions you will have ties…
That’s false. You don’t have to have divisions to break tiebreakers. Just take the top 2 teams of the entire conference. Doesn’t matter that you don’t play everyone.
It’s is possible to have more than two teams with the same conference record that never met during the season with a 14 team conference..
And that is why you have tiebreakers.
It is possible to have 3 teams with the same record in one division. If Auburn is 7-1 (Lost to Bama), Bama 7-1 (Lost to LSU) and LSU 7-1 (Lost to Auburn) you would have a three way tie.
Yes but they played each other… You can have teams with the same record in a 14 team conference and they never played each other is my point…. How do you fairly break that tie?
Each conference is different for tie breakers.
But you break it the same way any other tie is broken:
Head to head, tied teams record against similar opponents, etc. There are plenty of ways to break a tie. I could copy and paste the Big 12 procedures on here but it is long. The website explains it thoroughly.
The Big-12 only has 10 teams.
yes I know..
When did Gordon Gee become a college football power broker? He’s a clown.
If the SEC is not on board, it will not happen.
It needs to go to 8. Automatic bids for each P5 Champ and 3 at large. Kill the committee and go with the top 3 teams in the AP poll that don’t get the automatic bid.
This is dumb^. Automatic qualifiers should not be in the playoff. This isn’t the NCAA tournament
Unless everyone can play everyone that is the ONLY way to do it. Works for the NFL.
This is CFB not the NFL. I do not want to see Pittsburgh, NW, Washington, Alabama, Texas, ND, UCF and UGA in the playoff.
So you want affirmative action for college football. “Every conference must be included…whether they deserve it or not.”
Just wait until you are the number 7 or 8 team in the country and get knocked out of the playoffs by a 4 loss Pac 12 team, then tell me if you still think that.
1) Move it to 8
2) Get rid of the CCG (it would potentially help the SEC get 3 teams in every year)
3) Keep the committee and have them pick the best 8 after 12 games
4) Either have the top 4 teams play home games or play in an indoor venue/warm weather location. Since you are getting rid of CCG in my scenario then Indy, Jerry World, ATL and Santa Clara will all be available.
5) If your conference can’t get in with 8 then you do not deserve to be in.
Nonsense. You will never squash the bias talk unless you can have tangible criteria for qualifying. The eye test is archaic and stupid.
There is no bias talk with 8. If you cant get in the top 8 then you dont deserve to be in. The eye test is the best way to determine teams without a true set of criteria.
Do away with the conference championship games. Each conference names their champ like they use to and the playoff would have started this weekend of the conference championship games.
So you’d have 5 conference champions and 3 are large teams determined by the next 3 highest ranked teams that were not conference champions.
Champs
– Alabama
– Clemson
– Okla
– OSU
– Wash
At large
– Notredame
– GA
– Michgan
CFP 1vs8, 2vs7, 3vs6 & 4vs5 with the top 4 seeds getting a home game. After the first weekend in December you’ve got your final 4 and from there you play it out just like were doing now with the CFP.
The only problem will be determining the conf champions… I agree the CCG has run its course but how do you fairly determine a conference Champion without divisions if they have 14 teams and can’t play all the teams?
That’s the way it was until the SEC decided to go to the championship game back in 92 but of course most of the conferences had less teams back then. Let every conference go to 9 or even 10 conference games. Like in the SEC this year Alabama would have been the clear champion finishing the regular season undefeated so they would have secured their spot and Georgia would have gotten an at large bid. Clemson would have been a clear champion and wouldn’t have had to play a 7-5 Pitt. Each conference would have to have they’re own method of determining their champion in the event of a 2 or 3 team tie. It would be a simple system and would not add any extra games to the season and probably the only argument you’d have would be choosing the 3 at large teams.
Actually the best format would be to go with 4 Super Conferences with 2 divisions in each conference. Then each conference has a championship game which would be the first round of the playoffs. Then you’ve got your final 4 but that will never happen.
I get that but without playing a complete round robin there will be ties a lot of years. Believe me, I agree with doing away with CCG but I don’t know the correct answer or way to do it with 14 team conferences to were it will be fair… plus conferences aren’t even the same size and what about independents?
Bruce… Your second idea make a lot of sense.. Have teams just play the teams in their division during the season?
Another problem you run into is that if you play the P5 conference championship then you basically have to go with a 16 team playoff to make it fair, otherwise you’ve got possibly 3 at large teams sitting at home and and getting a bye while the P5 teams are laying it all on the line playing in their conference championship game. So the 3 at large teams should be playing an equally tough game on the day or weekend the 5 P5 championship games are being played. So if you did that you’d have to have 6 at large teams playing each other plus the 10 P5 teams playing in their championship games. After that weekend you’d be down to 8 teams.
Have a wildcard game conference championship weekend maybe?
Want to understand how the system we have now doesn’t reflect the true relative strengths of teams, look at the FCS, Div2 & and Div3 polls, then look at the results at the end of the season in their play-offs. A true playoff eliminates the bias of “voters” and pits teams as they are, strength-wise at the end of the season. None of that “strength of schedule” BS. A team that gets better as the season goes along shows it at the end of the season. The purpose of the whole thing is to determine which team is better at the end of the season. The results of the above-mentioned playoffs a lot of times don’t look like the “poll”. And a “poll” is really all the results of the playoff committee is. I can understand this though, if a person had a key to the bank vault they probably wouldn’t want to start making copies and passing them around. As with a lot of other things in this country, the problem is money; or more to the point, who’s getting it. It has nothing to do with fairness and isn’t that what college sports are supposed to be all about?
The one sport that has the biggest following around the country never had a playoff. Stadiums around the country packed to the brim to watch a sport that never had a playoff. Rivalry games had millions of people watching from all around the country on TV, for a sport that never had a playoff. Most every week of the season there was a big game match-up somewhere and millions atop millions tuned-in to watch it…for a sport that did not have a playoff.
And now we have many people that basically want to throw away an entire season of excitement so as to have a “playoff” at the end that accomplishes absolutely nothing and at the end of the day ONE team is named National Champion. Just as it’s always been.
There has never been a true national champion. Bama shares last year with UCF whether you want to believe it or not. It’s in the NCAA books. FBS football is the only sport that doesn’t have a real champion. I guess the NFL should just stop at the end of the regular season and hand the Super Bowl trophy over to the Patriots every year. How exciting.
That’s nonsense. The NCAA is playing the part of fraud here. They are very selective in recognizing one computer poll. Lots of computer polls name other champions in years past, but the ncaa doesn’t list them. They cowered to the squeaky wheel.
College football was never meant to have a “real champion” — the national championship was just an award like the Heisman that was voted to the team of the year and given the label of “national champion.”
The NFL is structured for a playoff — college football is not. The NFL has 32 teams and college about 130. The playoff is in the NFL are based on your record — college is not because there far too many teams spread out over far to many conferences and there’s really no way to reach into all of that and come up some some sort of equitable drawing of teams.
The NFL has about a third of their teams make the playoffs. For college to have that ratio there would need to be 40+ teams to make it to the playoffs — why does anyone want a playoff that will eliminate around 75-80% of the teams never having a realistic shot of making the playoffs? Even if you went to 16 playoff teams (disaster) there would only be about 30-40 teams around the country that have a shot at qualifying.
People years ago understand that college football is a REGIONAL game and not a national one. The “championship” was winning your conference and after the end of the season the exhibition (bowl games) began. The bowls were just good match-ups that didn’t matter except for bragging rights and the fans of the teams making a vacation out of their bowl week for fun — it was all just for FUN!
When it was all said and done there was a vote on the “team of the year” and someone got the award. And I have NEVER understood why there is this desperate push to have a playoff and ruin it all. The game will be RUINED if it turns into a playoff sport because it is not made for one!
Wrong about the NFL. They value division winners and not wins. That’s how you have teams with losing records in the playoffs. Shoot, you can be a 7-9 division winner and host a 12-4 team.
Didn’t everybody agree the the winner of the CFB was the National Champs?
As long as they are chosen and not placed. If Northwestern would have beaten Ohio State on a fluke I think they would have been just meat in the grinder for the playoffs. Can’t have sub par teams when a conference has a bad year.
The second The playoffs become about inclusion instead of the best teams, regardless of how many spots are in it, I’m out.
No system where a crappy 3 loss team, beats some other crappy team in their conference championship, then automatically jumps a bunch of better teams for a spot in the playoffs, will ever be worth watching. “Hey, we don’t have to win all our games, we just need to win 1 game to be in the playoffs.”
If a conference champion can’t get into the top 8 on their own, they don’t deserve to be there.
It’s either about the best teams, or it’s about inclusion.
Love it!
Let all conferences enter play offs