How hypothetical betting lines would have looked for 8-team Playoff in 2019
Would expanding the College Football Playoff to 8 teams actually make the tournament more competitive? Or, would it just stop certain teams from complaining that they were left out of the field?
That’s the question ESPN announcer Chris Fowler addressed on Twitter this week, tweeting out hypothetical lines for an 8-team 2019 Playoff.
As you can see below, the hypothetical lines have LSU, Ohio State and Clemson as 20+ point favorites over their lower-ranked quarterfinal foes:
I understand frustration that fuels 8-team CFP talk. But check Vegas would view the first round matchups. It’s a top heavy era. pic.twitter.com/FPGPIobNEg
— Chris Fowler (@cbfowler) December 10, 2019
Would the final four teams be different under this model? Sure, big upsets happen often in college football, but more often than not, the top 2-3 seeds would probably advance easily.
Still, this is perhaps the best way to ensure fewer teams are left out of the field and complaining at the end of the year.
UGA favored at Norman surprises me after the offensive egg we laid at the SECCG. Cager and Blaylock would still be off the table, and I don’t know that 3 weeks of practice would improve the passing game dramatically. Presumably Swift would be healthy. Maybe projecting how UGA’s D would fare after seeing Baylor handle the Sooner offense, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
I’d probably bet the under on that game.
Three 20+ point spreads is not enticing. This is what some people are fighting for?
Out of the 10 semi final games we’ve had 8 have been blowouts. Only 2 games have been competitive but everyone wanted to expand it to 4. Also 2 of the 5 championship games have been blowouts.
Exactly. Rarely are there more than 3 teams deserving of playing for the title. If they had just waited and decided the BCS championship game matchup after bowl season, they could have paired the #2 and #3 teams together in a bowl game and had a de facto play-in game assuming the #1 team won their bowl game also, but no, let’s go and ruin bowl season and conference championship games by having a playoff that lets teams win titles without winning their conference. I could go on all day about the stupidity of having a 4-team playoff in college football.
Agree but I also think it needs to expand
Why would it need to expand? The college football playoff is to determine the champion of the regular season. There has never been 8 teams that could make that claim.
Sure there has..
2017 is an example: Clemson, uga, Alabama, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Auburn, UCF, Ohio State.
Why is it that every division in football from little league to the nfl has a set criteria on how to get into the playoffs except D-1? And it’s the only one with controversy.
Past CFP results would say otherwise as the #4 ranked team going in has won it all twice….number of times the #1 ranked team has won it all……ZERO. I would like all power 5 conference winners to get an automatic qualifier into the playoffs (you’re welcome PAC12) so that conference championship means something.
How many two loss teams do we need in the playoffs? That discredits the regular season. Find eight this year. They aren’t there. Not close. Six would be stretching it.
The playoff either needs to be at 16 teams, with all 10 conference champions getting in along with 6 at-large teams, like March Madness or the fcs playoffs, and get rid of bowl season completely, or do away with the playoff and go back to the BCS. College football doesn’t need both a playoff and bowl games. Go all-in on one option.
16 is way too many..
LSUMC – auburn was a two loss team in 17 and beat the runner up and champion pretty soundly.. just because you lost two games doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be in it. Hell, teams that can’t win their conference can get in.
There’s a reason you play the games. Vegas isn’t in the business of losing money but teams win against 20 point spreads sometimes.
It’s rare, and it’s not worth watering down the playoffs or minimizing the bowl season to do that. Money will eventually cause the playoffs to expand. It won’t be because of the competition.
Bowl season already means nothing other than practices for teams not in the tournament. I say expand it to increase the chance for cinderella stories.
Bowl season means nothing to the teams in the playoffs, but it means something to lots of other teams. I loved LSU’s season last year. Not everyone is in contention for a NC. The bowls are still an admirable goal for them.
Except many players don’t see it that way, which is why we see so many of them sitting out. No matter how many teams are in the playoff, the mere existence of the playoffs will eventually make bowl games obsolete.
If spreads actually mattered, then Vegas would have handed Bama the championship in August. I could see all of those games being competitive with the exception of Memphis v LSU.
LSU vs Memphis would be closer than Clemson vs Oregon.
I don’t know about that. Oregon would be far and away the best team Clemson has faced.
That was a good Oregon team that blew out Utah. Who knows how good Clemson is?
Judging by the fact they’ve won every game by 31+ since early October, have the best RB in the country, a top 3 QB, top 2 receiving corps, and are top 5 in every level of their defense in terms of both talent and on-field product, I’d say they’re pretty good. Last year they had one of, if not the greatest team in college football history. They lost their d-line, and only a couple other key players. They’ve replaced that d-line with another top 5 d-line in the country, so they really didn’t lose much. This Clemson team dominates everyone they’ve played for two months without even trying a lot of the time. I don’t understand why people are sleeping on them so much because of their schedule. Since the wake-up call from UNC they’ve looked exactly like the team last year did in terms of the way they dominate their opponents.