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The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - ColoradoTree - 12-10-2015

College football is a funny game.  I've seen Stewart Mandel and other national writers scoff at the idea that an 8-team playoff is the right way to go, saying "look how perfectly it worked out this year!"

But we're a two-point conversion and an OT win (vs. Oregon) or a merely middling offensive performance rather than an awful one (@ NW) away from making it super controversial for a second year in a row, with a 1-loss Big 12 champion likely getting left out yet again.  Or Arkansas' crazy lateral play on 4th and 25 (or so) in OT against Ole Miss doesn't go for a first down, and we're debating Alabama's merits as a 1-loss team that didn't even win its division, let alone the SEC.  Or ND punches it in against Clemson, and all of a sudden Clemson's middling SOS (42nd, per Sagarin) and the relative weakness of the ACC is keeping the ACC out of the playoff.  Heck, the conventional wisdom if UNC had beaten Clemson in the ACC title game was that we would make it in the playoff above UNC or Clemson, meaning a 2-loss champ would have made it over a 1-loss champ. 

It seems to me that if we'd beaten either Oregon or Northwestern, we're in the playoff right now.  And I have a feeling that for the second year in a row, the lack of a Big 12 title game would have made the difference, and Stanford would have jumped Oklahoma just like Michigan State did.  (I still don't think that was the right call, given the disparity in strength of schedule (19th for Oklahoma vs. 44th for Michigan State--we're 14th, for the record, per Sagarin), and how bad MSU looked all year, frankly, until the Penn State game.  Great defense, but a boring offense.  I get that the wins over Michigan and OSU are hard to ignore, though, however they were achieved.)  Given that our loss would have been to either a 10-win NW team or a 9-win Oregon team, while Oklahoma lost to 5-7 Texas and MSU lost to 5-7 Nebraska, there's no way the committee keeps us out in that scenario.  So, sure, perhaps we're a few more years away from seeming like an entrenched power that gets the benefit of the doubt, but if we'd taken care of business, we'd have a ticket to the dance. 

But the point remains:  the fact that it worked out neatly this year doesn't mean that it always will, and indeed, it didn't last year.  There is an intractable problem when you have a 4-team playoff with 5 major conferences. 

So, what do we do?  Coach Shaw is of the opinion that the 4-team playoff is a step in the right direction, but we'll eventually get to 8 teams.  He might be right, and this year, an 8-team playoff would have been terrific.  (1-Clemson vs. 8-Our Lady; 2-Alabama vs. 7-Ohio State; 3-Michigan State vs. 6-Stanford, and 4-Oklahoma vs. 5-Iowa.)  But I also see the argument that expanding to 8 teams dilutes the regular season a little more.  (I'm not swayed by it, but I get where folks are coming from.) 

We don't often hear the idea of 6 teams (with 3 vs. 6 and 4 vs. 5 quarterfinals, and the 1 and 2 seeds getting a bye) discussed, though, and that seems to me to be a decent solution.  You solve the fundamental issue with leaving out one of the major conference champs, and you allow for a 6th slot for an outstanding team that finished second in its conference or division, or for a non-Power 5 team in one of those years where Boise State or Houston or somebody goes undefeated and looks impressive in doing so.  (I'm not sold on the idea of the conference champ automatically getting a berth in the playoff, as a 7-5 (or even 6-6, *cough UCLA cough*) team might win its division and pull an upset in the conference title game but not have a claim to being one of the best teams in the country, but having a little extra room in the playoff would mean, in most years, that the 5 major conference champs get in.) 

I get that the additional game would further weaken the bowl system, though that doesn't bother me in the least, and the damage is already done there.  The main drawback of either a 6-team or 8-team playoff is the impact on academics, and I am sensitive to that.  But if you keep the bowls on their traditional dates and just make them the quarterfinals, then have the semis the second week of January and the championship game the third week of January, you're causing that additional academic stress at the beginning of the next term rather than during finals, when it would be the most antithetical to the schools' academic missions.  (An alternative would be to have the higher seed host the quarterfinal matchup on campus, which would minimize cost concerns, but would also mean the losing QF team misses out on a bowl trip and the tradition surrounding that.) 

So what do folks think?  Keep at it 4 and just accept a 1-loss conference champ missing out as a cost of doing business?  Go to 8 teams?  Meet in the middle at 6? 

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - stupac2 - 12-10-2015

I really, really, really dislike the idea of 6. I think it's almost worse than staying at 4. Having a bye is a ludicrously large advantage for such a small tournament, and there's no guaranteed good way to pick who the 1 and 2 seeds should be. Every teams should have to play the same number of games.

That said, I really don't understand what people even mean by "dilutes the regular season". It's as though those people want some kind of single- (or double-) elimination tournament with all the teams. Which is, like, okay, I guess, but sort of silly and that's emphatically not what we have right now. Right now the regular season means less for some teams than others, because who goes to the dance is subjective and schedules are super uneven. If we even get to a point where every conference is playing 9 games, scheduling at least 1 OOC P5 team, and no one is playing FCS games, then sure, you can just compare record. But that's not the world we live in and it's not clear if it ever will be, so I want to see automatic qualifiers.

To someone who objects to a team like, say, 2012 Wisconsin being in the tournament, then fine, the qualifier can include a lower bound in terms of ranking. But I think that every P5 champion, provided they achieve some reasonable level of success in the regular season, should have a chance to prove it on the field against the other top teams. 8 teams with the P5 winners (or an at-large if there's an accidental, heinous P5 winner), an open slot for an independent/G5 team, and 2 guaranteed at large bids sounds pretty darn good to me.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - ColoradoTree - 12-10-2015

stupac2, I'm fully in agreement with you on the current scheduling inequities, and I think having automatic qualifiers for conference champs with a lower bound on record to weed out the outliers gets the job done. 

And for the record, I prefer 8 to 6 or 4.  And I certainly see the flaws in having 6 teams versus 8.  My primary reason for suggesting it is that it's an incremental change that might be palatable for folks who are leaning against moving to 8, and I think that something needs to change. 

On the question of the bye in a 6-team playoff providing teams a significant advantage, however, I think there's an argument to be made that the advantage (which I agree exists) isn't so large.  We see this in baseball and basketball playoffs all the time, with the team that swept an earlier round of the playoffs potentially having several more days off than their opponents.  I think we'd all agree that a little extra rest is a positive, but if, say, the 3 seed just beat the 6 seed and is coming into a game against the 2 seed, and the 2 seed hasn't played in about a month, it seems at least arguable to me that the 2 seed might take slightly longer to get into the game than the 3 seed would.  Of course, even if there's a slight mental advantage to the team that just played, I would think football is difficult to compare to baseball and basketball where the risk of violent injury isn't so high.  In football, I think the risk of injury in the 3 vs. 6 game would absolutely overwhelm whatever small mental edge the winner might have from getting back into the swing of playing games.  It's almost like Week 1 of a new season in a way.  You have a ton of time to prepare for an opponent (or, in this case, two opponents, not knowing which team it will be), but nonetheless good teams sometimes come out flat, even with all of the motivation in the world. 

That said, I agree that having a bye would, on balance, be an advantage, and that an 8-team playoff is preferable to either the current situation or a 6-team field. 


Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - Papa John - 12-10-2015

I voted for an 8-team playoff. Pending future conference realignments, the winners of each of the Power 5 conferences get in plus three at-large teams (a spot reserved for the top group of 5 team if it achieves a certain standard, say top-16 by some metric).

And every team in a conference plays 9 conference games.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - stupac2 - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 11:40 AM)ColoradoTree link Wrote:stupac2, I'm fully in agreement with you on the current scheduling inequities, and I think having automatic qualifiers for conference champs with a lower bound on record to weed out the outliers gets the job done. 

And for the record, I prefer 8 to 6 or 4.  And I certainly see the flaws in having 6 teams versus 8.  My primary reason for suggesting it is that it's an incremental change that might be palatable for folks who are leaning against moving to 8, and I think that something needs to change. 

On the question of the bye in a 6-team playoff providing teams a significant advantage, however, I think there's an argument to be made that the advantage (which I agree exists) isn't so large.  We see this in baseball and basketball playoffs all the time, with the team that swept an earlier round of the playoffs potentially having several more days off than their opponents.  I think we'd all agree that a little extra rest is a positive, but if, say, the 3 seed just beat the 6 seed and is coming into a game against the 2 seed, and the 2 seed hasn't played in about a month, it seems at least arguable to me that the 2 seed might take slightly longer to get into the game than the 3 seed would.  Of course, even if there's a slight mental advantage to the team that just played, I would think football is difficult to compare to baseball and basketball where the risk of violent injury isn't so high.  In football, I think the risk of injury in the 3 vs. 6 game would absolutely overwhelm whatever small mental edge the winner might have from getting back into the swing of playing games.  It's almost like Week 1 of a new season in a way.  You have a ton of time to prepare for an opponent (or, in this case, two opponents, not knowing which team it will be), but nonetheless good teams sometimes come out flat, even with all of the motivation in the world. 

That said, I agree that having a bye would, on balance, be an advantage, and that an 8-team playoff is preferable to either the current situation or a 6-team field.

A bye isn't an enormous advantage because of the rest time, which I agree is a mixed bag, but because you play 1 fewer game. In the NFL I don't think it's as big of a deal because there's an extra round, and the magnitude difference between winning 3 and 4 games is smaller than between winning 2 and 3. If you assume all teams are evenly matched then the odds of winning with a bye in the NFL are only 6.25% than not having it, but in a 6-team playoff they'd be 12.5% higher. I think that's a meaningful difference. Also, even with hypothetical standardized scheduling practices, schedules are still far more even in the NFL than they are in CFB.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - French Rage - 12-10-2015

To play devil's advocate, would all Power 5 champs getting in lessen the need for good OOC opponents?  If you know that winning your conference gets you in automatically, would you schedule cupcakes OOC to make sure none of your guys get injured?  Or would it conversely inspire you to get better OOC opponents, as they might give your team good experience and losing those games wouldn't hurt your conference title hunt?

Further, with the 8 team option, perhaps your OOC schedule would still matter if you want a wild-card, so you wouldn't ignore it completely.  Rather, the point at which it matters moves from getting you into the top-4 to getting you a wildcard.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - stupac2 - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 12:39 PM)French Rage link Wrote:To play devil's advocate, would all Power 5 champs getting in lessen the need for good OOC opponents?  If you know that winning your conference gets you in automatically, would you schedule cupcakes OOC to make sure none of your guys get injured?  Or would it conversely inspire you to get better OOC opponents, as they might give your team good experience and losing those games wouldn't hurt your conference title hunt?

Further, with the 8 team option, perhaps your OOC schedule would still matter if you want a wild-card, so you wouldn't ignore it completely.  Rather, the point at which it matters moves from getting you into the top-4 to getting you a wildcard.

I think that expanding the playoff would probably make for better OOC schedules, because:

1) Unlike now an OOC loss wouldn't completely eliminate your in-conference margin of error, since they'd be decoupled. So teams would no longer just do the bare minimum.
2) Aggressive scheduling could be rewarded through seeding.
3) Aggressive scheduling would make it more likely that, if you lose your conference, you get in as an at-large.

That said, there'd still be the same downside where aggressive scheduling likely means losing a home game, which teams in the south really don't want to give up.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - OutsiderFan - 12-10-2015

Playing tough OOC teams will have no downside and only upside in an 8-team playoff.  It will be more like basketball:

- Good OOC competition strengthens the schedule for post-season seeding purposes
- Playing tough OOC competition hardens your team for its conference season
- Better OOC home games increases attendance

Win your conference and get in the playoff, so even if you go 0-3 OOC, you can get in the playoff at 8-4.  To me, this not only means more teams can get in, it also give many more programs hope that they can get in the playoff.  That increase fan interest, and that is always good for the sport.

I have no problem with an 8-4 team making it into the playoff as long as that team is a conference winner.  There is never going to be a situation like the NFC East in the NFL this year, where a sub-.500 team makes it in.





Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - Stymie - 12-10-2015

I voted for the 7 game "local" prelim and a 64 team knockout, and not only because I have thought for some time that this is the most likely end game of the headlong dash to cash that has become NCAA football.  For another thing, it would allow us to resurrect the Pac-8 and other traditional conferences.  Also, you (largely) get rid of the influence of the sports hacks, cutty sarked coaches and computer nerds in deciding who plays whom and when.

I must admit that I had a serious brain freeze when I tried to work out all the computations, permutations and logistics of this scenario a few years ago, but I am confident that the rocket scientists on this board will take up where I lifted off ("left off" surely, Ed.)

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - teejers1 - 12-10-2015

If it ever gets to 8 teams, you'll have to have the top four teams host the first game.

There is no way fans will travel and fill neutral site stadiums in 3 consecutive weekends.  It's hard enough at 2.  In fact, if Stanford had made the playoffs this year, how many of us would have attended both the semifinal and final?  How many would have brought families to same?

I'm telling you, THAT's a big concern (unless TV doesn't mind playing Elite 8s and Final Fours in half-empty stadiums).

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - ThePassionOfTheChryst - 12-10-2015

As far as OOC scheduling, there could be a caveat.  You can have no fewer than 1 P5 and no more than 1 FCS OOC opponent on your schedule to be eligible for the playoffs.  I think the conferences would enforce that themselves, due to all the money involved.  Further, strength of OOC could go a long way toward seeding, as someone else said.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - Papa John - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 01:39 PM)teejers1 link Wrote:There is no way fans will travel and fill neutral site stadiums in 3 consecutive weekends.

Well, the NCAA basketball tournament does just that, although I agree that the arenas aren't always full for the first weekend.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - 82lsju - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 03:55 PM)Papa John link Wrote:[quote author=teejers1 link=topic=14003.msg147321#msg147321 date=1449779957]
There is no way fans will travel and fill neutral site stadiums in 3 consecutive weekends.

Well, the NCAA basketball tournament does just that, although I agree that the arenas aren't always full for the first weekend.
[/quote]

except the arenas for the basketball tournament are much smaller (except for the final four) and each site has four teams to fill the arena.  The higher seeds are also given some amount of geographic protection so their fans generally have a shorter trip to the sites.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - BostonCard - 12-10-2015

Plus in the basketball tournament you get two games each week end, so people who go for, say, the sweet sixteen will also go for the elite eight.  In football it would be consecutive week ends, so even if you make it the same venue, you won't get people to stay the entire week.

BC

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - BostonCard - 12-10-2015

It wasn't long ago that most teams played 11 games, and some (bowl invitees, who were a minority of Div 1A) played 12.

Now every team plays at least twelve, more than half (there were 40 bowls, so 80 teams went, including some that were 5-7) play 13.  Teams that go to their conference championship play 14, and those who play in the conference championship and the playoff final play 15.  That's a 25% increase in number of games played from just a couple decades ago.  As we are finding out more about the health effects of repeated blows, I have to wonder whether more games is necessarily better.  I'm all for "more football", but the athletes are going to face the consequences of more football in the future.

I'd like to go back to 11 games, so that teams can schedule two bye weeks during the year.  Yeah, it sucks to have a week without football, but the extra week to rest would be a good thing.

I don't necessarily want another round of playoffs.  Another round of playoffs means likely a 16th game for a couple teams.  At what point do you say that's too much?

The marginal benefit of including more teams in the playoffs just doesn't seem worth it.  I don't think there is anything inherently unfair about having four playoff spots for 5 power-5 conferences.  I don't think we were screwed out of the playoffs this year, because even though I think we might be competitive with several of the playoff teams, I don't think we can make a claim to being the best team in college football.  The more playoff rounds there are, the less interesting the first few playoff rounds are, the less interesting the non-conference season is, and the less important conference games become.  There was something to the fact that every game we played after Northwestern was absolutely critical.

There will always be controversy no matter what "system" you make.  Someone will always feel unfairly left out.  I don't think that an alternative system, say, with eight teams, would necessarily be worse, but it wouldn't be better either.  Mostly, it would just change the character of college football.

BC

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - CowboyIndian - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 01:14 PM)OutsiderFan link Wrote:It will be more like basketball:

This is not a selling point.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - stupac2 - 12-10-2015

(12-10-2015, 04:23 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:It wasn't long ago that most teams played 11 games, and some (bowl invitees, who were a minority of Div 1A) played 12.

Now every team plays at least twelve, more than half (there were 40 bowls, so 80 teams went, including some that were 5-7) play 13.  Teams that go to their conference championship play 14, and those who play in the conference championship and the playoff final play 15.  That's a 25% increase in number of games played from just a couple decades ago.  As we are finding out more about the health effects of repeated blows, I have to wonder whether more games is necessarily better.  I'm all for "more football", but the athletes are going to face the consequences of more football in the future.

I'd like to go back to 11 games, so that teams can schedule two bye weeks during the year.  Yeah, it sucks to have a week without football, but the extra week to rest would be a good thing.

I don't necessarily want another round of playoffs.  Another round of playoffs means likely a 16th game for a couple teams.  At what point do you say that's too much?

The marginal benefit of including more teams in the playoffs just doesn't seem worth it.  I don't think there is anything inherently unfair about having four playoff spots for 5 power-5 conferences.  I don't think we were screwed out of the playoffs this year, because even though I think we might be competitive with several of the playoff teams, I don't think we can make a claim to being the best team in college football.  The more playoff rounds there are, the less interesting the first few playoff rounds are, the less interesting the non-conference season is, and the less important conference games become.  There was something to the fact that every game we played after Northwestern was absolutely critical.

There will always be controversy no matter what "system" you make.  Someone will always feel unfairly left out.  I don't think that an alternative system, say, with eight teams, would necessarily be worse, but it wouldn't be better either.  Mostly, it would just change the character of college football.

BC

I've never understood the "too many games" argument. FCS teams play a 24-team playoff, which means the winner could end up playing as many as 5 playoff games, which is how many you'd get in the FBS with conference championships and a 16-game playoff (which, incidentally, I think is an unnecessary number of games given that every conference will have a championship game soon). It looks like FCS teams play fewer regular-season games, but from what I'm seeing 11 is the norm. So they're already playing the same number of games that we'd see with an 8-team playoff. Why is it acceptable for them but not for FBS? The only argument I can see is that the injury risk per game is lower in FCS because of the lower average athletic ability, but I'm not sure that actually makes sense and if it were true then it's definitely a reason to ban FBS-FCS games.

Anyway, we've been over this enough so I don't see the need to hash it out any further. But I will say that if you honestly think that the first round of a hypothetical 8-team playoff would've been boring this year or last, you need to have your head examined. Guaranteeing that the top teams play each other is awesome! And it's not something we always get.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - ThePassionOfTheChryst - 12-10-2015

8 teams is just the rational number, imo. Any one of the top 8 teams could rightly win the championship in a playoff format, imo. We have to decide, as the college football community, if the point is truly to crown the best team in FBS football or to punish teams who slipped up along the way. We lost to Northwestern, sure. But does anyone really think Northwestern is better than us? Or that Portland State is better than Washington State? Or that Arkansas is better than Ole Miss, who is better than Alabama?

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - stupac2 - 12-10-2015

I really think that the whole idea of finding the "best team" is an albatross around CFB's neck, and the sooner people get over it the better. If you think about it for more than a few seconds it just doesn't make sense.

Re: The merits of 4, 6, or 8 teams in the playoff - BostonCard - 12-10-2015

OK, fine.  I'm OK with the playoffs not determining a "best team".  But what's your criteria for figuring out the optimum number of teams to go to a playoff?
BC