12-10-2015, 11:07 AM
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.
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.