12-10-2015, 11:40 AM
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â
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.Â