It doesn`t have to be so complicated. If you do automatic bids, that guarantees someone will get it that shouldn`t and someone will be left out that shouldn`t. Why do they try to make it so complicated? Good thinking Lane!
For once I agree with Lane Kiffin. CFP should be top 16 from final poll. No automatic bids. Seed them accordingly, i.e. 1 vs. 16 & so on.
- Thread starter Psycock
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I completely agree with top 16 teams and no automatic bids beyond that. None, zilch, nada. The determining ranking would come after Championship Saturday, preserving the relevance of conference championship games.
One thing you know for sure: if it makes sense, it's the ONE thing they won't do.
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I would assume so. I'd prefer computers do it all. They can dispassionately assess every necessary requisite, and who could say that politics played a role?
I don't think there should be any polls involved, human or computer. Polls, by their very nature are subjective and determining a national champion in a major sport should be decided by head to head play on the field.
Divide the current P4 conferences into 8 10 team conferences. Have every team play a 9 game conference schedule to determine a conference champion. Do away with conference championship games. The regular season would be a de facto tournament that would determine the champion. Let the champions of those 8 conferences play a 3 round "tournament" to determine the national champion.
Divide the current P4 conferences into 8 10 team conferences. Have every team play a 9 game conference schedule to determine a conference champion. Do away with conference championship games. The regular season would be a de facto tournament that would determine the champion. Let the champions of those 8 conferences play a 3 round "tournament" to determine the national champion.
I agree with the polls being the standard - or robots - too many biased humans. Yes BCS style, although I hated that then. With 2 teams there were often a number of teams that you could have argued were left out. Well 16 is different. IMO if you don`t finish in the Top 16 you have no chance of going all the way so a much fairer system than the old BCS.
It's not the right answer, but the answer is that you have input from other conferences beside the big 2. They will be left out en mass if polls are used, and not conference champs.
This is what is fascinating to me. One of the main reasons the BCS was scrapped is because folks didn't like computers having as much input on the decision. They wanted the human element to weigh the intangibles. Now people want to scrap the intangibles and go back to computers.
The intangibles always bothered me. There's nothing I hate more than one team getting in the playoffs because of "the eye test".
But even computers are influenced by opinion. Preseason rankings can set the stage for one team to be higher than another through the season. The computer is then using that in its calculations. Even if they wait till week six to start calculating.
There is no real answer, imo, except to have the first team left out to be 13th or 17th. They weren't winning the title anyway.
I'm with it 100%!! I’ve been saying this all along - Top 16 - screw automatic bids. The tallest midget shouldn’t be in the CFP at the expense of deserving teams who may be 3rd or 4th in a strong, meat-grinder conference.
No auto bids! No auto bids! No auto bids!
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There's another complication.
With conferences going to 9 game schedules, how much inter conference play is there going to be?
The SEC will play primarily SEC opponents and cupcakes with this change. How to argue a 9-3 SEC team vs a 9-3 big 10 team if there's no common opponents or cross conference play?
It'll be whoever was ranked higher in the completely subjective, at best a guess, preseason polls.
With conferences going to 9 game schedules, how much inter conference play is there going to be?
The SEC will play primarily SEC opponents and cupcakes with this change. How to argue a 9-3 SEC team vs a 9-3 big 10 team if there's no common opponents or cross conference play?
It'll be whoever was ranked higher in the completely subjective, at best a guess, preseason polls.
Reality is that everyone takes it MUCH too seriously. It's just college football. People treat it like we're trying to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Besides that, it's an unfixable problem for the very problem you mention. No matter what they do, there's simply no way to get a truly objective analysis due to the overall lack of interconference play. There are simply too many teams to get any real comparison of relative conference strength based on head-to-head matchups. Any system will, of necessity, be highly subjective because of that.
Any conceivable system is going to leave certain teams/conferences out in the cold. Just the way it is.
There are way more pretenders in the playoff than there used to be. But it's possible to get the best 16 teams in there if the right tools are used. The human bias factor is the weak link.
The computers are subjective based on what formula they're programmed to analyze the different teams.
Auto bids are not subjective whatsoever. Everyone knows what they have to do to make the playoff, no guesswork involved.
There's definitely an argument about fairness though.
Computers loaded with consensus requisites by which all teams are dispassionately judged are the opposite of subjective. Auto bids are subjective to the extent that people politically decide which conference champions get them. Auto bids are also fallacious in that teams that get them are not necessarily stronger than teams that don't. I say digitize this process all the way.
We live in the South. I dare say college football is more important to a lot of us than peace in the middle east.
And the computer formula is created by people who determine which factors should be given which weight. The BCS used several different computers to rank teams and it made nobody happy.
An auto bid is open and easy to understand. It doesn't weigh strength of schedule, strength of record, scoring margin, injuries, FPI, etc.
The auto bid says at the beginning of the season, do this and you make the playoff.
Again, I'm not saying that should be how the playoff is determined, but it's definitely the least subjective process.
Whatever requisites are chosen would be applied the same to everybody when using computers. That isn't direct subjectivity. Auto bids ensure pretenders to a greater extent than computer ratings, especially when they throw a fifth manifestly substandard conference's winner in there based on that team's human ranking.
Do the computers even factor injuries? That was pretty much the sole reason FSU was left out, right?
I do also. Whatever they did would have been untainted by typical bias factors, though.
Computers are not the answer. No other sport at any level relies on computer rankings to determine who gets to play for a championship. Every other level of organized football relies on head to head play to determine who is eligible to play for a championship. The top level of college football, a multi billion dollar sport followed by many millions of people, is the only sport that lets polls or committees determine who plays for its championship. Head to head play on the field is the only true way to decide a champion. College football needs to create 8 conferences with 10-12 teams each that are each geographically homogenous and those 8 conferences should send their champion to a three round playoff to determine the national champion.
I discount college basketball because the tournament field is so large as to be a joke as far as determining who is worthy of playing for the championship. College basketball is basically two seasons, one that lasts for four months and another that lasts for around four weeks.
I discount college basketball because the tournament field is so large as to be a joke as far as determining who is worthy of playing for the championship. College basketball is basically two seasons, one that lasts for four months and another that lasts for around four weeks.
I agree. It only works though with the realignment you called out, or some form of it. Because now we have different groups of teams that don't mix as much, and are going to mix even less, and we have to decide if one 10-2 team is better than another 10-2 team who never played the same people as the first team.
It is not as long as team strength and individual player value can be reduced to numbers. It would be arduous but it could be done.
Yeah if your starting running back decides to declare early for the draft or transfer portal, your objective strength as a team could be diminished.
It's done for the EA games.
I just wonder if it could be done WELL in reality. Like the idea, I just have issues contemplating the implementation.