Should college football have a playoff?

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

You actually don't want people to look at March Madness. People would see how that sucked up all the interest in the regular season. Nobody cares about the regular season in that case. The money isn't there.

People keep saying that, but what proof is there? Yeah the tournament is more popular than the regular season, but that's not necessarily an indication that the tournament has hurt the regular season in any way. Really, the same could be said for the football and the bowls.

Originally Posted by Skipaway

I think what's needed first is to reduce the number of teams in the division.

Make a super college football division of only 40 teams or less, then it'd be much much easier to come up with good systems, playoff or not.

Doesn't reducing the number of teams hurt interest? What teams would you even pick?

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by dudeosu

People keep saying that, but what proof is there? Yeah the tournament is more popular than the regular season, but that's not necessarily an indication that the tournament has hurt the regular season in any way. Really, the same could be said for the football and the bowls.

Doesn't reducing the number of teams hurt interest? What teams would you even pick?

To generate interest, you need teams to be playing for something. In football leagues around the world you have teams fighting against relegation, and that's something. You have all those league cups or what not as a secondary prize to fight for also. Even in leagues with blown up playoffs like NBA there is the fight for the last playoff spot.

If you have a 16 team playoff system instead of the current bowl system, suddenly the number of teams fighting for something in the regular season decreased by a lot. Right now at least being eligible to a bowl is romanticized to be worth something, and teams obviously are willing to go to bowls even when they are not making money off those horrible bowls.

And reducing team number is going to help interest from the TV contract point of view. It would hurt interest overall from the stadium attendance point of view, because fewer teams are going to be in the top tiers and those cut out would suffer in attendance.

For the sport overall, there is no doubt having fewer teams helps, and that's why you don't see 100 MLB teams. You'd have talent too diluted and too many bad match ups.

Picking what teams to be in the super league is just another political issue, like playoffs and BCS. It's actually not that hard. You can have Big 10, SEC, Big 12, and Pac 12 deciding that they don't want to play with anybody else anymore, with a blessing of some super college football channel deal.


The smaller the division, the smaller the problem of strength of schedule discrepancies and the easier to decide championships, be it something like BCS or playoffs.

[jaxmagicman]

I would rather see what Skip is advocating than a playoff. I like the idea of teams be regulated and moving up and down as well as a way to get the team into the championship. If you have say 40 teams who are in the top division, or 32 teams, you can have a round robin. If you finish last in your Round Robin, you move to a lower divison. The top two teams from each move on to another round robin. Then you have a defacto playoff.

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

To generate interest, you need teams to be playing for something. In football leagues around the world you have teams fighting against relegation, and that's something. You have all those league cups or what not as a secondary prize to fight for also. Even in leagues with blown up playoffs like NBA there is the fight for the last playoff spot.

If you have a 16 team playoff system instead of the current bowl system, suddenly the number of teams fighting for something in the regular season decreased by a lot. Right now at least being eligible to a bowl is romanticized to be worth something, and teams obviously are willing to go to bowls even when they are not making money off those horrible bowls.

And reducing team number is going to help interest from the TV contract point of view. It would hurt interest overall from the stadium attendance point of view, because fewer teams are going to be in the top tiers and those cut out would suffer in attendance.

For the sport overall, there is no doubt having fewer teams helps, and that's why you don't see 100 MLB teams. You'd have talent too diluted and too many bad match ups.

Picking what teams to be in the super league is just another political issue, like playoffs and BCS. It's actually not that hard. You can have Big 10, SEC, Big 12, and Pac 12 deciding that they don't want to play with anybody else anymore, with a blessing of some super college football channel deal.

You didn't answer my question. You claimed that the NCAA basketball tourney hurts regular season interest. But there's no hard evidence of that, only some hypothesis including the one you give here. Good job theorycrafting, but I'm not buying it.

And who says you have to do away with the other bowl games? With an 8 team playoff go ahead and keep all the other bowls, you're really not changing the landscape that much other than that 2 teams will play an extra bowl game and 2 teams will play 2 extra bowl games. So 4 spots are taken away from other teams, who cares? They're going to be 6-6 teams anyway. Don't tell me that then the bowl games don't matter, because they already don't matter. They're exhibition games anyway, at least with a playoff a few more games matter a bit more. Plenty of teams are still playing for something, so, according to you, they're still generating interest.

As for reducing teams, how do you reconcile the fact that college football already has more than 100 teams yet has tons of interest? College fanbases are built differently than professional sports teams. By removing 70% of the teams from the viewing base, you're leaving tons of money on the table. College sports are popular but really only super popular at the top level. How many people watch the lower divisions in any sport?

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

I would rather see what Skip is advocating than a playoff. I like the idea of teams be regulated and moving up and down as well as a way to get the team into the championship. If you have say 40 teams who are in the top division, or 32 teams, you can have a round robin. If you finish last in your Round Robin, you move to a lower divison. The top two teams from each move on to another round robin. Then you have a defacto playoff.

I think you'd be the first person to agree that tradition and rivalries weighs huge on college football. Can you imagine a season where OSU and Michigan don't play? How about Florida and Georgia? New rivalries don't exactly pop up either, Penn St and MSU have tried with no success. Having relegated divisions would kill tons of football fans. I'd probably only watch about half as much.

Edit: I mean, you'd be sending Texas to a lower division this year!!

[jaxmagicman]

I like the rivalries, I also think they mean more in college football than any other sport because there is NO playoff. Every year, no matter how bad Florida or Georgia or Michigan or Ohio State is, the game between each of them is going to be a huge rivalry, because the other could knock the other out of the National Championship hunt.

In basketball, there is no bigger rivalry than Duke against North Carolina, but in the regular season or even the ACC Tournament the game means less to many observers because it isn't in the NCAA Tournament. When it is win or there is no tomorrow it heats up. We have that in spades in College Football because every game is do or die. You lose, just one game, you miss out on your chance to win a national title.

Yes, you get that lone team (Boise State, TCU, Utah) that says hey we went undefeated, what about us, but I would rather have 1 team out every year than to miss out on the week to week camping (in tents, intense, get it) that is college football!

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

I like the rivalries, I also think they mean more in college football than any other sport because there is NO playoff. Every year, no matter how bad Florida or Georgia or Michigan or Ohio State is, the game between each of them is going to be a huge rivalry, because the other could knock the other out of the National Championship hunt.

In basketball, there is no bigger rivalry than Duke against North Carolina, but in the regular season or even the ACC Tournament the game means less to many observers because it isn't in the NCAA Tournament. When it is win or there is no tomorrow it heats up. We have that in spades in College Football because every game is do or die. You lose, just one game, you miss out on your chance to win a national title.

Yes, you get that lone team (Boise State, TCU, Utah) that says hey we went undefeated, what about us, but I would rather have 1 team out every year than to miss out on the week to week camping (in tents, intense, get it) that is college football!

That's what I was harping on with Skip, who says that a playoff kills that? Would Duke-UNC really be better off without the tournament? It seems to be plenty hot to me. Losing interest in rivalry games would seem to be a factor of so many more games rather than of the postseason setup.

The win or die mentality of the football playoff would still be there too. They mean just as much because one loss still severely hurts your chances of winning your conference or, in the system I proposed (similar to Cryomaniac's), hurts your BCS ranking which I would still use to determine the playoff field. And is there really any more win or die mentality in a playoff?

[jaxmagicman]

Ok, think of it this way.

Ohio State is undefeated at the end of the year. They are going to the playoff as the big 10(+2) champ. The game agains Michigan means nothing. Michigan hurts your starting quarterback in the first quarter. Certainly he could return to the game, but why risk it? He can sit out, and you guys lose, it means nothing. That is why it loses the intensity. There is nothing to play for other than beating your rival. At the behest of your future games you would not send your best player back out there because you would want to save him for the playoffs.

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by jaxmagicman

Ok, think of it this way.

Ohio State is undefeated at the end of the year. They are going to the playoff as the big 10(+2) champ. The game agains Michigan means nothing. Michigan hurts your starting quarterback in the first quarter. Certainly he could return to the game, but why risk it? He can sit out, and you guys lose, it means nothing. That is why it loses the intensity. There is nothing to play for other than beating your rival. At the behest of your future games you would not send your best player back out there because you would want to save him for the playoffs.

Maybe a tiny bit of intensity lost, but far more lost because Michigan is bad. It also assumes that OSU has a 2+ game lead on everyone else in the Big 10, which is a rare instance. In my system, that loss could still knock someone out of the playoff should they fall below #10. You could also make the case that OSU was left out of the postseason because of bad luck (an injury). Luck plays a huge part in the current BCS model, a playoff mitigates that at least a little.

If such damage exists, then arguably it's already happening with championship games. Did Auburn-Alabama have a lackluster game this year even though Alabama had no chance of making any relevant bowl? People were still putting a one-loss Auburn in over an undefeated TCU. You could make the exact same "hurts rivalries" argument by noting that rivalry games played with teams that have no chance of making a title game mean nothing. Did UF-FSU hurt this year?

All that would also never hurt a fraction as much if Michigan and OSU never played each other because one was in a different division.

[dudeosu]

Dola,

You can also take the reverse situation similar to what happened in 2006. Given what we new at the time (first week of December), was there any team more deserving of being #2 than Michigan? Voters had to flip-flop their ballots to get Florida in. Yeah they lost to OSU, but they were the #1 team. With a playoff, you'd at least know that the 3 point loss was or wasn't a fluke or that some bit of luck didn't. Was it fair to penalize Michigan for going on the road and giving the undisuputed best team (at the time) the best game of it's life? Was there a game that has meant more than that game in the history of football (again, at the time)?

Granted, we learned very differently during the bowls, hindsight is always 20/20.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by dudeosu

You didn't answer my question. You claimed that the NCAA basketball tourney hurts regular season interest. But there's no hard evidence of that, only some hypothesis including the one you give here. Good job theorycrafting, but I'm not buying it.

And who says you have to do away with the other bowl games? With an 8 team playoff go ahead and keep all the other bowls, you're really not changing the landscape that much other than that 2 teams will play an extra bowl game and 2 teams will play 2 extra bowl games. So 4 spots are taken away from other teams, who cares? They're going to be 6-6 teams anyway. Don't tell me that then the bowl games don't matter, because they already don't matter. They're exhibition games anyway, at least with a playoff a few more games matter a bit more. Plenty of teams are still playing for something, so, according to you, they're still generating interest.

As for reducing teams, how do you reconcile the fact that college football already has more than 100 teams yet has tons of interest? College fanbases are built differently than professional sports teams. By removing 70% of the teams from the viewing base, you're leaving tons of money on the table. College sports are popular but really only super popular at the top level. How many people watch the lower divisions in any sport?

I am not buying the idea of playoff being able to generate more interest/money either. The point wasn't to say my theory is better. The point is to say the other theory is as baseless as mine. It's fine you are not buying mine.

And I think it's pretty obvious if you have a new playoff system there would be negative impacts to the other bowls. Playing for something means you have to create a good back story that people would buy in. New system upsets the old story. What's the story you are gonna sell for the old bowl games in the new playoff system? "They are exhibition games anyway" surely is true, but there are exhibition games people care more than others. Just look at how All Star games are marketed differently by different leagues and the fan interest varies a lot because of that.


You are simply wrong about the 100 teams with tons of interest thing. Look at the TV contract of each conferences, and they are no where equal. TV is now the most important revenue generation vehicle, and it's no where even among all 100 teams. More importantly, when we talk about TV revenue, it's no longer a simple issue of which team has the bigger fan base. Most of the TV viewers aren't fans of the two teams playing. In the mean time, college sports fans quite often don't have any real links to the college they support, for those people making them support the closest super division team like they support the closest professional team isn't a problem.

Teams currently in the FBS subdivision but not in the super league would just become more like the current FCS subdivision teams. That's actually not that huge a drop off for most of them.

[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

IAnd I think it's pretty obvious if you have a new playoff system there would be negative impacts to the other bowls. Playing for something means you have to create a good back story that people would buy in. New system upsets the old story. What's the story you are gonna sell for the old bowl games in the new playoff system? "They are exhibition games anyway" surely is true, but there are exhibition games people care more than others. Just look at how All Star games are marketed differently by different leagues and the fan interest varies a lot because of that.

Evidently, its not that obvious.

Explain to me how a small playoff (using the top four bows from the semi-finals on) damage the smaller bowls.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by dudeosu

And is there really any more win or die mentality in a playoff?

And that IS the problem. With the playoff, the win or die mentality would be concentrated in the playoff, but not anywhere else.

A loss in the regular season is weighted much lower than the one in the playoffs, since you can recover from the first one, but not the second one.


Let's put it this way:

1. Set up an imaginary 10 team league with all teams roughly equal. They all have 10% chance of winning it all at the beginning of the season.

2. With no playoffs at all, the chance would gradually increase and reduce over the regular season. All games in the regular season would be equally important. All of the games are marching toward the 100% target.

3. With a two team playoff system, the regular season becomes a battle to get that 10% to 50%. The one playoff game becomes the 50% to 100% game.

4. With a four team playoff system, the regular season becomes a battle to get from 10% to 25%. The playoff itself is about getting from 25% to 75%.


So you can obviously see with expanding the playoffs, the importance of regular season games would greatly reduce. What's at stake would be greatly shifted to the back. That means pacing starters at the regular season or even resting them would become a more viable strategy with bigger playoffs.

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

I am not buying the idea of playoff being able to generate more interest/money either. The point wasn't to say my theory is better. The point is to say the other theory is as baseless as mine. It's fine you are not buying mine.

The Big 10 commissioner even admitted to congress that a playoff could generate up to 4 times as much revenue as the current BCS model!

Big 12 blew it by eschewing playoff - College Football - Rivals.com

And I think it's pretty obvious if you have a new playoff system there would be negative impacts to the other bowls. Playing for something means you have to create a good back story that people would buy in. New system upsets the old story. What's the story you are gonna sell for the old bowl games in the new playoff system? "They are exhibition games anyway" surely is true, but there are exhibition games people care more than others. Just look at how All Star games are marketed differently by different leagues and the fan interest varies a lot because of that.

That's an assumption. Without any real status change for the non-playoff bowls or what the games mean, why would you assume their appeal would change? Really, what story is being changed? Meangingless bowl is still meaningless with or without a playoff. I just don't see any evidence that would change anything.

You are simply wrong about the 100 teams with tons of interest thing. Look at the TV contract of each conferences, and they are no where equal. TV is now the most important revenue generation vehicle, and it's no where even among all 100 teams. More importantly, when we talk about TV revenue, it's no longer a simple issue of which team has the bigger fan base. Most of the TV viewers aren't fans of the two teams playing.

Maybe not exclusively team fans, but still most of the viewers are probably either at least fans of the team or fans of the conference. There's multiple levels of fanhood in college, that's (partially) what I meant by building fan bases differently. Why else does ESPN do regional coverage (like when you see that map)?

In the mean time, college sports fans quite often don't have any real links to the college they support, for those people making them support the closest super division team like they support the closest professional team isn't a problem.

Quite often? Are you making this up? What do you even mean by real link? I don't think you can make that statement and be really all that familiar with college fandom.

Teams currently in the FBS subdivision but not in the super league would just become more like the current FCS subdivision teams. That's actually not that huge a drop off for most of them.

Well then pick the teams and we'll see. West Virginia going to the FCS would be a massive drop off. You're going to have plenty if it's only 40 teams.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by Cooleyvol

Evidently, its not that obvious.

Explain to me how a small playoff (using the top four bows from the semi-finals on) damage the smaller bowls.

It's just a sliding scale. Currently we have a small playoff already, that is the two team playoff of the BCS championship game.

Having this one game playoff has already disrupted the old system in several ways, but I think we can say the impact of implementing this one game playoff has been minimal to the smaller bowls. The bigger the playoff, the more impact.

With a small playoff system, like a four team one, the problem with the current BCS system would still be there though. What problem is that solution fixing?

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

And that IS the problem. With the playoff, the win or die mentality would be concentrated in the playoff, but not anywhere else.

Why? You still have to make the playoff. I think the win or die mentality comes from number of games, not playoff setup.

A loss in the regular season is weighted much lower than the one in the playoffs, since you can recover from the first one, but not the second one.

That's not very different than it is now.

Let's put it this way:

1. Set up an imaginary 10 team league with all teams roughly equal. They all have 10% chance of winning it all at the beginning of the season.

2. With no playoffs at all, the chance would gradually increase and reduce over the regular season. All games in the regular season would be equally important. All of the games are marching toward the 100% target.

3. With a two team playoff system, the regular season becomes a battle to get that 10% to 50%. The one playoff game becomes the 50% to 100% game.

4. With a four team playoff system, the regular season becomes a battle to get from 10% to 25%. The playoff itself is about getting from 25% to 75%.


So you can obviously see with expanding the playoffs, the importance of regular season games would greatly reduce. What's at stake would be greatly shifted to the back. That means pacing starters at the regular season or even resting them would become a more viable strategy with bigger playoffs.

No, I don't, because now it's lose one game (more than the top two) and you're out. Every team was done after their first loss this year. Tell me how their remaining games against other non-contenders had any meaning?

The playoff doesn't really change anything other than maybe shifting where losses matter most.

[dudeosu]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

It's just a sliding scale. Currently we have a small playoff already, that is the two team playoff of the BCS championship game.

Having this one game playoff has already disrupted the old system in several ways, but I think we can say the impact of implementing this one game playoff has been minimal to the smaller bowls. The bigger the playoff, the more impact.

With a small playoff system, like a four team one, the problem with the current BCS system would still be there though. What problem is that solution fixing?

It did? How?

Couldn't have been that bad considering there's more bowl games now than ever.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by dudeosu

The Big 10 commissioner even admitted to congress that a playoff could generate up to 4 times as much revenue as the current BCS model!

Big 12 blew it by eschewing playoff - College Football - Rivals.com

That's an assumption. Without any real status change for the non-playoff bowls or what the games mean, why would you assume their appeal would change? Really, what story is being changed? Meangingless bowl is still meaningless with or without a playoff. I just don't see any evidence that would change anything.

Maybe not exclusively team fans, but still most of the viewers are probably either at least fans of the team or fans of the conference. There's multiple levels of fanhood in college, that's (partially) what I meant by building fan bases differently. Why else does ESPN do regional coverage (like when you see that map)?

Quite often? Are you making this up? What do you even mean by real link? I don't think you can make that statement and be really all that familiar with college fandom.

Well then pick the teams and we'll see. West Virginia going to the FCS would be a massive drop off. You're going to have plenty if it's only 40 teams.

The playoff itself generating more money is a given. That's not the dispute at all. IF you shift so much emphasis onto a few games, of course they are going to be worth more.

And how is the story not changing? Just look at how the media is treating the bowls right now, and imagine how they'd be treated if there is a playoff. Right now each bowl is a stand-alone game that gets some attention. That attention would be replaced by a bigger playoff if there is one. These kind of things have tons of interactions, and a good example would be looking at how teams/fans treat the league cups in various football leagues around the world.

When I say real links I mean personally attending those schools. We can all manufacture links by saying I have this relative or that neighbor going to a certain school, but I believe that's something we can easily adopt.


And yes, there will be cases of big drop-offs, but obviously you know it's not a across the board thing. And the bigger schools that got dropped would have a not-very-attractive consolation prize of being able to dominate the second division. Relegation will never happen, or that would be the solution. I don't think that kind of thing would kill rivalries actually. For a rivalry to work well, two teams would need to be at the similar talent level anyway, which means the two teams most likely would be in the same division when you have the relegation system.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by dudeosu

It did? How?

In the past, it's pretty common for the #1 and #2 teams to be in different bowls. If they both lose, the #3 team could jump them. Now it's impossible. Also in the past you can have split national championships, now you can say it's still possible, but much less likely simply by the way you rearrange matchup with the BCS system.


The way things can play out definitely changed a lot.

[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Skipaway

It's just a sliding scale. Currently we have a small playoff already, that is the two team playoff of the BCS championship game.

Having this one game playoff has already disrupted the old system in several ways, but I think we can say the impact of implementing this one game playoff has been minimal to the smaller bowls. The bigger the playoff, the more impact.

With a small playoff system, like a four team one, the problem with the current BCS system would still be there though. What problem is that solution fixing?

Where did I back a four team playoff system. I mentioned one where the semis and finals are played in the big bowls.

To me, 8 is the magic number. The quarters would be played at the site of the higher seeded team. The semis and finals would take three of the four big bowls each year, leaving the odd one out each year to be used in the bowl system. I see nothing that lessens the importance (is there any) of the bowls.