16 is too many. Go to 8 teams with the current committee structure generally remaining in place. No auto-bids, but you take any conference champ (G5, P5, whatever) that is in the top 15. If more than 8 champs somehow finish in the top 15 (zero chance of that ever happening) then you just take the top 8 conference champs. Now everyone has a very reasonable way in, all teams and all conferences are treated exactly the same, but you have to have done enough in the regular season to justify being in the playoff. You also avoid a drawn-out 16-team playoff.
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You need to take your crazy pills.
Why is it too many when that is exactly what the FCS does?
I get the desire to have the best 4 teams in but right now the determination of who those 4 teams are comes down to opinion and bias. With no objective way to select the 4 top teams certain qualifications seem appropriate. Conference championship is the best objective measure we have. We may believe LSU is still top 4 even if they lose to Georgia but we don’t know for sure. What would be certain in that scenario is they wouldn’t even be regional champs so I would find it completely reasonable to eliminate them from national championship contention.
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Agree. We should try to eliminate as many subjective criteria as possible. It only leads to a mess. Conference champs is a great objective criteria. A computer ranking (fully transparent) is another way to take subjectivity and bias out of the process.
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Who’s to say a 1 loss Utah is better than a 1 loss Memphis? That’s basically what you are saying. As long as you have a championship and equal record, who’s to say?
I for one don’t believe all conferences are equal neither are the champions always equal with #2 and #3 with same conferences. I do understand your bias rompted by fear of your team being left out though.
If Memphis wins the AAC then they have completed the objective measure we have available and they can be considered for the playoff and certainly eliminated by the subjective measures we are left to decide with. I am not saying a particular conference championship is objectively better then a 2nd,3rd,4th,etc… place finish in a different conference. What I am saying is losing your conference championship is an absolute that could be used to determine elimination and then we go from there. I’m not saying this is the best way to go about it but it does provide some defined guidelines which currently we are lacking. Or we could just expand the playoffs so we don’t have to keep repeating these conversations every year.
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This still leaves us with opinion polls making decisions. It won’t fix the arguments it will just leave us with more teams arguing.
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If Memphis wins this weekend they will most likely have 4 Top 25 wins. Compared to Utah’s 1 and Oklahoma’s 2. Just sayin’.
Just sayin’ what? You think they should be ranked ahead of Utah and Oklahoma?
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No. What I am saying is that even if they lose they will more than likely had a more impressive record. Even the G5 runner up can have a tougher road and better resume than a 1 loss P5 champ. The idea you are in a P5 and win you conference makes you deserving isn’t a given you are one of the best 4. I find it disingenuous to weight late season losses to quality opponents heavier than early season losses to less than quality opponents. That’s a common theme on here for Utes trying absolve themseves of the SC loss and meanwhile punish teams late.
We can talk in circles about resume and scenarios, we may even come to a consensus eventually. The point I’m trying to make is conference champions are determined on the field so we should start there and then discuss the rank of those 10 teams. It doesn’t eliminate the possibility that a team will be left out in favor of a lesser team but that supposedly better team had there oppurtunity and lost. Right now we apply the subjective measures (rankings, sos, eye ball test)first and apply the objective measure(conference championship) as afterthoughts, important ones but afterthoughts none the less, it’s backwards.
Utah will be dropped to 15 or lower in the CFP. Likely headed to Alamo or Vegas Bowl.
Welcome to the neighborhood.
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