Stunning factoid from @DanWetzel piece: Florida “hasn’t played a non-conference game outside the state of Florida since the BCS was created”
Stunning factoid from @DanWetzel piece: Florida “hasn’t played a non-conference game outside the state of Florida since the BCS was created”
Syracuse spooked them. Going back to 1975, here are the scheduled out of conference games that Florida has played outside the state:
Syracuse ’91, lost 21-38
Memphis ’89, won 38-13
Rutgers ’86, won 15-3
USC ’84, tied
Houston ’79, lost 10-14
Rice ’77, won 48-3
NC State ’75, lost 7-8
I didn’t go back further than that but I doubt that they’ve played more than 10 OOC games out of state in the last 40 years.
So the question is, how do we fix it without implementing a playoff?
One option would be to factor in a strength of schedule component.
Another would be the combined opponents wins/losses.
We could factor in a negative factor for playing a 1-AA opponent (we could make it extra large if you LOSE to the opponent, but I think the polls would allready factor that in).
The first thing that should be done, however, is to make the votes in the human polls public each week. Maybe some public accountability would make some of these coaches think twice about how they vote.
Ultimately, none of those solutions would be enough to overcome the enormous advantage that an undefeated team necessarily has over a one-loss (or two-loss) team when you’re comparing resumes in a 12-game season. The “strength of schedule component” would have to be pretty enormous to routinely put one-loss teams with tough schedules ahead of undefeated teams with weaker schedules. And if you did come up with a sufficiently enormous component, it would inevitably create unjust situations where a team whose conference is down, through no fault of its own, or who scheduled a reasonable opponent that happened to suck that year, gets demolished in the BCS and loses out to a not-clearly-more-deserving one-loss team.
The answer to your question is, it CANNOT be reliably fixed without implementing a playoff. So long as college football insists on perpetuating the fiction that it is possible to select just two teams out of 120, on the basis of a 12-game season, that are worthy of a shot at the national title, there will always be enormous problems almost every year.
P.S. I support the “1-AA penalty” idea, or even an outright ban on playing 1-AA teams, but it won’t really address this problem. Florida would just load up on Sun Belt / MAC opponents, Texas on C-USA / MAC / WAC opponents. The only way to force the Floridas and Texases of the world to schedule the USCs and Virginia Techs of the world is to radically alter the formula in a way that would, as I allude to above, have huge unintended consequences.
P.P.S. Likewise, I whole-heartedly support making all votes public — in fact, it’s a wholly unjustifiable bloody outrage that this isn’t the case already — but that does nothing to solve this problem, because rarely, if ever, is a voter going to be “shamed” into putting a clearly worthy one-loss team ahead of a clearly unworthy undefeated team… it’s never that clear-cut (and on the rare occasions when it is, the voters get it right already). If anything, public ballots might actually increase the pressure to favor unbeatens, since it’s politically very difficult to deny a bid to a team that “did everything it was asked to do on the field” in favor of a team that lost a game. (Don’t believe me? Just wait until the lobbying campaign for Iowa/Cincinnati vs. USC or a one-loss SEC or Big champ gets started. Or for that matter, the lobbying campaign for Boise/TCU, if they’re the only unbeatens left at season’s end.)
P.P.P.S. On the topic of those “unintended consequences” I mentioned earlier… your “enhanced strength of schedule regime” would have the retrograde effect of completely shutting out the Boises and TCUs of the world, who cannot control the fact that their schedules suck, compared to the big boys, because: 1) their conferences are weaker, and 2) the big BCS boys generally won’t play them (and still wouldn’t, even in your scenario; if the scheduling wimps’ hands were forced, they’d be much more likely to be play mid-level BCS-conference teams than high-level mid-majors, because whatever the computers think, you generally get no credit from the voters for beating a mid-major, and lots of flack for losing to one).
One final thought. You’re presuming that we can change the incentives so Florida and Texas would play tougher schedules by penalizing them in the BCS. By definition, that means you think we should come up with a system whereby Florida and Texas would NOT be the #1 and #3 teams right now… right? So maybe the Top 10 would look something like:
1. Alabama (6-0)
2. Miami (5-1)
3. USC (5-1)
4. Virginia Tech (5-2)
5. Florida (6-0)
6. Texas (6-0)
7. LSU (5-1)
8. Oregon (5-1)
9. Ohio State (5-2)
10. Arizona (4-2)
That’s not scientific, I just threw in some teams with losses who played reasonably tough non-conference schedules to make a point… does that Top 10 make any sense? Is that what we want? It sure isn’t what I want.
The solution is not to make it impossible for certain undefeated teams to get a shot at the title. It’s to make it POSSIBLE for more one- and two-loss teams to get a shot, even when there are unbeatens hanging around, too. That requires a playoff.
We both agree the current system has problems. We don’t agree on a playoff being the cure-all.
Also, those weren’t MY plans, they were just potential ideas to float around.
I think the following rules would help:
1) All teams must play 9 conference games not including any conference champinoship game. This rule does not apply to conferences with 9 or less teams.
In addtion in order to qualify for a BCS game the following rules apply:
2) All teams must play one non-conference away game. A neutral site game qualifies as away if (some fixed distance) away from the away teams home location.
3) All BCS teams must play one game against an opponent from another BCS conference (Notre Dame counts here)
2 and 3 can be combined.
This would cut down on scheduling like Floridas
David, your point one is a terrible idea, and I’m convinced you put it in there simply because the PAC-10 satisfies it. That rule would essentially punish the SEC, Big 12 and ACC for having 12 teams, as winning those conferences would now involve 10 conference games, and combined with the much more reasonable points 2 and 3 would create an absolute scheduling nightmare. The big winners of this would be teams like Washington State, Baylor, and Northwestern, who are BCS schools, but pose little threat to any serious contender. Furthermore, the Boise States and Utahs would be totally doomed in this situation, as what BCS team in their right mind would schedule them?
I agree with Matt that #1 is a bad idea, and unnecessary to accomplish the objective.
#2 and #3 are good, but #3 should be modified so that top-level mid-majors like Boise, Utah, BYU, etc. “count,” and possibly so that low-level BCS teams don’t “count.” Of course, because scheduling is done several years in advance, this would need to be determined by some sort of reasonable multi-year rolling average.
Matt, then they should drop two teams and become ten team conferences, because right now they can and DO use that extra game to schedule an extra cupcake team.
Brendan, I tried to come up with a criterion we could include for that too. Perhaps include teams that have qualified for a BCS bowl within the past x years, etc.
As for the scheduling “nightmare” I doubt it. Scheduling is not simple, but its not THAT complicated.
David, I know the 10-team conference thing is your hobby horse, but that’s a whole different discussion. Rules #2 and #3 actually make sense, and it’s theoretically within the realm of possibility to imagine them being implemented in this universe. By contrast, BCS rule changes effectively forcing the SEC, Big XII, ACC and Big Eleven to contract, eliminate their title games, and convert to round robins, is something that would only ever happen in David K. La-La-Land. 🙂 You might as well hope that the Republican congressional leadership will endorse Obama’s health care reform plan, Apple will start announcing its product releases months in advance, and Pac-10 referees will suddenly become competent. It’s Not. Gonna. Happen. 🙂
Re: “teams that have qualified for a BCS bowl,” as long as we define “qualified” as “having been eligible for at-large selection” (i.e., conference champs and Top 14 in the standings), regardless of whether they were actually selected, then yeah, that makes sense. But the time window would obviously need to be such that teams would know for sure, when they schedule the game, whether they’re scheduling a team that “counts” or not. I honestly don’t know how long that would need to be.
No reason they have to drop the conference championship, but if they want to play it it should be in addition to the regular season and therefore it shouldn’t have a bearing on the regular season. Every team plays nine conference games. Across the board. Its equitable for everyone. Conferences are then allowed to determine their champion in whatever way they wish. By vote, by round robin, by best record, by two team playoff, etc. If that means that TWO teams play an extra conference game, is that better or worse than preventing cupcake non-conference scheduling like the conferences do now that have 4 non-conference games. As I just pointed out it affects a small minority of teams, where as the current system gives a large majority of teams an advantage in scheduling.
You can’t on one hand advocate a system like a playoff you claim is more fair because teams actually PLAY each other and then oppose a system where conference champions play FEWER of their own conference teams and yet are declared the best?
I really find nothing wrong with teams playing only 8 conference games and 4 non-conference games…and that is what the Pac10 should go back to doing. Indeed, the Pac10 coaches urged the conference to do that this year, but the athletic directors shot down the proposal this past June.
I agree with maineaic13. While the round-robin concept provides a certain purity on paper, in real life there are at least three complicating factors:
1) Which games are played at home and away,
2) Health of key players in key games, and
3) When during the season the games are played.
For a good NFL example of the importance of point #3, you have to figure the Bengals are kicking themselves for letting the Broncos off the hook in week 1, as the Broncos are not who we thought they were. It would be much harder for the Bengals to beat the Broncos today than it would have been in early September.
It does seem a bit odd that David supports this argument as strongly as he does, since David is also a strong proponent of the notion that the Gators are paper tigers – the round robin scheduling is really only a “paper” benefit.
Off topic, but an intriguing question re: Broncos/Bengals: if the miraculous winning TD doesn’t happen, and Cincy gets the win, is Denver 5-1 right now? 4-2, even? Or is it possible their confidence crumbles, the vultures that were circling all offseason pull in tighter and tighter, and they’re something like 2-4 now — meaning they are, after all, who we thought they were? That might be a great example of a freak play changing the trajectory of an entire season, maybe even an entire couple of seasons. Or it might not… we’ll never know. But it’s fun to think about.
P.S. “You can’t on one hand advocate a system like a playoff you claim is more fair because teams actually PLAY each other and then oppose a system where conference champions play FEWER of their own conference teams and yet are declared the best?”
Of course I can, although as it happens, I’m not doing so. Again, I’m not opposing the idea of round-robin scheduling. I’m just saying it’s so completely and utterly unrealistic that I don’t understand why we’re even talking about it. Seriously: college football will have a 16-team playoff before it forces the SEC to contract from 12 teams to 10m and eliminate its conference championship game.
Why? Well, because conferences like money, first of all… they like lots and lots of money. But also because, despite all the institutional roadblocks preventing a playoff, the logical rationale for creating one is pretty obvious — we want a champion decided on the field, not in an annual clusterfuck of polls and computers trying to differentiate between multiple teams with roughly-equally valid claims — and so it’s possible, albeit perhaps not likely, that public pressure will eventually win the day. By contrast, the rationale for 10-team conferences and round-robin scheduling is considerably less compelling and more convoluted. Again, that doesn’t mean I oppose the idea. But the need for its implementation is not self-evidently overwhelming and obvious, like the need for a better system of picking a champion is.
Choosing just 2 teams out of 120 to play for a championship, based on horrifically (and inevitably) unbalanced 12-game schedules, as assessed via the subjective opinions of pollsters and the unseen machinations of computers, is quite obviously and transparently nuts. Everyone knows that, even if they think the cure is worse than the disease, and thus oppose a playoff. By contrast, allowing conferences to have divisions and championship games is not nuts. It is perhaps a bad idea, but it is not obviously bad in a way that everyone instinctively understands.
Thus, because the need for 10-team conferences is not overwhelming and obvious, and not easily articulated in sound-byte form (seriously: give me a reason as simple as “decide the champion of the field!” why we don’t just want, but need, 10-team conferences with round-robin scheduling), there is simply no way any sane person would even attempt to convince the SEC, Big 12, etc., to go along with it. Which doesn’t mean you can’t have it as your pipe-dream hobby-horse — we all have dreams! — but I just don’t think it belongs in the same conversation as proposals for reforms that could actually, conceivably happen.
Been thinking a bit about the playoff too, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the playoff solves two huge problems, while arguably not helping with a third:
Problems solved:
1) What to do about Boise State/TCU. A mid-major will never be allowed into the BCS championship game. But an 8-team playoff can leave a spot reserved for non-BCS conference teams, assuming they meet criteria. Think you’re champs, Boise State? Replicate that Fiesta Bowl three times and you can have the trophy.
2) One-loss power conference champions left out of the BCS Championship game (featuring one or two one-loss teams). USC fans know this story well. As one-loss Pac-10 champs they would automatically be in the bracket, with no need for further discussion.
Problem remains:
3) Cupcakery. This assumes there will be one or two at-large spots, and also that David’s recommendations of restricted scheduling are unenforceable. Remove either criteria and the cupcake issue may go away, otherwise probably not.
There’s a wide body of research, at many Research 1 universities, that shows that workers who are likeable but marginally competent will have better job prosects than those who are unlikeable but good. So if the important thing to being highly regarded is to make others feel good, its worth asking:
Which is more fun to watch: a Sports Center highlight of Florida dismantling Charleston Southern in front of Gator Nation, or a Sports Center highlight of Florida plodding through a victory over Purdue in West Lafeyette?
If good feeling —> high positive regard —-> better prospects for at-large bids, I think you can expect much cupcakery for many years to come.
To Brendan @17, I’ve wondered a bit about the “whither the Broncos?” question as well. There are several points supporting the idea that the Broncos are not who we thought they were at the beginning of the season.
A) McDaniels was apparently a well-regarded protege of Belichick’s, and Belichick is who we thought he was, right? B) Orton’s great perfomance this year is suggestive of a system that is objectively superior to where he was before, C) The team is playing the type of disciplined football that leads to 4th quarter wins – usually irrespective of momentum…
…OTOH, if nerds are going to be sports fans, it kind of sucks to dismiss things like momentum. To say that Denver would surely have been 5-1 sort of strips the fun out of the whole thing, right? In a way similar to how some geek at a Research 1 university showing up on an NCAA-preview show to point out that there is no statistical difference in free-throwing shooting among “hot” and “cold” shooters – – – that’s a pretty unpopular guy…
Final thought:
The debate over conference structure — if there even is such a debate, outside of this comment thread, which I’m not sure there is — is a bit like the argument over whether basketball’s Championship Week is good or bad (i.e., whether conferences’ automatic bids should be awarded to regular-season or tournament champions). There are fair, reasonable positions on either side. On the one hand, conference championships are kinda cool. They’re exciting. They’re sexy. (*cough* They make money. *cough*) And hey, division champions are determined fairly, or relatively fairly. What’s so bad about having division, then letting the division champs duke it out? … On the other hand, determining the champion based on a regular-season round robin is more fair, better for competitive balance, theoretically encourages non-cupcake scheduling, etc.
By contrast, there is no reasonable argument in favor of the BCS that says, “why yes, we can consistently pick a clearly legitimate national champion based on a single bowl game between two teams out of 120 at the end of a 12-game season, who are chosen through a formula of polls and computer rankings.” You can reasonably say, “all the other alternatives are worse,” but you can’t reasonably say, “this system is awesome.” Thus, the argument for a playoff is automatically more compelling than the argument for 10-team conferences, because the problem it purports to address is so much more severe.
The problem with the “minimum distance” requirement is that it doesn’t really work logically.
Let say, for the sake of argument, that USC and UCLA were in different conferences and the Rose Bowl stadium is undergoing major renovations and it is UCLA’s year to host so say they decide to play at the neutral field of Dodger’s Stadium. It is a logical (ish) choice given the situation but wouldn’t count as an away game for either team like playing at the Rose Bowl would have for USC.
Is Charger’s stadium far enough away? And even if it is why should both teams have to travel that far.
On the other hand, USC played VT on a neutral field several years ago. That game was played at FedEx field in MD. Which makes it hardly a home game for USC, and basically a home game for VT even though FedEX field is further from VT’s campus than Chargers Stadium is from Westwood.
So how do you really define an away game? And how do you honestly make a rule about it short of saying the only thing that counts are games played at the opposing teams home stadium. There are far too many other what if situations involved.
USC vs. UCLA at Dodger Stadium shouldn’t count as an away game for either team. Nor should USC vs. UCLA at the Chargers’ stadium. Those are both pure neutral-site games. USC and UCLA are so close to each other that the only way they can play a non-neutral-site game is in each other’s stadiums. Otherwise they’re always going to be so close to equidistant from the site that it’s silly to call it a home or away game.
Although I suppose, in the “renovation” scenario you mention, UCLA’s ticket office could be given priority, as I presume they are in Bruin home games at the Rose Bowl, and it could be treated as a home game for UCLA. I dunno.
As for USC-VT at FedEx field, you could make a rule that if the distance is more than X miles AND one team is more than 80% further away than the other team (or whatever), it would count as an away game for that team. Or, hell, you could just have the computers factor in the percentages/mileages into the formula somehow, and let the chips fall where they may.
That was only 87% of an away game where as our team played 93% of an away game therefore our schedule is harder. I mean what are you going to do base it on the fans that show up. When you hand over your ticket you pull a lever for the team you are rooting for and the away-ish-ness of the game is based on the percentage of attendance?
The obvious answer is a playoff with the conference champions and some number of wild cards.
It will never happen, but it is the only way to actually come up with the champion.
A tournament opens up new problems, it doesn’t just magically make anything better. When a team can go 12-0 in the regular season, lose a close game to a team that went 10-2, then watch two completely unrelated teams win the championship, its really not telling you who is the best team. It punishes teams EVEN MORE for losing late games than early ones.
Now you can argue that its still a better system than the BCS, but lets not pretend a tournament is a flawless and ideal system. We need to point out its warts just as much as we do the BCS.
As for the argument that teams should play 8 coference games not 9, heck why not make it 6? or 2? or none? I realize that sounds absurd (it is) but why would playing LESS teams from your conference make sense? Isn’t the whole point of declaring a conference champion to show that that team is the BEST in the conference. If you have fewer teams in a conference play each other you are doing less to show ON THE FIELD who is the better team, which is the main complaint about the BCS.
None of us are in a position to change either the BCS setup or the conference structure, so which one is more achievable seems somewhat academic at this point, in which case, why not argue for a position that is more in line with the idea that competition on the field determines the better team?
Round-robin play is the BEST way to determine who the best team is, and while its not practical at the league wide level, it IS practiacl at a conference level. Even if you have too many teams to play everyone in one season, playing more conference games rather than less is still closer to the ideal and therefore better. Especially since it creates a more level playing field accross conferences and reduces the ability to scheudle as many cupcake games as there currently are.
Re: Neutral site games
I wanted to balance out the idea of schools like florida play 32,768 home games and 4 away games per season, with the reality that for some schools, getting abig name opponent to play them at home is a tough sell. ND is playing WSU in Texas this year because, well, who wants to go to Pullman?!? It also would make it easier for schools like Boise State or Utah to play bigger opponents who are reluctant to do Home/Home series in those much smaller stadiums.
Neutral site games offer the ability to play those games and by letting them count as away games IF they are sufficiently far away provides an incentive. Obviously the exact distance is something you could argue over, but I thought it was a better solution than only counting pure away games. If that rule weren’t included you’d end up with schools who would be less likely to play neutral site games for scheduling reasons as well. UW recently changed its schedule and dropped a home/home against BYU because it would have meant a 5 home 7 away game season since it fell on the same year as a 4 home/5 away non-conf schedule for the dogs.
David, is that why every other sports championship uses some sort of “tournament” or “playoff” at the end of the season? Is the Super Bowl and associated playoffs some how invalid? The World Series and league championship series an anathema? March Madness a farce? Give me a break! That argument is ridiculous.
Yes a tournament is good for figuring out one thing, and one thing only. Which team is the best and most consistent team at the end of the season. Well F* all if that isn’t what the champion is supposed to be. The best team isn’t always the one with the best overall record. We’ve spilled a lot of pixels and bits discussing that. But the reality is there is only one logical way to settle who the best team in college football is at the end of the season, the champion as it were. Have them play the damn games. Because not all 10-2 records are created equal. Nor are all 12-0 records created equal. Settle it on the field, everything else is a farce.
Ah, dcl, I sort of agree with David that a tournament doesn’t solve everything. Back in the day baseball used to have only a World Series that featured the two best teams, such as what the BCS (allegedly) does.
Now baseball has a tournament, and crappy teams with records like 83-78 (2006 Cardinals) or 87-74 (2000 Yankees) win the championship.
Just playing devil’s advocate. I agree that the postseason tournament is the lesser of two evils in the case of D-I football, just want to confirm that in the wrong circumstances a tournament could still be somewhat, er, evil.
Having argued the above, let’s be honest: its extraordinary to think that teams like Iowa or Cincinnati come from (so-called) power conferences, each may take care of their business on the field, may even do so impressively, and yet neither has the faintest practical ability to control their own destiny.
This is because there is realistically nothing that either Cincinnati or Iowa can do to wedge their way into the championship if Texas and Florida/Alabama are both undefeated.
That is a terrible flaw in college football. Even if the details of the playoff aren’t perfect and there are some offenses here and there, its hard to see the playoff being more offensive than Cincinnati/Iowa needing “luck” to have a chance to be champions, regardless of what they do on the field.
Amen.
Of course, I would apply this same argument to teams that are NOT from (so-called) power conferences, like TCU and Boise State, or Utah last year, etc. As blogger John Feinstein points out in an admirably rantish post about the BCS:
There is, of course, a tension between this argument and Wetzel’s “don’t set up a system that encourages teams to schedule cupcakes” argument. If “going undefeated” is the be-all, end-all, then Florida and Texas (and for that matter, Hawaii in 2007, and to some extent Boise State) have the right scheduling philosophies, and USC and Oklahoma (and BYU and Houston and Fresno State) have it wrong.
But in a 12- or 16-team playoff, in which every conference champion gets in automatically, that argument becomes largely irrelevant, because you don’t earn a shot at the national title by going undefeated, as such — you earn a shot by winning your conference. Obviously, if you’re undefeated, you’ve won your conference (with possible, freakishly rare exceptions in the Big Ten). Thus, the competition for the at-large bids is, by definition, among teams with 1 or 2 losses, not among undefeated teams. And in a battle for at-large bids among 1- or 2-loss teams, having scheduled cupcakes is BAD, not good, since teams with stronger schedules will usually rise to the top in such competitions.
(When I say “12-team playoff,” I do NOT mean a system with 11 auto bids and 1 at-large, but rather a system with 5 conferences getting auto bids, 6 conferences earning the right to participate in play-in games for 3 auto bids, and 4 at-large bids being doled out to the 4 highest-ranked teams without auto bids after the play-in games are concluded. So, in a sense, this is really a 15-team playoff, but it has the benefit that the top 4 teams get first-round byes — and, if you like, second-round home games — thus giving them “something to play for” even near season’s end when they’re already assured of a spot in the playoff.)
dcl, if you are going to ignore what I write please don’t bother to reference me when you write your comments.
I never said there weren’t arguments in favor of a playoff system, I just pointed out that a playoff system is no magical cure-all. It has problems. I want to make sure that in any debate we have about the merits of the current system vs playoffs we atleast CONSIDER the downsides a playoff brings with it. Apparently you think thats a ridiculous argument since you ignored it completely and acted as if i had said playoffs were completely stupid.
Also I should point out that the champion IS determined on the field, thats one thing that the BCS has actually helped with isn’t it? The problem isn’t the final outcome, its determining who gets the chance to participate.
Of course if playoffs are so essential to you, why not advocate for a full tournament, 128 teams (we can pull up some fo teh I-AA schools if necessary). Then its all determined on the field right? No problems at all, the tournament is the answer to everything! I think i’ll implement a tournament the next time i’m deciding what to cook for dinner. I think a fight between some taco meat and spaghetti sauce would be fascinating to watch…
David, you take away from the merits of your otherwise reasonable (if somewhat overstated) objections to the playoff format when you suggest that dcl’s logic necessarily means he would support a 128-team tournament. That’s no better than him “act[ing] as if [you] had said playoffs were completely stupid.”
No sane person would support a 128-team tournament. Even a 24- or 32-team tournament would obviously be overkill. The debate is between 2 (what we have now) versus 4 (plus-one) versus 8, 12 or 16. I have never seen anyone advocate for anything more than 16 teams, except people like yourself trying to discredit the playoff argument.
It’s worth noting that, even with a 16-team tournament, you’d never have an at-large team with more than 2 losses (you might have some conference champs with more losses than that, but they earned it by winning their conferences), so the argument that’s often made — I don’t recall if you’ve made it, but it’s a common anti-playoff argument — that it would be “just like the NFL” or “just like college basketball” (whose regular seasons are allegedly meaningless and boring) is a complete straw man. In the NFL, a 9-7 or even 8-8 team can win the Super Bowl. In college basketball, a team with a losing record can win 3 games in a conference tournament in March and qualify for the Big Dance, and a team with an 8-10 conference record in the Big East or 7-9 in the ACC can get an at-large bid and perhaps even go to the Final Four. That would NEVER happen in college football. We’re still talking about a playoff among regular-season champions of their respective conferences, plus at-large teams with 12-0, 11-1 and 10-2 records. So the regular season does NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, become meaningless (as it would in a 128-team tournament). And “getting hot” at the end of the season isn’t, by itself, enough — you can’t start 1-5 and then get hot. You have to have a good season first.
Anyway, my broader point is, if you want people to address the merits of your argument and not fight back with irrelevancies and straw men, you owe them the same courtesy. Argue against the REAL playoff proposals, not fake ones that nobody’s making.
Brendan, my whole POINT was to be absurdly extreme because he attacked me for something I didn’t actually advocate. Of course a 128 team playoff is absurd. I’m not ACTUALLY arguing against a real playoff, which is why I specifically addressed my response at dcl and not the rest of you who are having a more rational discussion.
Fair enough then. I guess I’m sensitive to straw-man arguments against a playoff because I see them made so often, as I mentioned. (The only thing in college football that gets wrongly compared to the NFL more often than a playoff is the SEC.)