Conference Championship Discussion

[KSUowls]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

All Alabama and Miami had to do was win one more game to be higher ranked. Alabama's 8 conference games were against four top 25 opponents. They lost two games against unranked conference opponents (Vanderbilt, and Oklahoma late in the season). Doesn't matter if Wisconsin was a better team 5 years ago when it was scheduled, what matters is that Alabama has been scheduling a late November FCS game since 2009. Unfortunately, Alabama and Miami are on the outside with the current playoff format. Winning those late season games against unranked conference opponents are important.

My point wasn't that Wisconsin was good 5 years ago or that Alabama shouldn't have just gone out and beaten the teams that they should have. I was just replacing one of their losses with what would have been less of a guaranteed victory when it was scheduled. The hypothetical was to replace 2024 Wisconsin with 2019 Wisconsin, aka: a quality OOC opponent. Alabama had a lot less assurance 5 years ago that Wisconsin would be a 5 touchdown victory. Which at the time was great for the sport because you had a big OOC game scheduled, but neither of those teams would be incentivized to schedule that same game in todays climate (assuming Wisconsin was still good).

It's a scheduling thing for the future. The committee said beating the CFP's #2 team was worth less (for both Alabama and Ole Miss) than having 1 more loss than Tennessee, Texas, Penn State, Ohio State and SMU. So if number of losses matters more than the quality of your opponents then you're not going to do anything to increase your difficulty in suffering fewer losses. Which is just bad for the sport because it means more cupcake games on Saturdays.

Full Disclosure - If Alabama, Ole Miss or South Carolina had made it in then I would be pointing out a different problem with the results. I'm not defending any of those teams lack of entry. Just noting how flawed this new system is.

[Sportsforever]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

As I look at the playoff seeding and hear all the conversation, I actually lean towards going smaller...I think 8 teams would best. Looking at this year, it would probably look like this:

1. Oregon (B1G)
2. Georgia (SEC)
3. Boise State (MWC)
4. Arizona State (Big XII)
5. Texas
6. Penn State
7. Notre Dame
8. Clemson (ACC)

I might swap out SMU for Penn State, but IMO each of these 8 teams would have earned it and the teams on the outside can only look at themselves for not being in.

[LowerWolf]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

I could live with eight. But I'd bring back some tradition.

ACC champ to the Orange.
SEC champ to the Sugar.
Big 12 champ to the Cotton/Fiesta (whichever is deemed the better bowl now)
BIG champ to the Rose.

Then four "wild cards" to oppose them. Choosing the wild cards could get messy. A part of me says just go with the four highest-ranked G5 teams, but that would never fly.

I've said this before, but I was born in Ohio, lived in California and then Tennessee/Alabama. As a Buckeyes fan as a kid, beating Michigan and going to the Rose Bowl was the goal each year. My friends who were USC/UCLA fans, going to the Rose Bowl was the goal each year. When I was in school, beating Florida/Alabama, winning the SECCG and going to the Sugar Bowl was the goal each year. I miss that.

Now we have coaches openly saying they hope to avoid winning the conference championship because they'll get an easier draw in the playoff. That shouldn't happen.

[legendkiller5]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

Loving the discourse, guys.

Great stuff!

[p_rushing]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

Regular season will matter less and less and OOC will be boring games. The SEC won't want to schedule another power 4 team and take a chance on losing and increasing the other team/conference.

The conferences really need to decide who goes to the playoffs. OOC games would help with seeding and preparing your team, so teams wouldn't be hurt by scheduling harder games. Use divisions to set schedules and everyone in each division plays the same schedule. Then 4 division winners play for conference championship.

Each conference could do that individually. SEC and B1G should love it since they would keep 100% of the money.

Sent from my SM-T970 using Tapatalk

[illwill10]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

Draft opt-outs and Transfer Portal has made a lot of non-playoff Bowls lose a lot of it's luster. I understand how limited the calendar can be changed, but it's just not the same anymore. As I mentioned before, I don't really like the look of players on playoff teams entering the portal. I get the window has shrunk more, it just gives off red flags that you don't want to at least stay around to see if your team might go on a run

[canes21]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

If it expands to 24 spots I'm not sure I could stomach the sport as much by that point. The current system has already made the product worse in my opinion. 24 playoff spots would lead to half the regular season being pointless at that time and I have zero desire seeing a bunch of 8-4 and 7-5 teams vying for a chance to compete for a national championship.

I still think if we're stuck with this playoff structure then it just needs to be the 10 conference champs all get an auto bid with 2 at-large slots. You can whine all you want about SOS, fair, unfair, etc. At the end of the day, when has CFB ever been about fairness? When has CFB ever been fair when some programs spend more in one season on their teams than some schools are able to spend in a decade?

Winning with the hand you are dealt should be what matters. Playing the games should matter. Earning a chance for a title is what should matter. If one team goes 11-1 with their schedule while you stumble your way to 9-3, they took care of business better than you did, end of story. If you were a team worthy of title contention, you'd have lost less games. It is as simple as that.

If we're going to sit here and potentially expand or leave the system as is and teams that are losing 2-3 games per year and can't even make their conference championship games are getting mulligans and title contention opportunities solely because of their brand perception and supposed talent on paper then why are we playing these games in the first place?

If Miami were to suddenly up their NIL game and bought the #1 recruiting class each of the next 5 years and was clearly the most talented team in 5 years and in that season they went 9-3 with losses to teams that finished #2, #4, and #5 all on the road by a combined 3 points, they don't deserve a title shot. I don't care if 6 of their 9 wins are against teams finishing top 15. That'd be the hardest schedule potentially ever in the sport, but they didn't take care of business and prove they were a team worth of title contention.

I know plenty will disagree, but I honestly don't understand what the purpose of the regular season is if we're just going to leave it all up to subjectivity and forgive teams for losing multiple games over all because they had to play some good teams. Guess what? If you're a national championship team, playing some good teams shouldn't trip you up time and time and time again.

I know people will disagree here as well, but I would 100% watch each and every playoff game if the system did reward all 10 conference champions. I'd be more interested in watching Army and Ohio getting rewarded for winning their conferences than I am watching the likes of SMU, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio State, Indiana, and Penn State all getting mulligans for dropping the bag, some multiple times over.

Hell, maybe a system like this even emphasizes better OOC games if the committee makes it clear that the 2 at-large teams need to have some marquee wins. I can't believe I am saying this, move it to 16 teams, 10 auto bids, 6 at-large bids, committee lays out a clear criteria that shows big wins weigh the most on a resume, now you have teams scheduling big OOC games again in the hopes that if they fail to win their conference a win over a good OOC team will lock them into an at-large spot. Make it so big wins > good losses > bad losses. You get 2 teams vying for that last at-large bid, one has a win OOC vs a top 15 team, the other played a cupcake OOC schedule and padded their win total, the committee goes with the one with the big OOC win every time under the new format, boom, big time OOC games have incentive to be played and all conference champs are rewarded for taking care of business during the season.

Would I love it? No. Would I find it better than the crap we have now? Absolutely.

[KSUowls]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

I agree on the 24 team playoff thing. 2024 was the least interesting season of college football in my life. I remember watching Georgia and Alabama play while I was recovering in the hospital from surgery. We all know how bad Georgia was in that first half, but at no point did I deeply care about the results (I cared how the team played, but not the final score). A few weeks later when they lost to Ole Miss it was still kind of "eh". It wasn't until after that game that I became at all concerned about the results impacting their playoff chances. There was no sense of extra excitement from August 31st when they opened the season with Clemson through November 9th when they lost their 2nd game to Ole Miss. In the 4 team playoff that feeling would have entered after they lost to Alabama on Sept 29th, and in the BCS era it was already there at spring practice. I can only imagine how "meh" the season will feel in a 24 team scenario.

At this point though I'm convinced that whatever the current system at any one point in time will be better than the one that comes after it. As much as I hate the 12 team playoff, I dislike every potential change to the format even more (outside of contraction which $$$ won't let happen). Further expansion sucks but so do automatic bids. It will always be unfair, but I always thought that the beauty pageant side of it wasn't all that bad. For one, there is just no way for 134 teams to settle it all on the field when they only play 12 games, and so you have to accept a level of inequity. Even if you limit the field of consideration to just the top half of the P4 schools who have a chance at the playoff then you aren't going to get there (as we saw play out in real time this year when so many B1G and SEC schools missed each other in the regular season). So, you compile enough data points between your record, how you played, and who you played, that I think people or computers could more or less get it right. It just becomes harder as you expand the field and the lines between data points begin to blur.

The only other option is to hand out automatic bids to every conference champion (which doesn't solve the problem with expanded conferences that we just saw play out for teams like Texas and Indiana). The historical method has problems because it is subjective, but it has the potential to create more interesting regular seasons (as long as you have more than 1 criteria of pure wins and losses, though it does diminish the more you expand the field).

The later is more objective, but it also makes OOC games meaningless exhibitions (not to mention a quarter of those teams seasons). The only way to make them mean anything is to add at-large bids, but as soon as you do so then what was the point in taking conference champions only? You just re-introduced the beauty pageant aspect of it, and arguably you have made it more unfair and difficult to choose because of how similar the likely eligible teams left over will be after the conference champions (this is the exact point that I made a year ago regarding the expanded playoff. The more you get away from the top, the more everyone kind of looks the same).

The marquee OOC games is an interesting idea, but it carries some very real logistical problems. The first is that in the current structure these games are scheduled years in advance. Alabama and Wisconsin agreed to their game back in 2019 when Wisconsin was a reliable 10 win team every year. They haven't sniffed that since then, which would just make it a nightmare to try and predict who will be relevant years in advance. Now, you could go to more immediate scheduling, but then that still leaves the other and more problematic issue. There aren't enough quality teams to go around to fill up OOC schedules for everyone or even a solid group of them. At least some of the marquee teams playing will win their conference (making those OOC games irrelevant to the at-large bids), and there still aren't enough of them even if you don't account for that aspect of it. Only 21 teams across the FBS managed 10+ wins. If you add in the group with 9 wins then the total is 30. Depending on which of those is deemed a potential marquee opponent then half to a 3rd of those teams will have automatic bids. I don't need to do the math to know that results in very few potential matchups across a 3 to 4 game OOC schedule for teams.


If I had to come up with a scenario that wasn't playoff contraction, then I would just kind of copy the professional leagues. I would say sorry to half the FBS, and go to 2 super conferences with 32 teams each. Each conference has 4 divisions of 8 teams and get rid of all OOC games. Teams play 12 game conference schedules (7 in division games) then they their remaining 5 games are played against other divisions in the conference. Division winners go into an 8 team playoff with the eventual winners of each conference playing each other for the national championship. Non division winners would play out traditional bowl games, with the opponents always being from the other conference (to keep things fresh). Or keep all 134 FBS teams and apply the above model to 4 conferences with a final 4 team playoff at the end. Actually I think that there is a non 0 chance that this happens as premiere schools look to maximize their dollars.

[canes21]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

I agree on the 24 team playoff thing. 2024 was the least interesting season of college football in my life. I remember watching Georgia and Alabama play while I was recovering in the hospital from surgery. We all know how bad Georgia was in that first half, but at no point did I deeply care about the results (I cared how the team played, but not the final score). A few weeks later when they lost to Ole Miss it was still kind of "eh". It wasn't until after that game that I became at all concerned about the results impacting their playoff chances. There was no sense of extra excitement from August 31st when they opened the season with Clemson through November 9th when they lost their 2nd game to Ole Miss. In the 4 team playoff that feeling would have entered after they lost to Alabama on Sept 29th, and in the BCS era it was already there at spring practice. I can only imagine how "meh" the season will feel in a 24 team scenario.

This is one of my biggest issues with the current structure of college football. Back in the BCS era teams needed to be about perfect. Upsets were crushing, but teams could go 11-1, understand their upset loss was a big deal, and then move on to their big bowl game in which they were excited for.

That's just dead in the current format. Losing 1-2 games anymore means nothing. Most bowls are meaningless and have players opting out left and right.

It's not nearly as enjoyable of a product anymore.

At this point though I'm convinced that whatever the current system at any one point in time will be better than the one that comes after it. As much as I hate the 12 team playoff, I dislike every potential change to the format even more (outside of contraction which $$$ won't let happen). Further expansion sucks but so do automatic bids. It will always be unfair, but I always thought that the beauty pageant side of it wasn't all that bad. For one, there is just no way for 134 teams to settle it all on the field when they only play 12 games, and so you have to accept a level of inequity. Even if you limit the field of consideration to just the top half of the P4 schools who have a chance at the playoff then you aren't going to get there (as we saw play out in real time this year when so many B1G and SEC schools missed each other in the regular season). So, you compile enough data points between your record, how you played, and who you played, that I think people or computers could more or less get it right. It just becomes harder as you expand the field and the lines between data points begin to blur.

The only other option is to hand out automatic bids to every conference champion (which doesn't solve the problem with expanded conferences that we just saw play out for teams like Texas and Indiana). The historical method has problems because it is subjective, but it has the potential to create more interesting regular seasons (as long as you have more than 1 criteria of pure wins and losses, though it does diminish the more you expand the field).

I know it won't happen, but going with 12 teams, all 10 conference champs getting in would be ideal. Yea, the conferences are so big now so many schools don't play one another, but who cares? That's a conference problem and if schools want a more fair shake in a system like this, move to smaller conferences that are more regional so there's less travel expenses involved and natural rivalries can form. Novel concept.

The later is more objective, but it also makes OOC games meaningless exhibitions (not to mention a quarter of those teams seasons). The only way to make them mean anything is to add at-large bids, but as soon as you do so then what was the point in taking conference champions only? You just re-introduced the beauty pageant aspect of it, and arguably you have made it more unfair and difficult to choose because of how similar the likely eligible teams left over will be after the conference champions (this is the exact point that I made a year ago regarding the expanded playoff. The more you get away from the top, the more everyone kind of looks the same).

This something I've touched on a few times. The further from #1 you get, the more teams are the same. It's how distributions work. You have the top outliers, the bottom outliers, then the rest are more or less identical performers. This is true in CFB and a major reason why I think SOS tends to be way overvalued. Take out the top 1-3 teams in each P4 conference and take out the bottom 1-3 in each P4 conference and you're left with 50+ teams that would basically be pick-ems against each other.

A similar situation is a typical competitive video game that has 10 ranks. 1 is the best rank, 10 is the worst. Going from rank 10 to 9 is a big jump. Going from 9 to 8 is a smaller jump. Going from 7 to 3 is about an equal jump as going from 9 to 8 is. Going from 3 to 2 is a bigger jump than going 7 to 3 is. Going from 2 to 1 is the biggest jump of all. It's just how distributions work.

The marquee OOC games is an interesting idea, but it carries some very real logistical problems. The first is that in the current structure these games are scheduled years in advance. Alabama and Wisconsin agreed to their game back in 2019 when Wisconsin was a reliable 10 win team every year. They haven't sniffed that since then, which would just make it a nightmare to try and predict who will be relevant years in advance. Now, you could go to more immediate scheduling, but then that still leaves the other and more problematic issue. There aren't enough quality teams to go around to fill up OOC schedules for everyone or even a solid group of them. At least some of the marquee teams playing will win their conference (making those OOC games irrelevant to the at-large bids), and there still aren't enough of them even if you don't account for that aspect of it. Only 21 teams across the FBS managed 10+ wins. If you add in the group with 9 wins then the total is 30. Depending on which of those is deemed a potential marquee opponent then half to a 3rd of those teams will have automatic bids. I don't need to do the math to know that results in very few potential matchups across a 3 to 4 game OOC schedule for teams.

If I had to come up with a scenario that wasn't playoff contraction, then I would just kind of copy the professional leagues. I would say sorry to half the FBS, and go to 2 super conferences with 32 teams each. Each conference has 4 divisions of 8 teams and get rid of all OOC games. Teams play 12 game conference schedules (7 in division games) then they their remaining 5 games are played against other divisions in the conference. Division winners go into an 8 team playoff with the eventual winners of each conference playing each other for the national championship. Non division winners would play out traditional bowl games, with the opponents always being from the other conference (to keep things fresh). Or keep all 134 FBS teams and apply the above model to 4 conferences with a final 4 team playoff at the end. Actually I think that there is a non 0 chance that this happens as premiere schools look to maximize their dollars.

Other answers in red for more clear replies to specific parts.

I think the current format is trending towards some super leagues like what you're saying in the end. I hope this all blows up way before that happens because I have zero interest in watching a worse NFL.

Ultimately, I believe that 12 teams is far too many teams but we're clearly not going to cut down the size of the playoff field, it will only ever expand if/when it changes again.

The only way for this to resolve itself and get back to a system that has more "fairness" is to have the realignment bubble burst and that lead to smaller conferences becoming the norm again with 9-12 teams in each. Conferences are region based, conference champs get auto bids.

Let the conferences reap what they sow and complain all they want when half their teams don't play each other and it leads to a lot of teams getting in with weaker schedules while others get left out. I won't shed a tear. It's ridiculous enough already that teams can be in the same conference and not have played at each other's campus in a decade or more.

Realistically, I don't know what happens next. Probably more realignment. Maybe the conferences get so big they split into regional divisions and we end up back in a similar situation where you have things like Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma all in a quadrant or division playing each other again and the winner of that division plays in an SEC semi-final for a chance at an SEC title appearance.

I don't really think the current state of things is healthy for the longevity of the sport as the product is not nearly as enjoyable. But, TV ratings continue to go up for now, so I may be in the minority there. I agree with you, though, despite Miami finally being relevant again for once and having the best QB in the nation I found the season to be one of the least interesting to watch in years solely because of the current structure of it all.

[LowerWolf]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

I think the biggest thing with college football is that it has lost its identity a bit with NIL, transfer portal and conference and playoff expansion. I'm not sure how to fix that. But the one thing college football still holds over all the other sports (including college basketball) is the rivalries.

True, with the expanded playoff games like Alabama-Georgia lacked the same punch because you knew both teams were still likely to get in (funny the team that won the game missed the playoff).

After we lost to Georgia, I told a buddy that even if we missed the playoff I considered the season a success because we beat Florida and Alabama. And the 2022 win over Alabama still greatly outweighs gagging away a playoff berth at South Carolina in my mind. And I imagine most Michigan fans are *almost* as satisfied with the ending of this 7-5 season as they are with last year's national championship season. Ruining your rival's season can cure a lot of ills.

So as long as we have rivalry games, I'll find college football fun to watch. And I think the playoff will be fun to watch, even if the road getting there is a bit bumpy.

But as far as the playoff goes, I think we're all mostly on the same page. I really want 10-team conferences with nine-game conference schedules. If we had say eight such conferences, you could just take those eight conference champions and play it down from there. We all know that's a pipe dream though.

[georgiafan]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

This is why the SEC really needs to add a protected rivalry. Because Tenn / UGA not playing after this year is just wrong.

I think the biggest thing with college football is that it has lost its identity a bit with NIL, transfer portal and conference and playoff expansion. I'm not sure how to fix that. But the one thing college football still holds over all the other sports (including college basketball) is the rivalries.

[LowerWolf]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

This is why the SEC really needs to add a protected rivalry. Because Tenn / UGA not playing after this year is just wrong.

Even with protected rivalries, I don't think that game survives as an annual event.

[georgiafan]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

Even with protected rivalries, I don't think that game survives as an annual event.

To me it should, but I live really close to the Tenn line so to me its UGA's biggest rival

[LowerWolf]

Re: Conference Championship Discussion

To me it should, but I live really close to the Tenn line so to me its UGA's biggest rival

From what I've seen, it's three protected rivals if it goes to nine conference games. I'd say Tennessee is Georgia's #3 SEC rival (behind Florida and Auburn) and Georgia is Tennessee's #3 SEC rival (behind Alabama and Florida).

The problem is, we're easily Vanderbilt's #1 rival and that game is in-state, so it would almost certainly be a protected game. And I think most Kentucky fans consider us their top SEC rival, so that might be a protected game too.

If the SEC sticks with an eight-game conference schedule (I really hope not), we're looking at just one protected game each year. I'd assume Vanderbilt would be ours. Easier schedule, but I wouldn't be happy losing the Third Saturday in October - and I felt that way even when they were beating our brains in every year.