As is the case every time this month until the change is made the debate about an 8-team college football playoff is making the rounds again. It’s likely to happen at some point in the future, so it seems. How it ends up shaping the football post-season is the more important question and one we will tackle until the end.
Recently in our writers room we had a debate about the merits of an 8-team playoff and one thing is clear that the debate is largely going to revolve around how much power is given to the conferences and bowl games as much as anything. You can’t escape those decisions with any plan.
With the debates leading up to the 4-team playoff the fear (or was it relief?) was that it would weaken the importance of the bowl games. Then, the sport sanctioned 2 major bowl games into the playoff semi-finals, elevated the Cotton and Peach bowls to New Years Six status, and created a rotation for these 6 lucky bowls to retain favored status moving forward.
But what about the rest of the bowls, are they being left out in the dark as fans become ever more obsessed with the playoffs? The more important question for Notre Dame fans is how a newly-minted 8-team playoff would dish out bids but I’m curious about the news that has picked up steam lately that the NY6 bowls could cover the quarterfinals (4 games) and semi-finals (2 games) of the new expanded system.
Call it the Bowl Games Strike Back?
It would be a genius move by the bowls. Let’s say they move to auto-bids for the 5 power conference winners, one spot for the G5, and two at-large bids–the most common and I’d say accepted system for fans. Most years, you’ve guaranteed you won’t have as poor of a NY6 bowl matchup as this year’s Virginia vs. Florida game and even if once and a while you have a struggling conference champion like last year’s blah 10-3 Washington team, at least there’s NFL talent and the opportunity for upset in a way that really can’t be found with this year’s 9-4 Virginia team.
For argument’s sake, let’s use this model for 2019:
8-Team Playoff for 2019
#1 LSU vs. #8 Memphis
#2 Ohio State vs. #7 Baylor
#3 Clemson vs. #6 Oregon
#4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia
Now, I’ve been wanting to kill the bowls for as long as I can remember. I personally wouldn’t like the decision of an 8-team playoff using all of the NY6 bowls but I do wonder if it further devalues the rest of those bowls over the long-term? What if in a new system we got rid of the rest of the bowl games and played several small tournaments instead?
What I did is take all of the non-playoff teams above and put them into 6 separate 8-team tournaments broken up by East vs. West based off the Mississippi River. You’d get seeds set up like this:
EAST GOLD TOURNEY
#1 Wisconsin
#2 Florida
#3 Penn State
#4 Auburn
#5 Alabama
#6 Michigan
#7 Notre Dame
#8 App State
EAST SILVER TOURNEY
#1 Cincinnati
#2 Navy
#3 FAU
#4 UCF
#5 Virginia Tech
#6 Indiana
#7 Wake Forest
#8 Miami (OH)
EAST BRONZE TOURNEY
#1 UAB
#2 Central Michigan
#3 Temple
#4 Louisville
#5 Marshall
#6 Tennessee
#7 Kentucky
#8 Pitt
WEST GOLD TOURNEY
#1 Utah
#2 Minnesota
#3 Boise State
#4 Iowa
#5 USC
#6 Oklahoma State
#7 SMU
#8 Kansas State
WEST SILVER TOURNEY
#1 Texas A&M
#2 Washington
#3 Iowa State
#4 Arizona State
#5 Louisiana
#6 Texas
#7 Air Force
#8 San Diego State
WEST BRONZE TOURNEY
#1 Louisiana Tech
#2 Hawaii
#3 California
#4 BYU
#5 Utah State
#6 Western Kentucky
#7 Arkansas State
#8 Wyoming
Currently bowl-eligible teams who are left out from the East would include Charlotte, Kent State, Liberty, Georgia Southern, FIU, Miami, Eastern Michigan, North Carolina, Illinois, Florida State, Georgia State, Boston College, Ohio, Southern Miss, Miss State, Western Michigan, and Buffalo. From the West the following would miss out: Washington State, Wyoming, Nevada, and Tulane. Only 9 of these teams went 7-5 while everyone else went 6-6 so sorry about that!
Would this set up be better?
One thing that jumps out is that the East (as would be the case most years) looks much stronger by sheer number of teams alone. For example, the East Gold Tournament has up to 7 teams that might be favored to win the West Gold Tournament. As such, the interest in the West might be pretty tame. My biggest question is if the semi-finals and finals in the West Silver and Bronze Tournaments would generate bigger ratings and more revenue than your average bottom third bowl game. Easily, right?
Location would be something to figure out, as well. Do we play the first rounds on the campus of the higher seed than the semi-finals and finals are played at the same neutral site warm-weather location? Does that ease the burden of travel for fans and alumni? Maybe purposely seek out medium-sized stadiums so capacity is closer to 100% full? Or is it just easier* to keep games on college campuses altogether?
*One of our writers, who shall remain nameless, believes in the sanctity of the bowl games in part due to the bowl committees well-honed skills at organizing events for visiting fans. To my knowledge the Camping World Bowl has provided Notre Dame and Iowa State with a pep rally, a free fan fest in the adjacent baseball stadium at 9 AM before kickoff, and a hospitality pavilion on the same baseball field for the low price of $85** as the highlights of this year’s contest. I’m not sure which is more entertaining a night in Ibiza or the amenities provided by the Florida Citrus Sports group for this bowl game.
**The bowl group has offered this experience for more than the price of a ticket to the game which is a nice touch.
I’m sure there would be some push back on 12 more teams playing an additional 3 games on the season and 24 more teams playing an additional 2 games. I wonder if it would be worthwhile for these tournament games to be played using 10 minute quarters? Could it be advantageous to create a television experience for viewers that last just 2.5 hours? At some point, a playoff expansion is going to officially destroy the record books for team stats anyway so is it fine to play shorter games outside of the playoffs knowing those stats are kind of “extra” anyway?
One thing that I think is a great benefit is the increased likelihood of rivalry games in these tournaments. Sure, we wouldn’t get to see Alabama blast Michigan (current Citrus Bowl) at least right away but we would get another edition of the Iron Bowl. There might even be a way to condense these tournaments into even more regional competitions, although that gets really tricky geographically out west and if you get too small anywhere on the map the balance of competition is thrown out of whack.
Does this make sense for college football? Probably not for many decades as the bowl games continue to hold an enormous amount of sway over the decision making process. The NBA is struggling–as they get ready to introduce an in-season tournament for the future–with a way to make teams and players care about something that doesn’t affect an actual NBA title. I suspect this would be a major draw back to any non-playoff tournaments, just not enough teams (particularly blue-bloods) are going to care about one to possibly three more “meaningless” games. Over time, perhaps a tradition of actually caring could develop (removing all redshirt rules would be a good start, let’s see the youth!) but I doubt it even gets to that point as the tournaments suffer from the same indifference plague as the bowl games–and it’s easier to sell not changing.
The 8-team, 6 auto-bid tournament is the worst possible evolution of the CFP. You’ll end up with the top 4 or so teams plus numbers 7, 10, 11, and 18, for example, while at least five teams with a legit shot at winning a playoff are left out. NFL model 12-team or a 16-team playoffs are both miles better and the “too many games” argument falls on deaf ears for me as long as the FCS is running a 24-team playoff.
It would be pretty rare for it to be that bad most years though, right?
2019
#1 LSU vs. #17 Memphis
#2 Ohio State vs. #7 Baylor
#3 Clemson vs. #6 Oregon
#4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia
2018
#1 Alabama vs. #9 Washington
#2 Clemson vs. #8 UCF
#3 Notre Dame vs. #6 Ohio State
#4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia
2017
#1 Clemson vs. #12 UCF
#2 Oklahoma vs. #8 USC
#3 Georgia vs. #6 Wisconsin
#4 Alabama vs. #5 Ohio State
When there are two unusually strong conferences and a really bad G5 representative then you’ll see some really good teams left out. But, I’m not sure history suggests that will happen very often plus we continue to underrate the top G5 teams anyway.
Largely because there haven’t been conference title game upsets the last couple years. 9-3 Utah and Texas both had legitimate chances to win late in 2018 conference title games.
2017 9-3 Stanford lost by 3 in the title game, the second highest ranked G5 team was two-loss Memphis and nearly beat UCF. And in 2016 #23 VT had the ball at the Clemson 23 yard line with a chance to win.
A system that relies on conference title games going chalk to produce a reasonable result isn’t suitable for college football.
I just saw Bill Connelly did this for the whole playoff era. We haven’t had a P5 program outside the top 9 make it into this hypothetical 8-team scenario yet.
This whole post is flawed, as the University of Minnesota is on the Eastern bank of the Mississippi! IT WILL NEVER WORK!
I actually briefly looked and thought it was on the western side. Whoops!
No worries, WKU really f’s things up anyway. There’s technically some UM buildings on the west bank, so that’s at least an argument.
I’ve always leaned toward not expanding to 8, but dear god this would be the absolute worst for it. I don’t want to see any of teams #5-8 in a playoff. #5 and #7 are not fun to watch play football, and #6 and #8 would get absolutely destroyed (as would #7) in their matchups.
It’s a very clean year for picking those teams but maybe not great matchups. Then again, we haven’t experienced a great upset yet either (I think Oregon could do it maybe).
Really the biggest problem with the entirety of the playoff format so far has simply been that Bama and Clemson have been so far above the rest of the field for a while now. Having Bama out this year has freshened up the format for me, to the point where I’m actually quite happy with this year’s field and format.
There hasn’t really been a year yet where I felt like a legitimate title contender has been left out of the playoffs. As it stands, there really hasn’t been a year so far where I didn’t feel like the best team in the country didn’t make it to the championship game.
Your point about needing a big upset makes a lot of sense to me. I love the NCAA basketball tournament, but I have no interest in expanding the CFP Field. But maybe if there were more upsets each year, I’d be more excited about more good-not-great teams getting into the field. In that regard, perhaps an Oklahoma win this year could significantly alter my opinion.
There’s no problem with the NCAA tournament comparison besides everything. 5-on-5 with a dozen or so scholarships and 11-on-11 with 85 scholarships are just wildly different animals. It’s nice to dream of a world where this year’s Memphis would have a shot at LSU, but put them on the same field and it would be an absolute bloodbath unless a bunch of fluke stuff happened. I suppose the possibility of a bunch of fluke stuff happening is fun, but Memphis is never, ever, ever going to beat LSU or any other playoff team absent those things. Expanding to 8 might create a couple of interesting 3/6 or 4/5 games, but it would never materially alter the final result, in my opinion.
This is all to say nothing of the fact that Notre Dame would never, ever, ever win an 8-team playoff. No one would except whichever teams happen to be the most talent-stacked at the time. Right now maybe 15 schools, if you squint, have a chance to win a national title. Expanding probably drops that to 10 or fewer.
I guess I would disagree with that, to an extent. Take 2012, for example. 99 times out of 100, that Alabama team is beating ND. But if ND is 1 and Bama is 2 in an 8 team playoff, ND’s chances of winning the national title skyrocket.
#1 ND vs. #8 LSU
#4 Oregon vs. #5 K State
#3 Florida vs. #6 Stanford
#2 Bama vs. #7 Georgia – Georgia only lost to Bama by 4 on a neutral field.
There’s a decent chance Bama loses to Georgia (maybe 35%?). ND’s chance of winning the 2012 National Title increase exponentially if that happens. ND still has to beat LSU, Oregon, and probably Florida; but that’s so much easier than beating Alabama in 2012.
(All that being said, I still am not in favor of expanding)
But this scenario is a lot less likely to happen, isn’t it? With the committee there’s less of a chance of the higher ranked teams actually being worse than the lower ranked teams. Before with the polls, it was a little more simplistic with record. But I’m not sure that the Bama team in 2012 would have been ranked behind the ND team with a committee. A little bit like undefeated FSU with Winston got in the playoffs at 3 but were behind 1-loss teams.
I think eliminating the month long break changes these scenarios. Take this year for example. How does Clemson react to playing 3 top ten teams in the span of 3 weeks instead of having a month off and then 15 days between the Semifinal game and the NCG.
Just as in basketball anything can happen when you’re talking about 18-22 year olds. It’s how you have Purdue smoking OSU last year. That’s why I’m a fan of a 16 team playoff. You still put an emphasis on the regular season and teams can get hot at different points of the year.
I would take Ian Book and ND since Va. Tech to at least challenge OSU in a 2 vs 15 matchup.
Since the inception of BCS in 98 until now there has been 10 undefeated National Champions. You shouldn’t have to be undefeated to be the National Champion. Saban has only done it once and it was his first one at Bama.
I would imagine undefeated ND with wins over the Pac-12 Champ and Big-12 Champ would have had a very strong case for #1. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that’s how it would have played out. It’s not like Alabama dominated every team they played that year. Aside from the 1 loss, they had wins over both Georgia and LSU by only 4 points.
I could definitely be wrong, but I think they would have viewed us differently than 2014 FSU.
It would have been an interesting debate for #1 between us and Alabama. We had the best wins – Pac-12 champ Stanford and 10-win Oklahoma (KSU won the Big 12, though). Alabama’s roster of the vanquished was pretty weak that year outside of LSU, who they barely beat in the final minute, albeit on the road, and Michigan, whom they definitely outperformed us against. But they also killed the other 6 conference foes they faced, whereas we obviously had a couple of underwhelming performances.
I suspect ND would’ve gotten the nod because they were undefeated, and also we didn’t have the long ledger of failures on the big stage under Kelly that we now unfortunately have.
I love this idea as an alternative to the bowls. It’s creative and especially adds value if you remove the ridiculous redshirt rule.
I don’t agree with the conference auto-bid unless you move to a 16 team playoff which I think is the most equitable for the division that is 130 teams deep. You have the first two rounds be on campus of the better seed and then have the semifinal and final game be played in a rotation of the Rose Bowl, Phoenix, Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Miami. No affiliation with the bowl committees, make it similar to the Super Bowl.
The most ridiculous aspect of major CFB to me is that you take a month off between the end of the season and the biggest 1 or 2 games of the year. Can you imagine the NFL on January 20th saying alright guys, let’s come back in 30 to 40 days and see who the champion is going to be.
I’m also fine with them reducing the regular season schedule down a game or two. Schools would still receive the revenue from on campus games with Eric’s Consolation Tourney’s and ESPN/Fox would still get their tv revenue with bigger potential for return than ND/New Mexico.
I know any of this won’t happen for 25 to 30 years, but it’s fun to dream.
“I’m sure there would be some push back on 12 more teams playing an additional 3 games on the season and 24 more teams playing an additional 2 games.”
My thought on this, since it’s wildly fantasy anyways — why not go to a 10 game regular season? Cut out the 2 fluff games that almost every P5 plays, so it would just be 8 conference games + ideally 2 OOC rivalry or opportunity games that mean something (i.e. if you’re Oregon to play an SEC team or something). Attendance is down almost everywhere and teams are having trouble selling tickets to games no one wants to see, so stop playing Clemson/Citadel or Bama/Mercer or Notre Dame/New Mexico games that offer almost no value to anyone.
I get that probably the answer is $$$ related for the teams that wouldn’t make the newly invented East/West touranments and lose revenue there, but overall it would present a better product, be better for the student-athletes and probably the game as a whole.
It seems like a ton of fans are on board with a 10-game regular season.
Yeah you’ve nailed the problem with the plan, revenue. ND vs. New Mexico still drew 1 million viewers this year. Even our game that they put on NBCSN vs. Miami (OH) a few years back drew 800,000 viewers. You’re asking for the non-elites to potentially give up a couple of games of revenue per year.
Really, it would be asking them to trade the revenue of 2 boring, non-competitive regular season fluff games (plus the bowl game) for 1-3 of these tournament games that will likely bring more money. Though obviously at the risk of not always making it that far.
I get it’s a losing proposition for most and why it won’t happen, but I mean it’s a hypothetical anyways that’s just fun to think about. I would think with dwindling audiences and stadiums everywhere that perhaps eventually it might be wise to shift from the current model but we all know change and NCAA doesn’t really go hand in hand.
Yeah, for the teams that are going to make it that far, it’s a no-brainer. But most teams won’t be making it every year. Many of the teams that were dominant even 10 years ago are no longer on that level.
This is a great bowl killer idea. Over the last few years you’ve finally worn me down on that one Eric…i now also would like the bowls to die. The great thing is ESPN owns most of the minor bowls, right? They’d be in the thick of it for the contracts to broadcast the 7 tourneys so they’d probably have lower expenses for similar revenues. That sounds like a situation a giant like ESPN would be into.
The multi-tourney idea also gives many opportunities for the networks/ESPN to hire the staffs (i actually prefer the plural staves) of those bowls who are adept at providing the fan experience making it more uniform across any given tourney. With 56 teams getting at least one more game the move to a 10 or 11 game regular season would become more feasible as well.
i also am keen on the idea of an 8 team playoff not having conference auto bids except for the highest rated non-power conference (it won’t always be an even 5/5 split). Top 7 in the committee plus one other makes sense as far as “who earned it”. Lots of details to be worked out, but if some version of this moved forward i’d be all about it.
I still like the bowls and I hope the playoff never expands. The only change I’d like to see is eliminating conference tie-ins for lower-tier bowls.
I would like to see conference tie-ins leave the bowls all together, even eliminate conferences or better yet have unified conferences. I think this is ultimately where the power 5 is headed anyway. Especially as we get closer to college athletes being compenstated more equitably.
The boss knows we disagree with him strongly on this issue. The bowls aren’t perfect, but replacing them with a joyless, sterile, robotic NIT style losers’ bracket is not an improvement, that is unless these tourney invitations involve drunk benefactors in matching loud-colored blazers, then we approve.
Good stuff Eric.
I have yet to find a good reason why an 8-team playoff with zero auto-bids and the first round played on the campus of the higher seed is a bad idea. IMO it’s the perfect balance between a fair playoff and a good regular season. It wouldn’t devalue the regular season because getting a top 4 seed would be hugely important plus it would make even more November games matter in terms of getting into the playoff.
You could also make 1st round losers eligible for the non-playoff bowl games, so those bowls wouldn’t suffer at all.
I find your 7 tournament idea to be very fascinating. It sounds pretty good to me.
Is today early signing day?
Yes. Apparently our subscription fees are going to waste. How do we not have a recruiting article today?!
Signing Day Update: Things are going well. Everyone signed. Pryor is announced as official although that paperwork was done a weekish ago. We’re favored to pick up an 18th recruit at 4:30ish eastern in cornerback Ramon Henderson, a 247 4 star (composite 3 star).
Right now our class composite rank is 13 and our class average-recruit rank (agnostic of number of recruits) is 8th. Adding Henderson would increase the composite rank to 9th while dropping the average-recruit rank to 9th (this only adds Henderson to our class without adding anyone to any other class, so subject to change).
To find the Trojan’s class composite on 247 you have to “Load more” to find them sitting at #76.
So a pretty good day so far.
Nice update. I also saw USC just lost a 5 star to Oregon. Hooray.
This is a small class, so #13 sounds about right nationally, but probably doesn’t do it justice relative to other BK classes. #9-#14 in 247 composite rankings all have almost identical scores and definitely feels like we fit right in there.
All we really missed on this class is top level DBs, unfortunately, those are fairly important. At least we got some numbers, so hopefully one or two become good players. Wallace, Rutherford, and Griffith, will be the only 4 star CBs on the roster next year. Yikes. Thank god for Pryor (and Hamilton and hopefully Alohi).
Top 100 signings:
7: Ohio State
6: rest of Big 10 combined
4: Notre Dame
And I think ND had a couple more on the brink too. Seems like some good quality with top-rated RB, WR, TE of the Kelly era. Now to hope it pays off.
The top player in ND’s class outside the top 100 is Jordan Botelho, the top player out of Hawaii and plays inside linebacker, so no pressure, kid, but we have really high expectations of top linebackers from Hawaii. For folks who remember the old SAT analogies
clearwall : Bo Bauer :: gambit : Botelho
I’m also interested, but not as optimistic, about our new German friend Ehrensberger on the defensive line. The recruiting evals of international players is much less dialed in, so it’s tough to know what exactly you’re getting, but the Irish offered him pretty early on, so someone saw something they really liked.
Pretty sure the plan for Botelho is to move to DE. He could be on the Okwara type schedule to be an impact player in a few years down the line in the next wave after Foskey and Nana, coming after the Hayes/Ade year in 2020. The talent building up on the d-line is really encouraging.
The German kid the coaches just love the “length” buzzword. He’s 6’7! That’s big! I agree he’s a big developmental type, probably most likely to never really amount to much at a big time D1 schoool, but hey, 85 scholarships gives a little margin for taking flyers and hoping to find something.
aOSU gained two more so it’s
9: Ohio St
6: rest of Big 10 combined
4: Notre Dame
Extend it to top 200
13: Ohio St
19: rest of Big 10 combined
8: Notre Dame
Big 10 breakdown
6: Penn St
5: Michigan
4: Wisconsin
2: Nebraska
1: Maryland
1: Northwestern
Rutgers seems to have a very strong chance at a top 200 per 247 crystal ball as well. So #2-4 in the big 10 is competitive, but they’ll all likely be underdogs to aOSU for some time. Notre Dame is finally seeing an uptick in recruiting again. Another year or two like this and the talent level will exceed that of the 2015 team…even if the Blue Chip % stays around 50% like this year. The top end talent is what we’ve been missing for a long time. The 2021 class already has 5 top 100 guys plus #104.
Nice data.
I also saw a tweet somewhere (forget who unfortunately) that for I think it was top-50 signings this year ND had 4, same number as Bama. The usual suspects (Clemson, tOSU, LSU, UGA) had a little more but overall very nice uptick at the top of the class. Says something to add the top rated RB, WR and TE in the Kelly era all this cycle. Hopefully it hits
And I saw USC has 11 commits; 0 five stars, 1 four star and 10 three stars. Hope Helton stays forever!
https://twitter.com/CFBHome/status/1207386085292150784
(Also, speaking of California teams to play every year, Alohi GIlman’s younger brother, also a safety, signed with Stanford. I believe he got a late ND offer but I don’t think they really wanted him all that badly at all)
Stanford’s class looks pretty weak so far. They’ve only got 3 players that I would be excited about. They are somehow ranked higher than last class, but had wayyyy more talent last year. But that 2017 class should give them another year of respectability, along with their coaching.
I live in DC they’ve been talking a lot about Shaw for the Redskins. I bet if they can’t get Urban they would move onto Shaw as a second choice. I believe there’s supposed to be a TON of NHL HC jobs opening up pretty soon. You would think if ever the time for Shaw to hop away from Stanford, this would be the year while his one bad season is seen as the outlier before more catches up to them…I guess we’ll see
” I believe there’s supposed to be a TON of NHL HC jobs opening up pretty soon.”
i really don’t think Shaw will be able to make the jump to hockey. Maybe the NFL, but there just isn’t any ice at ground level in the Bay Area…other than a little patch in San Jose. 😛
I think about hockey too much….San Jose DID just fire their coach last week though so….
Would love to see him leave Stanford. I think he could DGT with Ovechkin et al.
Ramon Henderson is Irish! Just signed his letter of intent moving the class composite ranking to #9 and the recruit-average ranking also to #9. I believe that puts a bow on the day for ND.