You're darn right the coalition will have something to say about that and I'm already loading up my guns to come out firing in a post on THE BASEBALL SAVANT soon!

I don't want to give up too much but what is amazing about it all is that they simply don't get it.

Florida got their chance to beat Ohio State and they did and now they are the champs.That's great and I can live with that.

However, Florida beating Ohio State on that given night and Florida beating Michigan, USC, and Ohio State in 3 consecutive weeks in an 8-team playoff format....uh it ain't happening.

CFR, let me ask you this because you clearly know more about it than I do, but obviously money makes the world go around.

In Florida's case, is the money any different for Florida in a playoff and not winning, or under the current system and winning a National Championship?

Put another way:

Is Florida's cash payout winning a national championship = Florida's cash payout making a playoff?

It seems like it wouldn't be to me, but I don't know enough about it to make a definitive statement.

Woo hoo! Go get 'em Bernie!

on a unrelated note....myles brand is a jerko

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/?p=3270

EDBS and CFR are my favorite CF websites...i assume most guys here will have seen this but if not check it out.

on a related note,
the fact that you don't think florida could beat michigan, usc and tosu consecutively means nothing with regard to the worthiness of a playoff. I think most would agree taht OSU and Michigan would have a lower chance of winning a 8 team playoff than florida. I'm personalyl for a 4 team playoff...the plus one system...If we can't have that then I'd rather stick with the current system and if we had to have a 8 team then I'd under no conditions wnat anything but cofnerence winners allowed in...I 100% agree with most of you guys that protecting the regular season is critically important...I think only allowig cofnerence winners protects conference winners but starts to destroy the OOC games that we all love....so that is why I'd veto a 8 team playoff as well...the 4 team playoff would still offer up the incentives to conferences and teams to schedule competitively to impress the computers to some degree (thus helping a 2 loss USC team make the four team cut against a field of Boise state's louisvilles michigans and LSU's)


a four team playoff would assure that a above-average SEC champ would get not knocked out of the MNC race anymore...Auburn got robbed in 2004 and we don't know if they woulda whipped USC that year but it now appears obvious they would have whipped Oklahaoma when you compare the talent on the teams in hindsight(in spite of the media frenzied praise of Jason white in 2004)...LSU lucked into the MNC game in 2003 when they were clearly a much better team than oklahoma...We'll never know what woulda happened with a LSU-USC game that year...but the SEC clearly deserved a seat at teh table...then in 2006 Florida lucked into teh MNC game again when in hindsight they were clearly deserving of a shot over michigan and weer a better team than OSU, florida just had a tougher schedule than the big 10 teams last year:fact.

It isn't that complicated:

The SEC guys think their teams would be in the championship game more often over the past 7 years if there had been a playoff...thus if a playoff is formed they think they will make more money, they have confidence they will have a lot of teams in the finals...the big 10 suspects they wouldn't have made it to the big game last year with a playoff, they know they are more likely to get the big slice of the pie in the current arrangement so they are against a playoff. That is pretty easy to see. Where do do the Big 12, ACC, Big East and PAC 10 come down? I guess we will see...overall a plus one would probably bring in a bigger total pie than the current system as long as safegaurds were put in place to not degrade the regular season. So the fence sitters could probably be persuaded. I understand the fear of tourny creep(first 4 teams then 8 then 16...and in 10 years our regular season doesn't matter anymore. but if a 4 team tourney doesn't degrade regular season(and that would be a good debate), then the the tourny creep fear shouldn't rule out discussion of a plus one game...part of the problem with college basketball is that; hell it's basketball...the game just ain't as good as football, you can't play everything crappy about bball on the tourney.

With all the money involved and the bball example to learn from, i think the football guys have some shot of flirting with tourney without falling into the pitfalls of having a 8 or 64 team tournament...I do think MLB is another great example of regular season degradation...The wild cards and divisions have killed much of the regular season fun for me. but 4 teams is still like old skool baseball...the top four computer ranked- conference winners having a playoff stil makes the regualr season extremely important...one loss will put any team on life support in that format...(in or out of conference) and a undefeated season would still not guarantee anything without a top-notch schedule...

Savant, it may be difficult to answer your question since nobody has any idea of what the playoff format will be...they all run around yelling "playoff!" without any consideration of how it will be implemented. The money payouts in a 4 team playoff would certainly be different than the payouts in a 16 team playoff...
...gabe, I agree with your sentiment to keep it small so as to not interfere with regular season integrity, but there is no system, whether the current one or a 4 team playoff, that solves the "odd number" conundrum for the years that an odd number of teams deserve a shot. The only way to alleviate that concern is to expand the pool of entrants to the tournament, and poof, there goes your regular season.
Its a lose-lose situation, except for these casual fans who can yell the "playoff" chorus but really don't know the words to the verses...

Gabe, it's not a fear of tourney creep; it's the reality of tourney creep. Playoffs=dollars, and over time, a small playoff won't be enough. Remember: the basketball tournament wasn't always 64 teams.

(Yes, I know they say there are 65 teams in the tournament, but come on. The play-in game is silly.)

Gabe,

All valid points. I think for me the two questions boil down to:

1. How can we preserve the integrity and history of the college football game?

2. What system ensures the biggest liklihood of the best team being crowned champion?

As to the first question, college football has never had a playoff so forming one stabs at the very heart of the game. The entire point of college football has always been the "mythical" national champion and college football didn't see any decline in the popularity of the game because of it. In fact, NCAA Football is probably the most exciting sport in all of sport. Only when we got the BCS did we see immense dialogue about a playoff system because how could we possibly allow computers to determine the playoff teams? Now that the humans are royally screwing it up we need the computers back. It's a terrible system granted, but one that's a lot better than the alternative.

2. Having a tournament no matter what anyone says only adds to the variance and luck that goes into crowning a national champion. As to the SEC wanting a playoff because they'd ha

Gabe,

All valid points. I think for me the two questions boil down to:

1. How can we preserve the integrity and history of the college football game?

2. What system ensures the biggest liklihood of the best team being crowned champion?

As to the first question, college football has never had a playoff so forming one stabs at the very heart of the game. The entire point of college football has always been the "mythical" national champion and college football didn't see any decline in the popularity of the game because of it. In fact, NCAA Football is probably the most exciting sport in all of sport. Only when we got the BCS did we see immense dialogue about a playoff system because how could we possibly allow computers to determine the playoff teams? Now that the humans are royally screwing it up we need the computers back. It's a terrible system granted, but one that's a lot better than the alternative.

2. Having a tournament no matter what anyone says only adds to the variance and luck that goes into crowning a national champion. As to the SEC wanting a playoff because they'd have more teams in the championship just isn't flying. Maybe last season with Florida being Florida, and I know everyone will point back to Auburn, but at the end of the day, if USC didn't totally flop last season, they would have been in the championship game against Ohio State and Florida would have been left out. Maybe the SEC teams would be in the championship game, maybe they wouldn't with a playoff, but let's face it, any team in a playoff would have a hard time running the table for 3-games against ELITE competition. At that point it no longer boils down to the superior team winning but rather the team that is the most healthy and the hottest at the right time. That doesn't lend itself to crowning the best team as the true national champion.

Even the Plus-1 system is going to fly in the face of what you'd really want. Last season with the plus-1 who are we going to pick to play in the plus-1 game? Florida is the obvious pick but then who? Louisville? USC? Boise State? Wisconsin? West Virginia?

If you pick USC then how can you leave out Louisville and Wisconsin who only lost 1 game all season? If you take Wisconsin, then how could you leave out Boise State who went undefeated and won their conference while Wisconsin was just a 3rd place team in their own conference? If you took Louisville, how could you pass on Wisconsin? It would be a mess that would then try and go to an 8-team format which would also be a mess because you'd get your 6-conference champions but then what?

You can't just assume that because Florid

ah it got cut off.

Anyway the point was that you just can't assume because Florida has a better shot at running a 3-game table that they would. If Wake got hot at the right moment in an 8-team playoff, would we be celebrating them as the best team in college football?

The SEC needs to quit whining about the playoffs and how they don't get into games and start scheduling some out of conference games.

The big bellyache out of Gainesville last season was the idea that if USC hadn't of lost that 2nd game, then Florida wouldn't have played in the BCS because USC would have, but USC played Arkansas on the road, Notre Dame and Nebraska in their non-conference slate while Florida beefed up on DII Western Carolina, S.Mississippi, UCF, and a weak Florida State squad. Even Auburn back in 2004 played an out of conference schedule of Citadel, LA-Tech and LA-Monroe! GOOD GRIEF that is brutal. If the SEC wants to whine about not getting into the BCS, how about scheduling some non-conference opponents?

Well obviously the SEC would say, well why doesn't USC play a conference schedule with 5 or 6 teams that are all in the top 15 in the country in talent? It's easy to play kids that are smaller, slower, and not quite as coordinated. But SEC scheduling is bad, we all know that, it's a wash.

But just to poke a tiny hole here, if you DID have the four team playoff, UF-OSU wouldn't have been a first round game, it would have been something like UF-USC and OSU-L'ville/Boise or whoever. Just sayin.

I think something overlooked here is the time factor. Having a single game in any format is a terrible way to decide anyway when both teams get anywhere from 30-70 days to wait for it. Teams get healthy, Troy Smiths get heavy, and results get misleading. If you are so concerned with crowning a champ, you need to include some of the integrity of the season, things like injuries, fatigue, and coaches having to make the quick turnaround on game plans.

I think the real issue here is that the coalition is not interested in a champion. They just want to watch some football. I get it, I'm about the same. But what's the point if there's no ending? Why do we keep score in the games? Why do we have teams that we follow for any sport? The point of being a spectator is that SOMEONE WINS. There must be something at the end for the rest of the story to matter.

Gaaaaaaaaa.

1)You can't replicate a season. Stop trying. Any postseason format is flawed next to the pure unadulterated awesomeness and completeness of a full regular season.

2)The coalition loves champions. The coalition looks forward to crowning champions and celebrating them with every fiber of its college football-loving being. But the coalition believes there are already champions whose championships whose credibility and value cannot be exceeded: conference championships. Check them out. They're pretty amazing. So:

3)"Why do we keep score in the games?" Check out the previous paragraph. The games don't need a self-aggrandizing championship system to have a point.

(Coalition: I apologize if I have misrepresented the coalition.)

Like any good party, the Coalition shares a diversity of opinions but we're united behind our profound skepticism of a playoff and appreciation for the game as it is currently constituted.

Some opinions within that sphere may deviate but the general consensus remains: the current format of the game makes it as popular as it is, tinkering with the postseason threatens the very foundation of the game - its regular season and longstanding tradition of bowl games.

Amen, brother.

Savant,

Re: the money thing and Florida, I have no idea.

Gabe,

Thanks for the kind words and the link.

Gabe,

You keep arguing for an SEC seat at the table which I find disturbing. The good thing about the current system is that it is (theoretically) colorblind when it comes to the conferences.

Almost every major conference has felt that one of its members was left out of a title game. That's how it works with uneven scheduling sometimes. Fix the schedules, not the way we determine the final teams. Make every conference 10 teams with round-robin games and 3 OOC's every year, something like that for starters.

This is important:

"Only when we got the BCS did we see immense dialogue about a playoff system"

Very true.

The Neb/Michigan thing in 97 was a mistake, but that's life, people make mistakes. Playoffs, however, are an abomination. They're an overreaction to a part of the game that keeps people interested.

"Well obviously the SEC would say, well why doesn't USC play a conference schedule with 5 or 6 teams that are all in the top 15 in the country in talent? It's easy to play kids that are smaller, slower, and not quite as coordinated"

that's a load of bull.

If you've studied USC since Carroll arrived, in nearly half their conference games they get a scare. The Pac-10 might not always be loaded with top 15 teams, but it has teams who are very good at picking each other off. At the end of the day SEC teams are just as likely to go undefeated in their conference as teams are in the Pac-10, HP had something about that a few months ago. The issue with Pac-10 teams is consistency, they have their good and bad days where SEC teams are a little more reliably good (if agonizingly conservative).

Anyway, I don't buy that argument one bit.

"I think the real issue here is that the coalition is not interested in a champion. They just want to watch some football"

Noooo, we realize we already have a system to determine a champion (two in fact, the AP poll and the BCS) and we've done enough thinking ahead to realize the fatal flaws of a playoff. We also wish to preserve the integrity of the regular season and have a mindfulness towards history and the fact that this great game has been shaped and made great by the pre-BCS format that was in place for so many years.

A playoff is a move FURTHER AWAY from that format instead of closer towards it.