Wetzel: What college football needs to do to make an eight-team playoff a reality, Rutgers mentioned
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One question I don't believe anyone has addressed is the problem the NHL Stanley Cup Champions face alot -- are the Cup winners always the "best" team?
These four playoff teams could all reasonably be deemed worthy of the National Championship if they can win their next two games.
But do you believe the first 8 teams are so close that their 1-8 rankings are almost meaningless in terms of how good the teams are? If yes, there's no problem. But if you think the 8th best team shouldn't sniff National Championship play, then you have a controversy on your hands.
These four playoff teams could all reasonably be deemed worthy of the National Championship if they can win their next two games.
But do you believe the first 8 teams are so close that their 1-8 rankings are almost meaningless in terms of how good the teams are? If yes, there's no problem. But if you think the 8th best team shouldn't sniff National Championship play, then you have a controversy on your hands.
Forde is such a tool (he must be Politi's long lost brother--never hesitates to take a swipe at RU (wahh)):
"Whatever fiscal sense Rutgers joining the Big Ten made in 2016 – adding New Jersey cable homes – might not in 2025 … or sooner.
If so, does the Big Ten stay at 14 and keep trying to prop everyone up when revenue gets tighter? Or does a core group break off? Or does an even tighter group of big schools link up with the big schools from other conference and create a couple mega conferences to try to salvage television revenue?
No one knows, other than the tsunami appears to be coming. While nothing seems imminent or even likely, nothing is impossible either. It’s certainly no less impossible than predicting Rutgers would be in the Big Ten in the first place."
EDIT- thought Forde wrote the article, but he is just in the video above the story. Surprised Wetzel would write something like this. Rutgers had been on the radar screen for several years as a B1G expansion candidate. His whole premise of conferences disbanding screams Chicken Little the sky is falling nonsense.
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Its so annoying. Lines like that would never have been written again if we had continued on the same trajectory we were on when Schiano left, or simply held serve. As a supporter of the school, it physically pains me to see the return of all of the same "loser forever comments" we had to deal with before 2005. I thought those days were done.
My bad on Forde--he did the video. I thought Wetzel was above this kind of cheap shot. He's usually a wet dishrag.
I know college football is unique with the top 25 rankings, but I still think it's important to win your conference. I would love to see the P5 conference winners with the highest ranked other conference and then the top 2 highest ranked non-conference winners in an 8 team playoff. There are always going to be years in which a dominating team or two fails to win their conference, but I think they should be penalized for that. For the past decade or so, SEC teams got the benefit of losses because the conference was thought to have been so strong. This year the Big Ten is getting that benefit. In the end, shouldn't wins actually matter?
People will always complain about something. If you go to an 8 team playoff, someone is still going to get left out whether it's just the top 8 teams as decided by the committee or if you go with the 5 power conference champions and 3 at large teams.
As far as the best teams winning in the playoffs in other sports goes, I think it's hard to compare the NHL where a goalie can get hot at the right time and carry his team, or NBA which is superstar driven.
the theory is out there,Mark Packer just discussed it on Sirrus XM,what if B10 and other power confrences decide they dont need bottom confrence programs to split revenue with and drag down the SOS for playoffs.and he has also mentioned Rutgers..
Another reason RU just cant sit around and and use the "wait for full share" game plan...
Another reason RU just cant sit around and and use the "wait for full share" game plan...
An 8 team playoff is basically like creating a separate season. It will deliver us the answer of who is the best NOW - which I don't think is as important as who has been the best team over the whole season.
College football is awesome because of all the moving parts: out of conference schedules, no scrimmages, academics, freshman impact players, etc.. The champion each season should be the program who handles every aspect of college football the best , which can only be determined over the course of a whole season. Four teams is perfect
College football is awesome because of all the moving parts: out of conference schedules, no scrimmages, academics, freshman impact players, etc.. The champion each season should be the program who handles every aspect of college football the best , which can only be determined over the course of a whole season. Four teams is perfect
if you wanted to give every conference a legit shot then you go p5 champs plus 3 at large based on body of work. So this year you would have had OSU and UM and wisky with the at large. Not bad if you ask me with 4 Big ten teams in the playoff lol
i dont buy it... sorry. Its still a playoff and the best team doesn't always win. Thats the beauty of it. It takes skill, luck, lack of injuries, the right gamble at the right time. Thats the beauty of the stanley cup finals and i think the CFP needs to follow suit.
Else you should just go for regular season champs based on w-l, why even bowl?
They used to say that college football was great because it had the most important regular season of any sport...
The playoff this year is a joke. People want 8 teams?? We don't even need 4 teams this year. Give Alabama the trophy and everyone else get your ass back to work and try again next year.
The playoff this year is a joke. People want 8 teams?? We don't even need 4 teams this year. Give Alabama the trophy and everyone else get your ass back to work and try again next year.
Stay at 4. And nothing will happen anyway until 2025. No need to expand. If Alabama and Ohio State were to play 7 and 8 they would be 2 blowouts and no one would care.
#5 Penn State is playing in the Rose Bowl against USC. Great game. No need to expand.
#5 Penn State is playing in the Rose Bowl against USC. Great game. No need to expand.
We're way off from that theory. It seems every 5 seconds some writer spits out "the best programs will join together and become their own super-conference. Can you imagine how great this new world will be". What a great idea. Guess what. Even if that were too happen there would be the creation of new bottom feeders. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. Then what. They'll throw away those losers?
The Big Ten Conference has been around since 1899 and shows no signs of anything other than continuing to excel at academics and athletics as a Conference of large, land grant, public state, academic institutions (Northwestern withstanding). The Conference is much more than just throwing around a football, or some shaped ball, on a sunny, cold afternoon. So in summary these writers who have been spewing their garbage about this pipe dream will continue to do so in their fantasy land, all for the sake of getting readers to click on their stories
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The "theory" is out there because the same clowns are talking to one another about it. It ain't happening. Rutgers and the B1G is about a hell of a lot more than football. Next.
The current system is awesome and the best one available. I predicted it 5 years in advance and I am calling it now that we keep it as is for another 30 years,
Without Rutgers in the most rich and densely populated region of the country who the eff would care?? We are cared about even when were not good...,even Cali and Fla have tons of NYC/NJ transplants everywhere....We are the United States except for the sparsely populated regions where no one cares or SPENDS...,Were in no matter what...,NYC/NJ DONT WATCH??
THEN IT JUST AINT TELEVISION!!!Want to end FB?....Stop showing us...well join NE in demphasising HS Football and outside Fla and Texas the party's over!!!
Why are people so obsessed with the concept of "best" team. How do you even define that? Especially in a system of separate conferences and very little interconference play?
Is it the best team over the course of the entire season? Because then the champion of any title game isn't necessarily the "best" team, either. If Alabama loses in the playoffs, does that mean it's not the "best" team? Best at the end of the season?
Bottom line, you don't have to meet someone's arbitrary definition of "best" to be a champion. Sports don't choose the "best" team because it's a useless designation. If you're the best, you go out and win. If you can't do that, then why should you be called the best?
If you want to choose the "best" team, you're stuck with some crappy subjective system that no one likes. In fact, probably the best way to do that is to just forget playoffs and an NC game and have the committee pick "the best team" based on a season of work.
Why can't CFB just crown a champion and leave the notion of "best" team behind, like in all other sports?
YEAH!!! Who needs the intrigue of bowl games and playoffs when you can just end the season in November! Great idea!
I was about to get mad. Then I remembered Wetzel writes for Yahoo ... the most reviled piece of virtual toilet paper on the Internet. Not mad no mo.
RU plays in the #1 tv market in the country and per capita NJ has some of the best hs football in the country and while RU football has not won a gosh darn thing of note (New Years Days Bowl game or an outright conference championship) RU gets shots taken at it in pieces like this where it's not the main topic. RU is even relevant when it's not relevant. Can wait for the day RU wins the Big East Division. RU will get so much publication RU won't know what to do with it. Patience fellow RU supporters this is only the beginning.
GO RU
GO RU
Until we win, or even just get back to bowl eligibility, we will be held up as the shining example of what's wrong with conference expansion. Going for cable households instead of improving your product. And we can't argue that. Yet. Now that Colorado has turned it around, what addition has been more of an embarrassment on the field than us? Did Missouri lose four games by 220-0? Did Utah? Louisville? Hell, even Boston F-ing College is bowl eligible this year.
I don't mind the cheap shots at all. They will someday end. What I object to is 220-0 and 0-9. And those, too, will end.
As for the point of his piece, I half disagree. I like eight, but why do we have to buy his illogical argument that conferences don't matter just because for the first time in three years a non-champion made the playoffs? Silly.
I don't mind the cheap shots at all. They will someday end. What I object to is 220-0 and 0-9. And those, too, will end.
As for the point of his piece, I half disagree. I like eight, but why do we have to buy his illogical argument that conferences don't matter just because for the first time in three years a non-champion made the playoffs? Silly.
We're the newest addition of that group and have had 3 B1G seasons, including a winning one. No reason we should be held up as an example of anything.
There is a very simple solution:
Invite the 8 teams with the best regular season resumes to an 8-team playoff, which is enough teams to ensure that any worthy of national championship consideration will get an invite.
Give teams a lot of credit for beating top 10 and top 25 teams
and no credit for beating FCS teams.
Then, let those 8 best teams all play it out on the field.
1st Round:
Team #8 at Team #1
Team #7 at Team #2
Team #6 at Team #3
Team #5 at Team #4
Teams #9, #10, #11 and #12 can't make anywhere near the case that teams #5, #6, #7 and #8 can make for being a national champion.
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6 teams. 5 champions and 1 at large. Top 2 seeds get bye. Incentivizes winning conference, makes it huge risk to get in if you don't, leaves flexibility for other conferences and MD, and only adds 2 games instead of 4 required for 8 teams.
If they would only adopt my realignment with 8 conferences of 9 teams each, allowing everyone to play everyone else in the conference once, so there should be much less doubt who's the champion. No championship games required, which would help with getting an 8-team playoff going from the 8 conferences (too many games now for an 8 team playoff). Could also do 7 conferences with 10 teams each with 9 conference games, allowing a team from outside the top 70 teams to make it into the playoff or allowing a great 2nd team from one conference to make it.
If the top 64 FBS teams were used to create 4 relatively equal 16-team conferences and each of those 64 teams played 12 conference games a year then an FBS playoff system that is based solely on conference winners would make sense. But, that isn’t what we have.
128 teams is way too many to compete at the same level. But, until those 128 teams are divided up into more competitive groups, a playoff system must be in place to give all 128 of those teams a chance at the national title.
Since the 10 FBS Conferences are not equal, it would be impractical to base the FBS playoff field on conference winners.
If two or three of the best teams in the country appear to be from the same conference or division, all of those great teams are more deserving of a playoff spot than many conference champions that are clearly not top 10 teams.
14-team conferences like the ACC & SEC only play 8-game conference slates, where some of their best teams don't always play each other. Occasionally, there are FBS independents that are great teams. Frequently, 14-team conferences like the ACC, B1G & SEC have two teams that are much better than any Group of 5 team or Big 12 team, where only 10 teams reside despite the name Big 12.
If ACC team #1 wins 6 ACC Conference games, their division and their ACC Championship game and loses 4 OOC games finishing their regular season with 6 losses, are they more deserving of a national title playoff bid than B1G East team #2 that lost their conference opener by 1 point to division rival B1G East team #1 and finished their season with 1 loss ?
Obviously not. All regular season games that are played on the field need to be considered, if you want the national title to be determined on the field.
Rewarding Strength Of Schedules promotes the scheduling of good OOC games.
Focusing solely on conference championships shrinks 12/13-game regular season resumes to 9/10-game resumes. OOC games matter too.
8 best teams is the solution.
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Did anyone else have a problem with this contradictory development of thought?:
"No one knows, other than the tsunami appears to be coming. While nothing seems imminent or even likely, nothing is impossible either. It’s certainly no less impossible than predicting Rutgers would be in the Big Ten in the first place."
"No one knows, other than the tsunami appears to be coming. While nothing seems imminent or even likely, nothing is impossible either. It’s certainly no less impossible than predicting Rutgers would be in the Big Ten in the first place."
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One problem. People make money off conference championships. They are not going to give up that revenue.
That's the "one problem" you found with a nonstarter plan to reorganize the entire P5 infrastructure? I'd say there might be one or two others lurking in the shadows.
