2014 College Football

[lonewolf]

There are only 128 D1 football teams.
To produce a true national undefeated champion, all you have to do is have a huge tournament... 128 teams in one bracket will produce a winner in 6 weeks...64 teams in each of two brackets would only take 5 weeks.. Four 32 team brackets would only take 4 weeks.. Eight 16 team brackets, 3 weeks ...would not matter who played who in what order in what bracket.. you could do it alphabetically and wind up with an undefeated champion.
Teams could play eight or nine pre-tournament, non- counting, warm up games and still play only 12 games.

[Pego]

I cannot understand how is a "play-off" of 4 all that much better than 2.

[jazzcyclist]

I cannot understand how is a "play-off" of 4 all that much better than 2.

What do you propose?

[Pego]

The only thing I know is that a cosmetic change is no true change. To be honest, I had no problem with a "mythical national champion." The next one is going to be "not mythical" only in a name. To have a meaningful play-offs, you would have to have a minimum of 16 teams. Adding 4 extra games to the schedule is nuts, especially with ever-increasing size of the conferences, where teams no longer play everyone else, far from it.

[jazzcyclist]

I guess my feelings about playoffs are the exact opposite of yours. Regardless of the sport, I'm an elitist, so I think that four teams should be the maximum number of teams allowed in a college football playoff, and the only reason I wouldn't want to go back to two teams is because of years like 2004, 2009 and 2010 when you had undefeated teams finishing the regular season ranked #3 or #4 behind two other undefeated teams in the top two sports. I have zero sympathy for teams that lose in the regular season.

If I were the king of the world, I would return the NCAA basketball tournament to a 16-team playoff, the NFL, the NBA and MLB to four-team playoffs and I would return college track and field to the days when you went straight from the conference championships to the NCAA championships via a descending order list.

[Pego]

This is the sort of disagreement I can live with ;-).

[Atticus]

As has been described of democracy, a 4-team playoff is a terrible idea, but better than all the other alternatives. If the sole purpose of the playoff is to identify a team that 'deserves' to play for the National Championships, then by having four, you're pretty well assured of getting the one most deserving one in there. Strictly speaking ONLY undefeated teams who have played a 'representative' schedule, i.e., one with other ranked teams, need apply. We could have 3 of those, but never 5, so 4 is a magic number in that regard.

[jazzcyclist]

If the sole purpose of the playoff is to identify a team that 'deserves' to play for the National Championships, then by having four, you're pretty well assured of getting the one most deserving one in there. Strictly speaking ONLY undefeated teams who have played a 'representative' schedule, i.e., one with other ranked teams, need apply. We could have 3 of those, but never 5, so 4 is a magic number in that regard.

Bingo! Based on the history of the AP poll, as long as you include the top four teams, you're virtually guaranteed to include the best team in the playoffs. I just wish they hadn't replaced the BCS ranking system with a selection committee. The ranking system, which distributed coaches' votes proportionally throughout the division 1-A football conferences which had to be disclosed at the end of the year, and which employed computer rankings, was much more transparent and objective than any selection committee will ever be.

[user4]

There are only 128 D1 football teams.
To produce a true national undefeated champion, all you have to do is have a huge tournament... 128 teams in one bracket will produce a winner in 6 weeks...64 teams in each of two brackets would only take 5 weeks.. Four 32 team brackets would only take 4 weeks.. Eight 16 team brackets, 3 weeks ...would not matter who played who in what order in what bracket.. you could do it alphabetically and wind up with an undefeated champion.
Teams could play eight or nine pre-tournament, non- counting, warm up games and still play only 12 games.

why in the world would you want the bottom finishing teams from every conference in a "playoff" for the championship. That just seems wrong. Any playoff system is flawed but that would be a step in the wrong direction.

and jazz is right the BCS ranking system was one of the best. None of these innovations are progress, just more carnival.

[Atticus]

I just wish they hadn't replaced the BCS ranking system with a selection committee.

And woe unto that Committee if it does NOT mirror the AP Poll (or any other poll, for that matter), because the ignored team will go PSYCHO-NUTZ!!!
It's an absolute NO-WIN situation for the Committee. Best go back to the BCS formula, so the 'people' can blame the 'machine'!

[jazzcyclist]

Best go back to the BCS formula, so the 'people' can blame the 'machine'!

At least with the coaches' poll, you could see which coach screwed you over and settle scores with him in the future. Because of this, coaches had an incentive not to be too hackish, lest other coaches retaliate on them in future, when they're in the hunt for a BCS bid and need all the help they can get.

[odelltrclan]

The only thing I know is that a cosmetic change is no true change. To be honest, I had no problem with a "mythical national champion." The next one is going to be "not mythical" only in a name. To have a meaningful play-offs, you would have to have a minimum of 16 teams. Adding 4 extra games to the schedule is nuts, especially with ever-increasing size of the conferences, where teams no longer play everyone else, far from it.

Your assumption is that the current amount of games must stay the same. They only went to 12 regular season games relatively recently. They could go back to 11. Without a conference championship game, it could be less as well. The logistics could be worked out. 2 or 3 non-conference games, and 8 or 9 game conference schedule depending upon conference championships, and then the playoffs. Top 5 rated conferences get 2 teams, lesser conferences get 1, independents, if rated highly enough get 1. I don't think it would take that much effort to appease the masses.

[lonewolf]

why in the world would you want the bottom finishing teams from every conference in a "playoff" for the championship. That just seems wrong. Any playoff system is flawed but that would be a step in the wrong direction.

and jazz is right the BCS ranking system was one of the best. None of these innovations are progress, just more carnival.

It is not a"playoff". It is an end of season tournament in which one team eventually beats everyone else who beat everyone else and emerges undefeated.

[26mi235]

At least with the coaches' poll, you could see which coach screwed you over and settle scores with him in the future. Because of this, coaches had an incentive not to be too hackish, lest other coaches retaliate on them in future, when they're in the hunt for a BCS bid and need all the help they can get.

There were problems because the machines were not allowed to provide the best answer that they had. Specifically, they were forbidden to include margin of victory. Humans do a better job of the nuance between a big margin in certain contexts denoting meaningful mastery in a way that matters (especially not with weak teams or where games get out of hand). Algorithms have trouble with this sort of human level of understanding.

[jazzcyclist]

There were problems because the machines were not allowed to provide the best answer that they had. Specifically, they were forbidden to include margin of victory.

I agree with this. Originally, margin of victory was included, but it was eliminated after the 2001 season when a one-loss Nebraska, who had steamrolled its opponents, got in the championship game over a one-loss Oregon, who had seven wins of seven points or less, and Mike Bellotti was all over the media crying like a little whiny bitch because Nebraska didn't win their conference. During the BCS era, every time the final rankings didn't agree with the human polls, they tweaked the system the following year to give more weight to the human polls and less weight to objective criteria like the computer rankings, which don't distinguish between losses in September and losses in December.