24 team playoff

[IndianaVol]

Get rid of conference championship games and play the first 3 rounds on campuses. Starting on championship Saturday..

24 teams in 12 bowl games.
Everyone else sits at the house.
Then the 12 winners are in the playoffs!

Here's my two cents worth - and with the phasing out of the penny, that rounds down to exactly zero...

If going to a 16 or 24 team model, then get rid of the conference championship games.
Top 16 or 24 in the polls get into the field.
12 bowl games and the teams are assigned regionally (i.e., you don't have things like JMU flying across the country in Round 1).
Final poll after the bowl games to seed the remaining 12 with Top 4 getting a bye.
Bowls would be 2 weeks after the season ends to allow Army / Navy game.
That would put the National Title game somewhere around the 2nd week of January before the NFL playoffs.

All of that said, I have been pitching an idea for a couple of years now that I think would work well for everyone involved, but it would take some realignment and such:
ALL of CFB would realign into 4 conferences of 20 teams each (sorry ND, get on board or get out).
The conferences would go back to aligning regionally.
There would be 4 major conferences (SEC, ACC, B1G, B12) and 4 minor conferences.
Teams could go from minor to major and vice-versa based on performance over a time period similar to how some soccer leagues operate.

Each conference would be made up of 4 pods of 5 teams.
Each pod would have a winner based on record (with 5 per pod, likely hood of a tie is small).
Each pod winner would go into 4 team bracket to determine Conference Champion.
Pod titles and conference titles could be current bowl games based on importance (i.e., poinsettia Bowl would likely be a pod game, but Gator would be a conference title)
8 conference champs would go into a bracket to determine National Champ and those would be bowls as well.

That's 32 teams in 31 games (30 "bowls") in 7 weeks.
Start the week after the season ends and you are done in the 2nd or 3rd week of January.

 

[zeppelin128]

Conference championship games need to go away, even in the current playoff setup.

Award conference championships based on the regular season. If there is a 3 way tie, so be it. We had co-championships in the past.

 

[SubVet676]

(sigh) Well, like Ron White once said...I had the right to remain silent, but I did not have the ability, so...

Let's not try to re-invent the wheel here yet again. Let's go with what the rest of the NCAA FB Divisions are using, at least for a starting point, okay?

DIII has 240 teams. And a 40-team playoff. So 16.67% of DIII teams make the playoff.
DII has 161 teams. And a 32-team playoff. So 19.87% of DII teams make the playoff.
FCS has 130 teams. And a 24-team playoff. So 18.46% of FCS teams make the playoff.

If we average the playoff percentiles for DIII, DII, and FCS, we come up with 18.33%. Let's just call it 18% to make the math easy.

There are, as of now, 136 FBS teams. 136 X .18 = 24.48. So a 24-team playoff would be about right for what the other NCAA FB Divisions are doing.

No doubt this is part of the argument that some are making.

Except that DIII, DII, and FCS teams are not playing a 12-game regular season schedule. Add a conference championship game to that, and then a 24-team playoff where you might end up playing as many as 18 games. Perhaps as few as 16 (if you didn't play in your CC game, but somehow still made the Top 8 in the bracket), but as many as 18. Figure 17 is a safe number.

That's a lot. Of course, we've worked our way up to as many as 17 games now for an FBS team that played in their CC game and didn't make the Top 4 seeds, so...who's counting, right?

Do / should conference championships count? Well, they do in every other NCAA sport, so...yes. And we seem stuck on the 12-game regular season schedule, so now what?

The numbers and comparison to other NCAA FB Divisions say 24 teams and a max of 18 games for the last two teams. And since it's basically the NFL Lite now, who cares how many games those poor young men have to play? After all, they're getting paid. Almost all of them more than me, and no one is on the Internet fussing about how I have to work too hard.

Annnd we haven't even talked about how the seedings would work. I'll leave that for one of you with a PhD in Quantum Statistical Predictive Astrology. My brain already hurts.

I don't know what the right answer is. But whatever it is, you can absolutely bet that money will trump everything; we'll end up with either 16 or 24 teams; maybe home games for the first round; bowl games come in to play starting with the 2nd round; and in the end there will still be a vocal majority / minority who are not happy with the current arrangement.

It is what it is. I'm wrong a lot, but I don't think I'm wrong here. Time will tell.

Gotta run, I just got an email offering me a 1/4 share of a Venezuelan oil tanker looking to make a quick deal.

Go Vols.

 

[VOLINVONORE]

Way too many games needed to win the Championship. Teams would be playing game from the last of August to mid January. That is the entire Fall Semester of College. I know some think that athletes don't attend classes, but they do. Many are honor students and most do not make to the NFL. They need their education as much as non-athletic students. .

 

[volfan102455]

If we expand, the connection to the bowl games needs to end. Yes, there could still be bowl games for teams that don't make the playoffs, but it is the connection to the bowl games that creates the crazy schedules.

If the sponsors of the bowl games want to sponsor some of the second, third and fourth round - so be it. But let them bid on the honor verses continuing to try to appease all the major bowls.

 

[volfan102455]

Way too many games needed to win the Championship. Teams would be playing game from the last of August to mid January. That is the entire Fall Semester of College. I know some think that athletes don't attend classes, but they do. Many are honor students and most do not make to the NFL. They need their education as much as non-athletic students. .

They would need to remove the byes that are built into the schedules - like high school - let them play week after week and get to the playoffs in mid-November.

 

[ftsandersvol]

The level of controversy is directly proportional to the number of teams in the CFP.

 

[xpsyclonex2002]

16 is what we need. If you can't get into the top 16, your not national championship material.

 

[It's Vols or nothing!]

Expanding the playoffs will happen

Look how no one cares about the bowl games if they aren't competing for a natty

 

[Woodlawn VOL]

Expanding beyond 16 is moronic. GBO

 

[Dansky]

If we keep increasing the field, it makes more fan bases see their team is actuall better. Being the 24th team in the CFP sounds so much better than finishing 24th in the polls. Same difference except it encourages folks to just give a little more to get a better seed. In reality there are maybe 6 teams a year they are good enough to win it all.

It’s bs. Just like participation trophy’s to little league teams that don’t win many games. Open it up to 32 teams so the sisters of the poor can lose 50-0. 12 teams is too many. And make notre damn be equal to other teams. Just because they are a catholic schools shouldn’t matter. This isn’t basketball. Takes a major toll on the players.

 

[BillyHoyleVol]

This is so dumb. We need LESS teams, not more. No one wants to see 30 point beatings in the first round. I’d like to see 8 teams in, seeded by rank. Each of the big 4 conferences get their highest ranked team in…next 4 highest ranked get in after that…seeded by final rank. No byes. Both rounds before the NC Game are hosted by the higher seeded team. NC Game is neutral site just like the current model. This also gives back the most prestigious bowl games. NIL/Rev money is on the line, similar to the early season basketball tournaments. Idk…$500k to make it, $1m to win the game, or something. This gives teams/fans something to continue being invested in after their team is out of the CFP picture. We can get rid of conference championship games, too…regular season winner is the de facto champ. The apathy of teams mathematically eliminated is only going to continue to grow and it’s going to lead to dwindling interest in the last third of the season which is ultimately going to lead to less dollars for the schools, conferences and the crooks at the NCAA.