(03-25-2018 03:03 AM)Edgebrookjeff Wrote: If they go to 8 teams, what makes you think that they'd invite a non P5 team?
It would roughly continue the current distribution of revenue and power, a level of welfare subsidies down the ladder which the P5 seems content with. (You don't like that phrasing of it, but I'm looking at it from the POV of The Powers That Be, and asking you to do the same in predicting what TPTB will do. Crimson Tide football is subsidizing Vanderbilt, and subsidizing South Alabama, and they seem ok with that in general, because somebody's gotta be on the losing end of those shiny won-loss records--although UAB is an obvious counterexample.)
The CFP system gives about 1/6 of the revenues to the G5. (It's been four or five years, I don't think this includes the Contract Bowl money). And 1/12 of the spots.
In a new/revised system, the power conferences will NOT want to suffer the indignity of ever being left out of an 8 team setup. That means autobids.
Taking away the G5's existing autobid gets awkward at that point.
Another point of awkwardness: UCF will not be the last G5 team to go undefeated and win their New Years Six Bowl game. And whoever does it next now basically has to claim a National Championship, based on the UCF precedent.
TPTB prefer now to have that happen every 5 or 10 years.