(12-22-2018 10:16 AM)esayem Wrote: (12-22-2018 09:23 AM)stever20 Wrote: (12-22-2018 09:11 AM)esayem Wrote: (12-22-2018 02:09 AM)stever20 Wrote: (12-21-2018 10:16 PM)esayem Wrote: Creeping into the NFL playoffs is also a super lame excuse. Hey people, do you realize that college football is played alongside the NFL....ALL SEASON?
Keep lucrative conference title games.
Keep poll tradition: top 8 make the invitational playoffs.
Keep bowl tradition: Elite 8 on New Year’s Day at bowl sites.
Create new tradition: Final 4 and Finals at neutral sites.
If you really want to make it “easier” on the athletes then FCS games don’t count towards the record and will not be considered for poll voting. FCS games should be exhibition games anyway. Back-ups can play and the gate will still be super strong at the big programs.
uh, you don't want to be going directly against NFL playoff games which is what you are talking about.... Last year in the divisional games- which is when final 4 games would be- every single game drew at least 26.69 million viewers. To put this in perspective- the Alabama/Georgia Title game drew 28.44 million viewers.
College football is played alongside the NFL all season- but it's just that alongside. It's not played at the same time...
Uh, Friday and Monday night games. Uh, time slots. Uh, excuses.
you have to have both games the same day. And that's not an excuse- that's a reason.....
They have to be the same day? Why? If it is absolutely necessary then one game would crossover vs the NFL or there would be a later game on Friday, 10 ET, but played at a western site.
Otherwise, a Friday night game and a Saturday game before, in-between, or after the NFL games. There are only two NFL games played each day during the divisional rounds.
I agree - I think most of these arguments are artificial barriers/strawmen similar to what people argued in the pre-CFP era and even the pre-BCS era that supposedly would “never happen”. They all generally get knocked down as long as there’s enough money involved. To me, there’s only one true must have for an 8-team playoff: auto-bids for the P5 champs regardless of record or ranking. Whether people want to agree with that approach or not, it is really the only thing that will drive the people that matter like Jim Delany into expanding the playoff to 8 teams. As long as all of the P5 champs are in, the rest of the details are largely negotiable.
Just my thoughts if I was Sports Czar of the World (which track with what I’ve proposed previously):
(1) Quarterfinals using the traditional bowls on or around New Years Day with P5 champ “auto-bids” (in reality “contract spots” just like now for legal purposes) and any G5 champ in the top 8 guaranteed a spot.
(2) Semifinals at the on-campus home sites of the two highest seeds remaining played on MLK Day
(3) Championship played at a neutral site on the Sunday one week before the Super Bowl
All direct NFL playoff conflicts are avoided and games are played when most people aren’t working (either weekends or holidays). Any concerns that that auto-bids for the P5 would detract from the regular season and the use of the bowls for the quarterfinals would be mitigated with the incentive for the very top teams to get a home game for the semifinals (so no elite team that might have already qualified for a conference championship game can rest on its laurels later in the season).
This also addresses concerns about too much travel to neutral sites for fans and teams. The system would allow for every elite team to get a holiday bowl trip while reducing the travel for the “middle” semifinal round where travel is the toughest. (The National Championship Game is going to sell tickets no matter what if only because of sponsors and general interest no matter who is playing, just like the Super Bowl.) I know that lots of people propose quarterfinal games to be played at home sites in December in an 8-team playoff format, but it will simply always bother me that the “reward” for an elite playoff team is a mid-December road trip to places like Tuscaloosa or Norman and then go home for the holidays if they lose while the lesser teams get to spend the holidays in places like Pasadena and Miami. By switching the quarterfinals to the traditional bowls and making the semifinals on-campus, it keeps those holiday bowl trips for all of those fans and teams (which are already hard enough to plan when the bowls are announced at the beginning of December, much less if they only have a week or two to plan after a hypothetical mid-December playoff game) while not forcing fans of the top seeds to travel in the semifinal round.
To be sure, there are other details to that need to be addressed (e.g. Big Ten and other northern stadiums are usually winterized by January), but that’s the basic framework. If I were running ESPN or Fox, I’d certainly think that format would be extremely attractive.
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Delany thinks playoff should be discussed
