College Football Playoff....revisited...part 2

read part 1 here.

Now let's look at the most popular idea that everyone keeps tossing around....an 8 team playoff.

The benefits to the 8 team playoff is it doesn't extend the season by much and it is still a very elite group of teams involved. And it is still better than what we have now. But it does have some serious flaws.

The main flaw is how do you select the teams? If you take the conference champs plus 2 based on BCS standings you would have this:

1. Oklahoma
2. Florida
3. USC
4. Penn State
5. Cincinnati
6. Virginia Tech
7. Texas
8. Alabama

Not bad. A very nice tournament depending on how you seed it. But the big thing missing here is a non-BCS school. It would be almost impossible for a non-BCS school to get into the playoff because they would have to finish in AT LEAST the top 8 in the final standings. And in this years case the top 4.

So if you wanted to add a non-BCS school than you would eliminate Alabama and put in Utah. Does that solve anything? You just took out a top 4 team to accommodate a non-BCS school. But you have to or the non-BCS schools with sue and everything will change again.

Okay so instead of using the conference champions lets just choose our teams based on the BCS Standings. This years tournament would be this:

1. Oklahoma
2. Florida
3. Texas
4. Alabama
5. USC
6. Utah
7. Texas Tech
8. Penn State

Not bad again. I would love to see most of those games. But now you have left out 2 BCS conferences. And in most years you would still be leaving out a non-BCS school. Yes this season Utah cracked the top 8 but that isn't the norm. Do you really think those conferences and the non-BCS conferences are going to agree to this arrangement without getting paid? No and that means everything will change.

And anyway in my opinion the conference champions should AT LEAST get into the playoff. If you win your BCS conference (no matter how weak) than you should be included in the playoff.

Now let's look quickly at a 16 team playoff even though I don't think this argument has ANY staying power I will still refute it.

A 16 team playoff based on BCS rankings and conference champions (6 champs plus 10 at large) would be ridiculous. This year you would be including 3 teams that have 3 losses! And that isn't right. I don't think the regular season would be diminished much with an 8 or 12 (more on that later) team playoff but with 16 teams and multiple 3 loss teams I think you would be making the regular season MUCH less important.


The main problem with an 8 team playoff is that you will never make people happy with the selections. But the problem with a 16 team playoff is the addition and inclusion of TOO MANY teams. And while no system is perfect there is one (mine of course) that will work best.

A 12 team playoff! Check back later (around noon) for more.