College Football Playoffs May Expand

[nzm136]

Interesting article by Pete Thamel.


Why financial fallout from coronavirus will likely lead to College Football Playoff expansion

I’m good with 8. 5 P5 champs, indy + g5 and 2 at large champs.

Put another way, SEC champ + 1 (which should be a runner up), ND/g5 flavor of the week, 4 other P5 champs, and one P5 runner up (B1G ~50% of the time with an off shot of FSU/Clemson, USC/Oregon, or Oklahoma/Texas if they lose a CCG).

everyone has access, there’s a reward for elevated competition, and everyone but the SEC’s CCG means something - but the SEC (read: winner of LSU-Bama-Auburn and UF-UGA) is compensated accordingly.

 

[nzm136]

if they expand to 16 wouldn't it make sense to reconfigure the Big East again if it's gonna get an auto bid? I feel like that number creates the desire to have bigger conferences split up again. As i've said in other threads, the desire for ADs to be more regional is gonna be a story in post corona for the olympic sports. May as well do it for the revenue sports. If i'm Syracuse i'd RATHER be back in the big east for hoops and see if the ACC would allow for a Big East sub conf (a divsion called "the Big East" maybe?) of the old eastern football teams. May need to strong arm ND and hold our nose on UConn.

8 power conferences of 8 teams each is ideal in my mind. You can get real regional rivalries, all regular season games would matter, and it sets up for a clean 8 team playoff.

The g5 would get hosed, but that’s just formalizing the current reality. And *a* power P5 team would get hosed (I’m looking at you Rutgers), but the value generated by creating a system that attracts fan interest would be such that RU’s alignment to playing teams that they have a puncher’s shot at beating could easily be bought.

 

[nzm136]

Give me BC, PSU, SU, UMD, Pitt, WVU, ND, and VT/Miami* for football, and add Georgetown, Nova, St. John’s, and UConn for basketball, and JHU for lax, and I’m in.

I’ll take either, but I’d prefer Miami. Heck, I’d even take Rutgers, but one P5 team has to go for an 8x8 setup, and I think dropping RU would cause the least waves.

FWIW, it also wouldn’t be a bad deal for ND. They’d get yearly games with Pitt, BC, and potentially Miami, and they’d also have 5 OOC games to play Stanford, USC, and Navy. I imagine that they wouldn’t mind playing PSU regularly, and while playing us, UMD, and WVU probably aren’t dream games for them, they probably aren’t complete train wrecks, either (esp. if they could convince SU to play “at” and “home” in NYC every decade).

 

[Offthedome]

Could this in some weird way create parity? If 8 teams (for argument's sake) make the playoffs, perhaps top recruits feel like they don't HAVE to go to the perennial top 4 programs for a shot at a National Championship, and the talent is spread out a bit? Maybe?