Suggested College Football Playoff
There is no perfect way to do this, but putting emphasis on winning the conference championship seems to be a better way to make the playoff. Not a Penn State fan, but they appear to have really got slighted by the playoff committee this year. Penn State won the conference in the same division as Ohio State, won the so called important 13th data point and beat Ohio State head to head, but they are not in the playoff and Ohio State is seeded 3rd. Makes no sense.
The playoff committee seems to do some very strange things in their weekly rankings. One week Michigan loses to unranked Iowa and stays at number 3, then later they lose to number 2 ranked Ohio State and drop 3 spots. Even more shocking was and unranked Tennessee beats Kentucky and jumps to number 19.
I say take away some of the playoff committee’s bias and go to an eight team playoff with automatic conference qualifiers.
Basic Concept:
Automatic Conference Champion Criteria:
Why allow the conference champion to have 2 conference and 1 non-conference loss?
Much has been made of the desire for teams to schedule better non-conference and allowing this extra possible loss would not penalize teams for scheduling up. Most years a team is probably not making the playoff with three losses.
As to 2 conference losses, this could allow a team to recover from a possible early season loss or perhaps an extra loss because of injury of a key player. Also, consider the scenario conference playoff, where a 1 loss team is upset by a three or more loss opponent. The conference could invoke a rule to award the automatic playoff bid to the now 2 conference loss loser. In reality, most years this 2 loss rule would probably not be an issue
Assuming this criteria, what would this year’s playoff might look like.
5 Conference Champions: Alabama, Penn State, Clemson, Oklahoma, and Washington
Wild card team pool (limited here to the committee’s top 10): Ohio State, Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin, and So Cal. (In reality everybody is in the wild card pool) From those listed, assume Ohio State, Michigan and Colorado are selected by the committee as wild cards. Hence, the eight team playoff would consist of these teams, which might be seeded as follows (avoiding 1st round rematches if possible):
(1)Alabama vs (8) Washington
(4) Michigan vs (5) Oklahoma
(2)Ohio State vs (7) Colorado
(3)Clemson vs (6) Penn State
Teams left out would have little to complain about, since they didn’t get their conference automatic bid and had to be considered on their resume. There will always be some who will complain, but this seems to be much fairer and eliminates some committee bias.
There is no perfect way to do this, but putting emphasis on winning the conference championship seems to be a better way to make the playoff. Not a Penn State fan, but they appear to have really got slighted by the playoff committee this year. Penn State won the conference in the same division as Ohio State, won the so called important 13th data point and beat Ohio State head to head, but they are not in the playoff and Ohio State is seeded 3rd. Makes no sense.
The playoff committee seems to do some very strange things in their weekly rankings. One week Michigan loses to unranked Iowa and stays at number 3, then later they lose to number 2 ranked Ohio State and drop 3 spots. Even more shocking was and unranked Tennessee beats Kentucky and jumps to number 19.
I say take away some of the playoff committee’s bias and go to an eight team playoff with automatic conference qualifiers.
Basic Concept:
- · Eight Teams
- · Five Conference Champions (With exceptions)
- · Three wild card teams selected by the Playoff Committee from the pool
- · The selected teams are seeded 1 thru 8 by the Playoff Committee
Automatic Conference Champion Criteria:
- · Conference champions cannot have more than 2 conference losses
- · Conference champions can have three losses, if one of them is a non-conference loss to another Power 5 team
- · Under no circumstances can an automatic qualifying conference champion have more than 3 losses
- · Non-qualifying conference champions are pushed to the Power 5 pool and thus their conference could possibly now be eliminated from the playoff
Why allow the conference champion to have 2 conference and 1 non-conference loss?
Much has been made of the desire for teams to schedule better non-conference and allowing this extra possible loss would not penalize teams for scheduling up. Most years a team is probably not making the playoff with three losses.
As to 2 conference losses, this could allow a team to recover from a possible early season loss or perhaps an extra loss because of injury of a key player. Also, consider the scenario conference playoff, where a 1 loss team is upset by a three or more loss opponent. The conference could invoke a rule to award the automatic playoff bid to the now 2 conference loss loser. In reality, most years this 2 loss rule would probably not be an issue
Assuming this criteria, what would this year’s playoff might look like.
5 Conference Champions: Alabama, Penn State, Clemson, Oklahoma, and Washington
Wild card team pool (limited here to the committee’s top 10): Ohio State, Michigan, Colorado, Wisconsin, and So Cal. (In reality everybody is in the wild card pool) From those listed, assume Ohio State, Michigan and Colorado are selected by the committee as wild cards. Hence, the eight team playoff would consist of these teams, which might be seeded as follows (avoiding 1st round rematches if possible):
(1)Alabama vs (8) Washington
(4) Michigan vs (5) Oklahoma
(2)Ohio State vs (7) Colorado
(3)Clemson vs (6) Penn State
Teams left out would have little to complain about, since they didn’t get their conference automatic bid and had to be considered on their resume. There will always be some who will complain, but this seems to be much fairer and eliminates some committee bias.
