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48 team playoff

AngryHusker88

Walk On
Feb 5, 2011
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There were 40 bowl games played, plus the National Championship game to make 41 Total post season games.

If the college football postseason were changed into a 48 team playoff, there would be a total of 47 games played. So that would add slightly to the # of postseason games played & it would actually determine a champion & give the rest of the bowl game/play off games meaning as well, since every team could still win. Use something like the current system to determine the best 48 Division 1 football teams regardless of conference, higher seeded team awarded home field advantage.

Personally I think 48 teams is too much, but I think this actually makes more sense than the current bowl system
 
I think occasionally a team ranked below No. 8 might be able to win it all. Nebraska in 2009 & Alabama in 2010 come to mind as two teams ranked below that who were playing good enough to win it all towards the end of the season.

2009 Nebraska finished the regular season ranked No. 20 in the AP Bowl at 9-4 & played then-undefeated No.2 Texas down to the last (controversial) second of their conference championship. I bet Nebraska would've jumped No. 19 Stanford (8-4), No. 18. West Virginia (9-3), No. 17 Pittsburgh (9-3), & No. 16 Oregon State (8-4) if a Playoff spot were on the line.

In 2010 9-3 Alabama finished the regular season ranked No. 15, but had come within a point of National Champion Auburn late in the season.

Ranked No. 12 UCF certainly showed they deserved chance at play for it all by beating SEC heavyweight Auburn

But once you go below 16, the chances that a team ranked below that would make a run are low IMO
 
USC was playing as well as anyone at the end of last year. I think they proved they could've made a run at a National Title (they defeated No. 4 seed playoff team Washington 26-13 during their 9 game win streak, but would've missed a 8 team playoff at No. 9, but would've missed a 8 team playoff as they finished the regular season at No. 9.
 
There were 40 bowl games played, plus the National Championship game to make 41 Total post season games.

If the college football postseason were changed into a 48 team playoff, there would be a total of 47 games played. So that would add slightly to the # of postseason games played & it would actually determine a champion & give the rest of the bowl game/play off games meaning as well, since every team could still win. Use something like the current system to determine the best 48 Division 1 football teams regardless of conference, higher seeded team awarded home field advantage.

Personally I think 48 teams is too much, but I think this actually makes more sense than the current bowl system

A big problem with this is that the final two teams would play 6 or 7 (if a play in team) games to get to the championship games. You'd have to give up all of the bowl games and half of the season.
 
There were 40 bowl games played, plus the National Championship game to make 41 Total post season games.

If the college football postseason were changed into a 48 team playoff, there would be a total of 47 games played. So that would add slightly to the # of postseason games played & it would actually determine a champion & give the rest of the bowl game/play off games meaning as well, since every team could still win. Use something like the current system to determine the best 48 Division 1 football teams regardless of conference, higher seeded team awarded home field advantage.

Personally I think 48 teams is too much, but I think this actually makes more sense than the current bowl system
I know this is getting into the weeds of the discussion, but I always have a problem with how "seeding" is determined, especially when it yields distinctive advantages such as home field, byes, etc. Like has been discussed in other threads, there is too small of a sample size considering the quantity of teams to make a hardline decision (and yes, I realize this is a decades'-old predicament).

Out of 130 teams, you're really splitting hairs when comparing teams within a few spots of each other. Once you qualify for the playoff, all advantages should be mitigated except where there is a fundamental requirement for an advantage to be given (ie, location of the game).

Here's an idea, whether this means breaking off the P5 or not, so be it...
- Have a field large-enough to capture all of the conference champions, plus a few at-large spots for the balance of the field (to get to 8, or 16).
- Put the conference champion automatic qualifiers in one pool "A" and at large teams in the another pool "B".
- Random draw one team from each pool for first-round matchups, with the caveat that there can be no first-round rematches of previous games or of two teams from the same conference (like the NCAA basketball tournament does).
- The teams from Pool "A" host the teams from Pool "B".
- Inevitably, the number of conference champions will not be exactly half of the field. If just the P5 are automatic qualifiers, then in an 8-team playoff, one team will have to play on the road in the first round. In this case, draw a team from Pool "A" prior to any teams being paired for first-round matchups and designate that team as a Pool "A" road team to be selected as a Pool "B" team for first-round purposes. Likewise in a 16-team playoff, if just P5 champions are automatic qualifiers, then randomly draw three non-champions to host first-round games.

Maybe in the draw, treat it like the NBA Draft lottery using some type of analytics metric (FPI or whatever) to weight teams such that a dominant team from Pool "A" has less of chance of being selected as the designated Pool "A" road team for the first round in an 8-team playoff or more dominant Pool "B" teams have a better chance of being selected as designated Pool "B" home teams for the first round in a 16-team playoff.

This is a very simplified version of what tennis does when they seed and draw.
 
If you go with conference champions and a few others like one or more g5 teams (lower seeded) in the preliminary games, doesn't that kind of amount to something similar to a large playoff?
 
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