I guess my broader point is that the days of believing the unimaginable could never happen in CFB seem to be over.
Playoff Setup
- Thread starter Aclone
- Start date
We're going to see guys on 2 and 3 loss teams start sitting out if they know they'll get drafted.
The logic for sitting out bowl games has always been: they aren't the playoffs, so they're meaningless.
If that's the case, how is any game a team plays after being eliminated from playoff contention meaningful? Why is a bowl game worthless but a late season game between an 8-4 team and a 6-6 team sacred?
If the playoffs are the only thing that matters, this is where it's headed.
Yes to both. Lower seed picks where games are played and you have 4 byes. Winning will be important to the end.
Well, first I think NIL agreements are going to make it hard for kids to sit at all going forward. If the payers are generous they may allow an opt out for a bowl game at the some cost to the payee. You aren't getting 6 figures and just shutting it down whenever you want going forward. It'll probably matter a little bit the stature of your school. ISU is going to care a lot more about TJ Tampa sitting out a meaningless bowl than Alabama is going to care about Kool-Aid Mckinstry sitting out a meaningless bowl.
The 4 highest rated conference champs get a bye. So if we ever won the Big 12, we'd be one of those getting a bye.
No one out of the top 4 is ever winning it anyway. The other 8 are just to generate content and cash.
As soon as ISU gets a bye game and Tennessee has to play in a freezing Ames, will be the end of byes going to conf champs.
Under this structure, #1 Notre Dame would be a 5 seed. That's ******* funny.
To clarify, for my purposes, although the top 4 champs get a bye, can the 5th champion be seeded anywhere? Or is it automatically a 5 seed?
You don't think Georgia could have won it this year?
Exactly, the second best SEC and Big Ten teams would be out of the top 4 and would have a serious shot of winning most years.
The teams that get byes don't get home games. Fun quirk of the system.
Only #5-#8 get home games.
#1-#4 join in once the games move to bowl sites.
I feel like the 5-8 spots are where we’re going to see the BS from the committee going forward with those being host teams. They will always be favoring the bigger schools with home games and I won’t believe for a second that weather won’t play a factor in picking who gets those.
This is a take, what small schools do you expect to be making the playoffs outside of the G5 rep that could get screwed over?
I interpreted @Clonehomer assessment about "bigger schools" to mean "more prominent/traditionally strong programs."