The Wetzel playoff plan
November 27th, 2007Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel has proposed a playoff system for college football that looks pretty darn good to me. Here’s what it would look like this year.
Now that would make for some interesting football. Instead of one postseason game that has meaning, you’d have 15 games that have meaning.
Hat tip: Mark G.
Now, this is not just due to the fact that I’m a Tennessee fan, but what right do Georgia and Florida have to be in that bracket when they haven’t won their conference, much less their division? A strong case can be made for the exclusion of Georgia, Florida, Kansas, Central Florida, and so on, simply because they aren’t conference champs nor divisional champs.
Well, if you’re going to have a 16-team playoff, you’ll have to include teams that didn’t win their conferences.
If you read the article, he’s assuming that LSU will beat Tennessee in the SEC title game. So yes, a 10-2 Georgia team and a 9-3 Florida team would both be more deserving of inclusion than a 9-4 Tennessee team.
What dreams may come…
I love it. My suggestion would be to ditch the conference championship games and start the playoffs on Thanksgiving weekend - can you imagine how huge the ratings would be? Play a featured game on Thanksgiving night, a couple games on Friday and the rest on Saturday. Every male in the country would watch just to avoid going shopping. If the first three rounds were completed by the second week of December, the current bowl lineup could basically continue unchanged, with the big-name New Year’s Day bowls picking from among the eliminated playoff teams.
Hawaii vs. Kansas! You better have extra scoreboard light bulbs on hand for that one. Just looking at the bracket gets me excited - though I’m not sure the rest of the country would like seeing three SEC teams in the semifinals. But I guess it would prove again the superiority of the conference. Oh, for the day…
I still think that a playoff of 4 teams (or at most
is sensible: 16 is not, and it would severely reduce in importance some pretty big games in the regular season.
A system in which an undefeated Auburn was left out is, obviously, a broken system.
But, likewise, a system in which Florida can lose to Auburn and LSU AND Georgia and still enter a tournament for the national title is absurd.
On Monday, while listening to Mike and Mike, I for the first time saw why some people don’t want a playoff in college football. It was like that moment in the movie Independence Day, when the president saw into the mind of the alien, and figured out what their plan was. Pretty cool.
Anyway, it goes like this. The 2007 college football season has been crazy, and wonderful. Every week, every team is playing all out. Its like, every week is a playoff! Now, compare that to the NFL season, which has a playoff. As soon as a team wraps up a spot in the post season, they lay back. Rest their starters. As it stands now, every game is a playoff. If it changes, the regular season becomes dull. Like in college basketball.
I am starting to think this college football playoff thing is not so good after all.
I disagree, Jason. I don’t think there are that many times in the NFL when a team rests its starters and doesn’t put forth an effort. Maybe two or three teams, on the last week of the season. If you’re playing for a higher seed or home field advantage, you’re still going to be playing hard.
I’ll gladly trade those two or three games when teams may be resting their starters if we’re going to get a playoff system. And it’s not even close.
Oh, and Bubba, I sort of agree. I think an eight-team playoff would be ideal. But I’ll take a 16-team field in favor of the current BCS any day.
Ok, so I’m a biased UT fan but any system that includes 3 3 loss teams and one 5 loss team over a 2 loss Texas team is still broken. Still better than the BCS system though.
So Jason, which teams do you think would be laying back this season. Which games would have been not as interesting this season if we had had a playoff? As it is, there is no playoff.E ach game is interesting in and of itself, but the system provides little context and meaning for these games. That is what a playoff system would (will) provide. And does anyone not think that in 5-10 years we’ll not have a playoff system?
Now we know that Wetzel reads timellsworth.com because this approach is exactly what I proposed on Nov. 19 in the previous “Open Blog Friday”. Not that it takes a genius to come up with this simple 16 game playoff system. Wetzel is right on.
I will throw my name and financial support behind whichever Presidential candidate guarantees this playoff system in place in the first year of their Presidency. I’m actually not surprised it hasn’t made it into a party platform. I mean, come on, this is America; we need to get our priorities in line.
The real problem with this is not which teams would play in such a playoff (surely there would be a selection committee just like in basketball, or at least a better system than the BCS rankings), but rather where those teams would play. I actually wrote a paper on this in high school (yeah, I know, my English teacher had to be an idiot for letting me do that - feel free to insert any and all public school education jokes here), and at that time all the controversy was over the money and historic prestige that goes along with the current bowl system. The main opponents of the playoff system seemed to have been then - and the way the BCS was created seems to add weight to the belief that this is still true - the heads of the bowls. They refused to give up their traditional formats. And if memory serves me correctly, the Rose Bowl attempted to hold out on the BCS system until they saw how much money they were losing and recanted.
So any real playoff would have to involve locations at the bowl sites. But even in my limited skills of financial analyzing (in high school and even now), a playoff system involving the bowls would have a much better payoff for the schools, the bowls, and most especially the NCAA. So, my conclusion was then (and now), why the heck not a playoff?? And so the mystery continues. The only thing that’s certain is that somehow the Illuminati is involved.
So yes, a 10-2 Georgia team and a 9-3 Florida team would both be more deserving of inclusion than a 9-4 Tennessee team.
I almost have to disagree with that simply on principle — Georgia and Florida didn’t even win their division. It’s almost like Nebraska playing for the title that year that they didn’t win the Big 12. They may have only had one loss, but they weren’t a conference champ. There was a much more deserving team who actually was a conference champ that got left out.
If you at the bare minimum win your division, you ought to be eligible for such a proposed playoff. Of course, that also shouldn’t guarantee you’re in, since there could be other division winners who are also not conference champs who are more deserving. That very same Nebraska team I just mentioned would be a great example — they’re a one-loss team, not conference champs, but they are a divisional champ and should at least be considered. A team like that would certainly be a better pick than a 9-4 UT that lost in the SEC championship.
But that’s just me thinking, and we all know the BCS people don’t care what we think.
I heard Peter R. say something about lots of significant college football matchups on Thanksgiving weekend and no shopping.
Whatever his plan is….I’m in!
In response to the argument that the whole season is a playoff as it stands now I would say that it’s not a playoff if you can will all your games and still get no shot at the championship.
I lean toward liking this a lot. However, do folks think the bowl sponsors and their massive infrastructure will simply go away? Also there is something amiss when the subjectivity of a poll is aligned with the objectivity of a playoff bracket. Furthermore, as the comments reveal here, this will not reduce the controversy of “at large bids.”
Without question, something needs to be done so that my bitterness as an Auburn fan can be recompensed (owning Bama every year is not enough to assuage my pain from being left out of the title game a few years ago).
Controversy over at-large bids is a non-factor to me. If a team has two or three losses and gets left out of the playoffs — tough. Don’t lose two or three games next time. A system like this would ensure that undefeated teams, or teams with one loss, would be in.
It’s kinda like the controversy about the 66th team in the NCAA tournament. You want to make sure you get into the field? Play better during the season.
I agree Tim, the problem is that the proposed system is poll dependent which gives certain teams an unfair advantage at the beginning of the season. For example, we all know that USC was ranked #1 preseason. The effect is that they sit atop of the rankings for no other reason than opinion and not performance. A playoff system would be great but there needs to be more thought as to how the polls would intersect with the final bracket. I like Tuberville’s suggestion a few years ago that the AP poll should not start until week 3 or 4 like the coaches poll. Also, if the poll element is removed then there might be additional problems placing teams that are independent of conferences.
Marty, right on. If you win all your games and don’t get a chance to play for the title, then why even be division IA?
Paul, I am not an Auburn fan, but I thought it was a crime that an SEC team that ran the tables didn’t get in the title game. Any team that survives the SEC without a blemish deserves to be in the title game over any Big 12, Pac-10, Big Ten, or Big East teams that do the same.
Ideally, there needs to be a 12th conference. Then the at-large bids could form one bracket and the conference champions fill the other 3 brackets.
Paul, delaying the polls is definitely a wise move. But let’s be realistic. I can see the coaches agreeing not to do their poll for several weeks, but I don’t see how there’s any way you can force the AP writers to delay theirs. This is a free market and we love our rankings, and so $$ alone will keep pre-season and early season polls alive for the AP and other ranking services, because people want to read them.
The whole bowl system is obsolete. Rarely does anyone care about the majority of the bowls unless they are a fan of the team playing in it or they are the school cashing the hefty check.
Every sport has playoffs to determine the champion. That college football doesn’t is a shame.
A move to a playoff wont stop the endless complaining…it will just shift to who got left out, who got screwed by the seeding and then the groundswell would start to expand the playoff field, no matter what the number is. If it is 8 they will want 12…if 12, then 16, etc.
The thing which might suffer the most will be good regional out of conference games. Why would Texas and Ohio State play in the regular season if that loss might be the one that keeps them from making the playoffs or getting a high seed.
College Basketball now has 65 teams in the tournament. There is always some complaining about which mediocre team didn’t make it, but everyone knows that the best teams are there.
With 16 teams, you know that the best 4 or 5 teams are represented and if anyone complains otherwise, well, they just should have won their conference. Tough. Instead of having heated discussion on preventing the best team not make the championship, I would rather ignore marginal discussion on which mediocre team didn’t make the tournament who would probably just get beaten anyway.
Why would Texas and Ohio State play in the regular season if that loss might be the one that keeps them from making the playoffs or getting a high seed.
I think a playoff like what Wetzel suggests would actually lead to more meaningful non-conference games. If you play a good team from another conference early in the year and lose, it has no bearing on your chances of making the playoffs and winning it all because you can still win your conference and get in.
I went to college at a D-3 school (D-3 already has playoffs) and we regularly played D-2 and 1-AA teams.
Everyone here should read the article linked from this follow-up:
http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news;_ylt=AiiuBBx5fxjLzoCK4bTKQNQ5nYcB?slug=dw-voice112907&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
He addresses much of the criticism that I have seen in these comments.
Frankly, this would be AWESOME. Yes, there will be complaining, but like another poster said, if you don’t win your conference, you can’t really complain about not getting a shot if you are left out. There are always bowl games for those left out (and even bowl games for folks that lose in the first 2 rounds). I am a BYU fan, and I would take a 16 seed in this thing over the Las Vegas bowl anytime. At least there is a chance, remote, yes, but a chance nonetheless.
You have to understand that college football trams only play a max of 13 games a season and never against the same teams, unlike basketball where teams play like 31 games and play opponents multiple times. With the playoff, teams will still have to be very careful about their loses just like the system today. The playoff system keeps the tension of the BCS schedule but with a fair, playoff championship. The Wetzel Plan is basically PERFECT, letting teams from “non BCS” conferences have a chance at the Championship, and letting non-conference-champion teams with awesome records have a chance to redeem themselves.
Also you have to have a minimum of 11 teams to include all conferences, so 16 team bracket is perfect.
I’m writing this on Saturday, December 1st. Pittsburgh just upset #2 West Virginia and Oklahoma is putting a hurting on #1 Missouri.
Welcome to the BCS MESS.
Playoff system is way overdue.