12 Team Playoff Is Here!

[Rex54]

Can we please eliminate the conference championship game and reduce scholarships.

[R2Dawg]

Huh? Am I missing something?? Has MSU or OM finished in the top 12 in the last five years? Ten years? I'm guessing possibly our #1 year and OM's Sugarbowl year? If so, was that once in 20 years? Don't see that as "extremely conceivable".

I think we would have went in 14. Yeah it is still a stretch but if we finish in top 3 of SECW we have a chance.

[DownwardDawg]

This is great and LONG overdue

[maroonmania]

Yea.. I don't see it helping us that much but it's good for the game. if they had gone to 16, maybe we get in sometime.. but top 10 is still a tall task with the state of the West.

The move to 12 is goofy. I mean either go to 8 or just go all the way to 16 for Pete's sake. So, not only will the Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State types still get most all the elite talent, now they will get have a week off in the playoffs while the other playoff teams beat each other off. There are no 'bye' games for the #1 seeds in the NCAA basketball or baseball tournaments, so I don't understand why they didn't just go to 16 rather than give the elite teams even more advantage than they already have? And, while this gives a few more 'fun' games to watch at the end of the year, it does nothing to address the lack of competitiveness in the college football product. Its still going to be the same programs winning the NC every year.

[FriarsPoint]

Free agency has been instituted in college football. Now you?re on the verge of a 12 team playoff.

Shit, just install a commissioner, pay em salaries(like SMU), and kill it for good.

For years this is what the Haves wanted. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

[Sienfield]

Free agency has been instituted in college football. Now you?re on the verge of a 12 team playoff.

Shit, just install a commissioner, pay em salaries(like SMU), and kill it for good.

For years this is what the Haves wanted. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

I'm with you. I don't watch NFL and don't want college football to follow that format. The bowl games used to be great but now that's gonna be a thing of the past.

[DownwardDawg]

Free agency has been instituted in college football. Now you?re on the verge of a 12 team playoff.

Shit, just install a commissioner, pay em salaries(like SMU), and kill it for good.

For years this is what the Haves wanted. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

The “haves” have never wanted more than 4 teams in the playoffs. The rest of us have said it should have been 8 teams from the beginning. Not sure how I feel about 12 teams but it beats the hell out of this 4 team format.

[Hot Rock]

Gonna be some terrible terrible quarter final games.

There is going to be some 3 & 4 seeds get upset in that qtr final game as well. The best four teams will be left standing and no one will be a pretender that makes it to the semi's

[Hot Rock]

I'm with you. I don't watch NFL and don't want college football to follow that format. The bowl games used to be great but now that's gonna be a thing of the past.

The Bowl games have been a thing of the past for 20 years. You have guys opting out every year to prep for the draft.

This will actually make the post season more interesting because more teams will have skin in the game and less opt outs.

The lower bowls have been nothing more than a reward for players to get a trip, extra practices to prep younger players for next year and your first look at next year's team for a long time.

[Hot Rock]

The move to 12 is goofy. I mean either go to 8 or just go all the way to 16 for Pete's sake. So, not only will the Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State types still get most all the elite talent, now they will get have a week off in the playoffs while the other playoff teams beat each other off. There are no 'bye' games for the #1 seeds in the NCAA basketball or baseball tournaments, so I don't understand why they didn't just go to 16 rather than give the elite teams even more advantage than they already have? And, while this gives a few more 'fun' games to watch at the end of the year, it does nothing to address the lack of competitiveness in the college football product. Its still going to be the same programs winning the NC every year.

I get your point, so how is it worse than what we have now?

You get more games in the regular season that mean something. Even the top four will be vying for that bye week and then you have another 15-20 teams vying for those other playoff spots. That Egg Bowl could be a play in game and that would never be the case in today's format.

Plus, you get way more interesting matchups. 1st week will have 12 vs 5; 11 vs 6; 10 vs 7 and 8 vs 9.

If one of those teams has legit put it together, over come an injury or has found a new starting QB or something they could make some noise in the next round make the final four. That's a legit reason to watch and it should be fun.

I just think how little interest March Madness would draw if they only invited four teams every year.

[Hot Rock]

Can we please eliminate the conference championship game and reduce scholarships.

That's not a bad idea.

[RiverCityDawg]

The move to 12 is goofy. I mean either go to 8 or just go all the way to 16 for Pete's sake. So, not only will the Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State types still get most all the elite talent, now they will get have a week off in the playoffs while the other playoff teams beat each other off. There are no 'bye' games for the #1 seeds in the NCAA basketball or baseball tournaments, so I don't understand why they didn't just go to 16 rather than give the elite teams even more advantage than they already have? And, while this gives a few more 'fun' games to watch at the end of the year, it does nothing to address the lack of competitiveness in the college football product. Its still going to be the same programs winning the NC every year.

The NFL (most successful pro league in the country) has first round byes and that works well. The byes help incentivize playing the whole season out to the end. With 16 and no byes you would have a lot of teams resting starters the last couple of games.

I think 12 is a great number.

The competitive issue is separate (and I don't see a viable way to address that other than maybe scholarship reductions). This at least gives more teams a ticket to the ball and more meaningful post season games for the fans. Sure the elite programs are still at an advantage, but that's always going to be the case. At least more games means more chances one of them slips up.

[Indndawg]

I hope the powers that be hold off on those preseason and early season polls for about a month and let the season play out.

[Johnson85]

Ummm... I think you agreed with me. Rarely would we have qualified... ever. But who knows? Great! Afternoon golf and drinking may have clouded my thinking. If so, someone try again.

I was agreeing with you that it would be rare, but pointing out that Shotgun's statement was about the Egg Bowl deciding a spot, which would just mean that one team enters the game with the likelihood of a playoff spot if they won, which is a slightly easier bar to clear than either of us actually finishing in the playoffs. 2014 is the only year that for sure would have impacted the playoffs. 2015 would have been close but Ole Miss would have missed it by one spot. 2017 possibly could have been a year like that, but likely even a win would have put us in the same position as Ole Miss was in 2015, where we were the first team out but ranked higher than the G5 representative.

[maroonmania]

I get your point, so how is it worse than what we have now?

You get more games in the regular season that mean something. Even the top four will be vying for that bye week and then you have another 15-20 teams vying for those other playoff spots. That Egg Bowl could be a play in game and that would never be the case in today's format.

Plus, you get way more interesting matchups. 1st week will have 12 vs 5; 11 vs 6; 10 vs 7 and 8 vs 9.

If one of those teams has legit put it together, over come an injury or has found a new starting QB or something they could make some noise in the next round make the final four. That's a legit reason to watch and it should be fun.

I just think how little interest March Madness would draw if they only invited four teams every year.

Its not worse than we have now I just think that it should be either 8 or 16. I am absolutely against giving the teams with most depth of talent an extra week of rest while everyone else beats each other up. Hey, while we are at it, let's just give national seeds byes into the Super Regionals in baseball or the number 1 seeds in the NCAA basketball tournament byes into the Sweet 16. I mean they've earned it right? I am being sarcastic, but it pisses me off that they want to take the sport in college athletics with the MOST talent disparity (because of issues they refuse to address), and then give those elite teams with the most talent and depth another advantage by allowing them to skip a round of the playoffs. But no, its still not worse than we have now. You at least give a few more schools a chance, slim as it is. It will still pretty much always be the same 6 or 7 schools in the Final Four until they address the issues that currently make college football the most noncompetitive major sport out there.

[Gutter Cobreh]

It'll be interesting to see if more teams making the playoff means recruits will consider more schools

I think this is absolutely what you'll see.

[TrapGame]

There was a pretty good discussion about this on SEC Radio on SXM this morning. They went back several years using this new format talking about who would have made it. It was good a segment. Both us and OM would have made it in 2014. They also mentioned recruiting advantages for non-blue bloods being able to crack the 12 every two or three of years.

[Johnson85]

I think this is absolutely what you'll see.

To start with, I think it will help second tier teams win recruiting battles with third tier teams. Not that they're not already doing well, but teams like A&M, Florida, and Auburn can make a pretty credible claim that over the course of your career, you've got a good chance at competing in the playoffs under this system, which is a claim that is hard for Ole Miss, Mississippi state, USC, etc. to make credibly right now. I think that's going to be a bigger help against those schools that can't make that claim than it will be going head to head with Bama, although it may help them in some of those recruiting battles too.

[Coldsleeve Jr.]

Does "conference champs" mean regular season champ, or conference championship game winner?

[Johnson85]

Does "conference champs" mean regular season champ, or conference championship game winner?

Going to almost certainly have to mean conference championship game winner, at least for everybody except maybe the Big12. Don't think SEC, ACC, or Big 10 could establish a regular season champion with 14 teams even if they play 9 conference games. Maybe the Pac12 could with 9 games, although you'd still have teams that played only 9 out of 11 of the other conference teams, and schedule could have a huge impact on who has the best record.

Another question is going to be how much flexibility the schools have to establish rules naming their own champion. A few years ago, the Big 12 I believe changed the tie breaker rules mid season to try to help one of their schools get in the playoffs (I think it was between TCU and Baylor).

As the only P5 school without a championship game, the Big 12 could in theory have a funky rule where the tie breaker goes to the 2nd highest ranked team in any tie breaker. So say they had a Big 12 team that was 9-1 and ranked 8th, and a team that was 9-1 and ranked 12th, crowning the lower ranked team champion would get them two spots in the playoffs rather than one. Obviously everybody would cry foul if they tried to game it so obviously, but if they are allowed to change mid season like they did, they could in theory reorder the rules in a 3 team tiebreaker to make it work.

Or alternatively, if one of the conferences had a three way tie breaker that was going to put a non-competitive team in the championship gamea nd hurt their changes of getting a second (or third) team in the playoffs, they could change the rules like the big 12 did to try to ensure they didn't lose a potential playoff team because they got left out of the championship game, or alternatively because they "had" to play in it against a better team.