If you could set th rankings criteria for the playoff, what would be in it?
Also, how would you weight the criteria?
For example, one could be top 25 wins scores +6 points, top 25 losses -6 points, 10 wins scores +5 points, 11 wins +6 points, 12 wins +7 points. Conference champions +7 points. These are just examples, but how would you do it so you are rewarded for big wins in the regular season, penalized for weak losses in the regular season, and can get points for a Conference Championship, but aren’t penalized for losing a Conference Championship?
It has been said before, “in the absence of facts, opinion rules”. Right now it’s way too much opinion based on who is on the committee each year. There are no stated criteria for rankings, can you imagine if games were scored that way? Now it’s your chance to state how you would do it, and put some integrity in the rankings.
30 Replies
H
Hokester
1y
I prefer the champion model because it is the cleanest and all the participants in the playoffs would be conference champions and thereby be determined on the playing field and the playing field only. A committee would be used only to seed the playoff tournament and have nothing to do with which teams participate. Conferences would be allowed to have their own determinants as to how they decide their champion.
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
have a conniption if only one of their teams got in. Which would serve them right for trying to corner the market on the best teams. But clearly would never be allowed for the same reason. Can you see it now, we're going to let JMU in over Ohio State or Texas. Then again, maybe could be an impetus for splitting up into manageable conferences.
(In response to this post by Hokester)
1y
I agree with @PadrosWindup below that what we have now is probably as good as it gets. There's just no great (and certainly no "optimal") answer to the problem. You've got way too many teams involved with not enough games to think that there's some magic set of objective, mathematical criteria is "right." Have people take a look at any computer rankings and many are going to say "how the hell is XYZ State ranked above ABC U.?!?!" For any 2 teams from different conferences, there's likely zero overlap in their schedules. Heck, even within conferences now that they've grown stupid big, you can take 2 teams and they may not have much overlap. It's pretty hard to compare teams in that circumstance.
The committee can make use of whatever objective criteria/rankings they want (and I'm sure they do), but at the end of the day choosing the "best" or "most deserving" teams and ordering them is a task that involves opinions. Any individual algortimic ranking also kinda involves opinion...it's opinion applied the same way across all teams, but there wouldn't be so many computer rankings if there weren't varying opinions on what's valuable in ranking a team and how an algorithm gets built.
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
Problem was, they would tweak the algorithm every year after the previous year delivered the "wrong" answer - don't forget that there were people who thought Nebraska should have played FSU in thd 2000 Sugar Bowl.
And people will continue to insist the "eye test" is the real test.
What we have now, with a committee with plenty of data, is probably as good as it gets.
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
try to improve it. Continuous improvement is hallmark of successful organizations and people.
(In response to this post by PadrosWindup)
1y
Have a formula based on conference success over the previous 4 or 5 years that determines how many bids each conference gets. Then have those bids assigned based on conference standings. ND could have a standard they have to meet based on their schedule in a given year (in general, 10-2 would probably do it). If you expanded to 16 or more you could let the MWC and AAC champs in and let Sun Belt, CUSA, and MAC champs and either MWC or AAC #2 play a couple of play-in games the week of Army/Navy. Basically give everybody in FBS a shot.
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
Too many teams start the season ranked in the top half of the polls that are nowhere near the polls when the season ends, and that skews the polls for the teams that get near the top.
This season 13 of the teams in the final top 25 were unranked in the preseason including 4 of the 12 playoff teams. When teams get ranked higher in the preseason, they tend to have any games that they lose not counted as much as a team that starts the season unranked.
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
chime in.
(In response to this post by mrcaniac)
1y
How does anyone who pays attention to college football avoid knowing rankings when they're everywhere?
And who says the CFP rankings use them?
(In response to this post by mrcaniac)
Something not talked about enough: the college football punditry class love
their time in spotlight. They love the control. And they have more of it in this sport than any other.
(In response to this post by IB4TECH)
Most objective way to make changes is to do relegation and promotion.
English League soccer style.
But the powers that be would rather tinker with the system than make real and substantive changes.
Merit over manipulation.
(In response to this post by Stech)
T
Truthahn
1y
Match teams to minimize travel in the round after that, at least East and West brackets.
Update: Give auto bids to conference champions, too. I guess they could have less than 9 wins.
Byes, if there is a need for them, go to conference champs first.
A few Cinderella teams by P2 standards would get in, like JMU, but that would be great, IMO. College playoffs should have those.
** Edited by Truthahn at 12/27/2024, 1:43:30 PM
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
Any statistician would frankly find it laughable to have a formula where beating a top 25 opponent would be X points, but beating a top 26 team would be 0 points. It's silly to create arbitrary and discrete buckets, and the introduction of these artificial barriers would lead to manipulation once teams figure out the formula.
If you want to make it as unbiased as possible, then you simply use "computer rankings" (with margin of victory), or you use "conference champions".
If you want to introduce a human element, which is understandable, then you can nudge the computer rankings by weighting human polls (hello old BCS). Yes, that introduces controversy. so an even more human solution is to create a "selection committee", which allows you to justify a pick by hiding behind a "group of people".
Personally, I think the current system of automatic bids plus at-large selections is perfect, and it does not need any tweaking. Every team that got left out failed multiple times during the season and only have themselves to blame.
** Edited by jesuisvtguy at 12/27/2024, 12:56:22 AM
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
system that we have right now, lacks integrity and consistency. Each year the opinions change as people selecting change. We can do so much better with your mathematical/computer selection instead of the Unprofessional Wrestling model. They try to hide it, but It’s currently mainly about ratings and not nearly enough about objective measurements.
(In response to this post by jesuisvtguy)
Bingo on the "Top 25" number. Anyone looking to remove "bias" should start
by ignoring polls. And what is so magical about 25? Why not 16 or 5 or 29?
I'm old enough to remember the AP Top 20. Not sure why expanding that to 25 was even necessary, but whatever.
And if you are using polls as a barometer at all, they are inherently biased. Figures don't lie, but liars figure. And it's a bit of a fool's errand to find a fixed point as a foundation to figure ANY of this selection process out objectively. I also remember when people complained about the computers.
And I agree that no team left out this year has a beef. In the end, I just hope an undefeated team doesn't get left out. That was always my biggest complaint about the systems in the past. In no other serious sports league is an undefeated team prevented from challenging for the top prize. In the end, I hope that championships continue to be a valued criterion. But conference realignment (read: TV networks) have made this more challenging criterion to uphold.
** Edited by Maroon Baboon at 12/27/2024, 11:22:44 AM
(In response to this post by jesuisvtguy)
E
EDGEMAN
1y
I think that would force the P2 to play more tough games OOC.
(In response to this post by jesuisvtguy)
1y
games. Not only that, but you can win the ratings in the short run without integrity and consistency, but in the long run it will eat you up. Look at NASCAR for what can happen.
(In response to this post by EDGEMAN)
H
Hokester
1y
(In response to this post by EDGEMAN)
i don't think it matters
I think there is no parity in this game and there are 4 teams at most who are great any year and they will get in. So letting another 8 in really doesn't matter.
(In response to this post by Stech)
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Truthahn
1y
IMO, that should be a major goal of the post season. Otherwise, things stay lopsided forever.
(In response to this post by MrBayAreaHokie)
L
lawhokie
1y
** Edited by lawhokie at 12/26/2024, 6:17:59 PM
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
allow 8-10 per conference.
As long as there are preseason polls, it will not matter what criteria is used.
(In response to this post by Stech)
H
Hokester
1y
(In response to this post by Big12 guy)
1y
So, keeping that in mind, what other ranking criteria can you put forward, if any?
** Edited by Stech at 12/26/2024, 5:38:39 PM
(In response to this post by Big12 guy)
D
daveinop
1y
The problem right now is conferences scheming to get more than a fair share.
All criteria should relate to championships, wins, and losses; and historically, the CFP rankings have followed that. Alabama was the outlier this year...they had no business being #11 (Saban is gone, and the benches of all the bluebloods are being depleted by the portal/NIL)...but they also didn't get in.
** Edited by daveinop at 12/27/2024, 8:18:46 AM
(In response to this post by Stech)
1y
There are 134 schools right now in FBS. If we broke them up into conferences of just 7 teams, then it gets to a nice clean 19 conferences plus an independent ND. This would allow two things.
1. Scheduling flexibility in regular season. 6 round robin conference games and 5 OOC games for ratings/money/fun.
2. Expanded playoff that still favors the power teams.
32 total teams (16 first round home games, 8 second round home games, 4 third round bowls, 2 semi-finals, 1 champ game)
19 auto bids for the conference champs
1 wild card spot for ND if they qualify
12 wild card spots based on selection committee (so they can use whatever criteria they want)
Here is my fantasy breakdown by regions. And the tougher groups could have bigger media contracts and get more wild card playoff spots due to strength of schedule (however they want to define that). So you could easily have one of the SEC pods get 3 teams in (or same for the football focused ACC group).
** Edited by HokieAl at 12/26/2024, 2:39:02 PM
(In response to this post by Big12 guy)
This makes the most sense
(In response to this post by Big12 guy)