The next college football national champion could be…

- a three loss team
- a team with multiple losses to 3-loss teams
- a team who lost to the same team twice

When was the last time a college football national champion had those kinds of blemishes on its record?

Is the expanded CFP nothing more than a consolation bracket? Is there no longer a difference between being the champion versus the winner of a consolation bracket? How many remember consolation brackets?

Enjoy the consolation games, as they can be very entertaining!

That's the nature of a tournament format. Everything that happened during the regular season become irrelevant.

Have you read the script yet? Maybe they hand it over to sip along with the keys to the SEC. It would keep the talking heads mouth's full all off-season too.

StinkyPinky said:

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That's the nature of a tournament format. Everything that happened during the regular season become irrelevant.

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Except for that the regular season is what got you there to have the right to have a chance to go on a run.

It puts much more emphasis on playoff games with the teams that earned their way there. I like a system where playoff games mean more than regular season. That's the way it's supposed to be.

AggieJ2002 said:

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StinkyPinky said:

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That's the nature of a tournament format. Everything that happened during the regular season become irrelevant.

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Except for that the regular season is what got you there to have the right to have a chance to go on a run.

It puts much more emphasis on playoff games with the teams that earned their way there. I like a system where playoff games mean more than regular season. That's the way it's supposed to be.

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These teams earned their way in as well.

There are TERRIBLE NFL divisions who will still send their division winner.
Teams win conference tourneys out of nowhere in basketball to make the tourney all the time.

The idea that somehow other sports teams "earn" it, but any of these 12 didn't is silly. I don't think they all earned it to the same degree, but all of them did enough to at least be in the dicussion.

That's better than an undefeated team who hasn't played anyone being "champion".

Just think how exciting the playoffs could be if, afterward, we still just voted on who was actually champion. Like maybe a three loss team wins it, but then after it ends we just vote Oregon as champion anyway because they have the fewest losses.

Winning three or four straight games against other Top 12 teams within a month isn't an easy task. The winner of the playoff deserves to be called the National Champion.

tk for tu juan said:

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Winning three or four straight games against other Top 12 teams within a month isn't an easy task. The winner of the playoff deserves to be called the National Champion.

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lmNC…less mythical???

Wanted to ask a legitimate question that I hope folks smarter than my dumb butt can answer.
Why are pairings in the brackets the way they are?
Why pair #5 with #12? Etc.
Seems it would be more fair to have 5 against 6, 7 against 8, 9 against 10 and 11 against 12.
Why are the highest ranked teams paired with lowest?
Honest question.

Four byes.

That's how brackets with byes work.

In European first flight soccer the champ is the regular season winner. Of course the teams play each other team in the league, both home and away.

It will probably take some getting used to that the champion in CF could be a Cinderella/underdog rather than one of a handful of favorites. But take heart that it will be like football at every other level, including the other divisions of college football who seem pretty cool with it. At first blush the CFP seem much more exclusive compared to the % of teams that make the postseason in other college sports.

Taking into account our penchant for using playoffs to determine the champion of virtually every American sport it's downright patriotic that it's not a regular season award.

I understand the byes. But it would seem to be more fair and make more sense to have the first round teams play the team rated below them. So #5 play #6 not 12. Just saying.
Sips should play Penn State not Clemson etc.

Amusingly that would result in a rematch of the ACC championship game at No. 11 v 12 with SMU v Clemson.

It's like the conference tournaments in college basketball with the byes as far as the setup. Texas as the 5 will play the 4 if it gets by the bottom seed. Penn State as the 6 will play the 3 if it gets by the next to last seed.

Where this fails is that the seeding is jacked in CF due to the negotiated arrangement that allowed for the playoffs to be expanded. On paper Texas and PSU (should they win) will have easier matchups against the 3 & 4 seeds than Georgia and Oregon will against the Indiana/ND and UT/OSU winners.

Well, yeah.
The field of 12 is 3x what prior years had.

Of course you're gonna end up with some oddballs in the back half of the field

Gunny456 said:

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I understand the byes. But it would seem to be more fair and make more sense to have the first round teams play the team rated below them. So #5 play #6 not 12. Just saying.
Sips should play Penn State not Clemson etc.

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No it wouldn't.

Then #4 plays #11 or 12 while #1 plays #5 or 6

Brackets always have a power of 2 entries.

A bracket of 12 is really a bracket of 16.

1v16
2v15
3v14
4v13
5v12
6v11
7v10
8v9

Byes go from the bottom up.