Gophs @ Bucky for the Axe

[dietac]

It seems pretty easy... have an 8 team playoff, have the champion from the 5 power confere nces get automatic bids and have 3 at large teams.

[humanrefutation]

8 team playoff.

Automatic bids for the Power 5 Champs. 3 wild cards picked by the committee, who then seed everyone.

Yup.

[Mags FTW]

A pet peeve of mine was listening to people who argued against a playoff say "But each game is more important without a playoff! Each week is like a playoff!"

Exactly. And then when your team loses 2 games, maybe even 1 game in certain years, they are done. And since the overwhelming majority of teams lose 2 games, that gives you a bunch of meaningless games being played every week.

[coolhandluke121]

Bowl games, rivalries, and conference championships still mean a lot. Were all games meaningless before there were even BCS bowls, let alone playoffs?

This isn't basketball. You can't just play a bunch of extra games to find the best team in the country from well over 100 teams. Make sure the 2 best teams get a chance to play for the title. Having just one championship game isn't enough because there can be debate about who's the best or 2nd-best, but having 4 teams is enough to ensure that you will get the top 2 in the playoffs. That's all you need. The bowl games are fine. They're only diminished if you choose to be obsessed with a playoff format. Other bowl games are no less meaningful just because they don't have title ramifications. Only a couple bowl games a year ever had those ramifications anyway.

It's foolish to just want to keep expanding the playoffs. The system is exciting, lucrative, and fair as it is.

[Mags FTW]

Bowl games, rivalries, and conference championships still mean a lot. Were all games meaningless before there were even BCS bowls, let alone playoffs?

Depends on the state of your program. If you are anyone other than OSU, MU, WI, or maybe MSU, you probably jizz your shorts over a B10 title. But if you've won 2 in a row or 2 out of 3, then some people might say "ho hum".

[MikeIsGood]

I am very clearly in the minority on winning your conference title. I'd like to stick with my gut, but am quite nervous.

I think it's so damn stupid to have such little meaning in the title game. They really need to expand to 8 teams. Like, really badly.

[Bernman]

I have a hunch, especially w/ Alvarez paralleling the room, even though he can't specifically speak about Wisconsin (don't be naive), that this will work out for us. I think it will come out that regardless who won the B1G title game, they'll be in the playoff, to justify OSU's inclusion, and vice versa. It's a packaged deal. PSU gets the argument of having beaten OSU, and Wisconsin that their loss margins were razor thin and they played a brutal schedule. Washington will get punished for not playing anyone out of conference and in conference the Pac 12 being mediocre.

Of course Colorado could also help some brothers out (too bad it wasn't USC) or we can make a statement to a lesser degree of what OSU did to us a couple years ago.