College Football’s 12-Team Playoff Finally Arrived—and It Was a Complete Dud

[meangreen11]

No upsets, no road wins and a parade of blowouts suggest the sport’s new postseason format is in need of a rethink.

Ever since college football introduced a four-team playoff a decade ago, analysts and armchair quarterbacks had salivated over the prospect of adding more teams to the mix. 

When the sport announced an expanded postseason bracket for this season—with first-round games held on snowy campuses in December—fans were positively drooling.

read more: https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/college-football-playoff-ohio-state-texas-penn-state-notre-dame-7ee4d3dc

 

[NT80]

I wouldn't call it a dud.  It went as predicted for these first 4 games.  Home field is huge at Notre Dame, Ohio St, Texas, and Penn St.  Not many programs can win there anytime.  Next week at neutral sites will be more fair.

The real upsets were the initial selection of 5 non-P2 schools, leaving out Bama et al.

[NM Green]

I’m really not sure how to feel about this whole playoff thing. Just one persons opinion.

1. I was less interested in the regular season big boy matchups. Knowing they could just win their league and “get in.” Or they would be such a draw that they would get in anyway.
2. The teams I would have enjoyed seen were not there. Ole Miss, South Carolina and Alabama are teams I would have enjoyed seen this weekend. The right big teams were there even Indiana because they were an interesting story. 
3. I feel this whole playoff drama feels manufactured. I don’t care about who moves on like I do in March madness or even some pro leagues. This playoff felt like baseball playoffs where if your team is there you are interested and there. If not you are onto the next sport. Do I really need to see Texas and Penn State play again? I really don’t care much. And Boise and Arizona State I could really care less about seeing especially after watching SMU Indiana and Clemson this weekend. I didn’t watch Tennessee but if I had they would join  them too. All flawed un-interesting teams making up this playoff thing.

4. This is the weirdest to me. I’m football saturated. Weird because I will watch any bowl game and have some interest stewing. We’re talking Ohio vs Monroe in the Bahamas kind of interest stirring. Why do I care about random bowls with 6-6 or 5-7 teams more than I do about who moves on in the playoff? I’m not saturated with the bowls but could care less about the playoffs. I can’t figure me and this out. All I know is that I am excited for some midweek football to come. 
5. I was listening to the SMU broadcast on the ticket and they said there were diehard Nittany Lions fans who travel to happy valley every week that sat this one out because it was too cold. In this story I heard football saturation, like I have with this whole production.

The 1AA playoffs seem so much more interesting with now with weeks to get excited for Montana State and The Bison in Frisco. 

Ready to get back to bowl season. 

GMG

Edited 7 hours ago by NM Green

[CMJ]

44 minutes ago, NM Green said:

 This playoff felt like baseball playoffs where if your team is there you are interested and there. If not you are onto the next sport.

I gotta totally disagree on this...October baseball is the best pro-post season.  I'd watch every game if we weren't on vacation (my wife usually gets a vacation in late September/early October, so I tend to miss at least a round of October baseball).

[Cooley]

Nothing new here. When I was in high school, the only school that advanced to the playoffs was the district champion. For whatever reason, the UIL allows 4 teams today. Majority of lower seeds almost always get blown out in the first round.  Same with the NCAA basketball tournament that expanded from around 12 back in the 70's to 65 or 66. Most result in blowouts. I agreed with a modest expansion but not the current 65. They are now talking about over 70. 

Everything is 100% about money and the quality of the product left some time ago.

[scratch1976]

Phony up! 🤣😅😂

[CMJ]

30 minutes ago, Cooley said:

Nothing new here. When I was in high school, the only school that advanced to the playoffs was the district champion. For whatever reason, the UIL allows 4 teams today. Majority of lower seeds almost always get blown out in the first round.  Same with the NCAA basketball tournament that expanded from around 12 back in the 70's to 65 or 66. Most result in blowouts. I agreed with a modest expansion but not the current 65. They are now talking about over 70. 

Everything is 100% about money and the quality of the product left some time ago.

The NCAA Tournament hasn't been less than 16 teams since 1951.  In '53 it went to 22 and depending on the year was between 22 and 25 (some years they had more and then less play-in games) until the 1975 expansion to 32.  That was followed quickly by expansions to 40 ('79), then 48('80), 52(' 83), 53 ('84), and then finally 64 ('85), 65 ('01), 68 (2011). 

 

I doubt many remember a time of less than 22 teams in the field.

 

Given how routine upsets in the NCAA Tournament, I don't one can say the overall quality of the product is that poor.  Besides, since all the league champions get in (and always have - it's just there are more conferences recognized now), the vast majority of the blowouts are of champions, not of also rans from conferences.

[GMG_Dallas]

Ever since the 4 team playoff started, there have been blowouts and nobody has ever cared nor has it ever counted against those schools. Now that we have smaller programs like SMU and Indiana getting blown out, we want to complain that there aren't 12 worthy teams. Anything to protect the big money programs. I will continue to support the 12 team playoff and would even like it go to 16 with more conference champion auto bids.

Here's some blowouts we had during the 4 team playoffs:

2014: Oregon 59 - 20 Florida state 

Ohio State 42 - 20 Oregon

2015: Clemson 37 - 17 Oklahoma 

Alabama 38 - 0 Michigan Statd

2016: Alabama 24 - 7 Washington

Clemson 31 - 0 Ohio State

2017: Alabama 24 - 6 Clemson

2018: Clemson 30 - 3 Notre Dame

Clemson 44 - 16 Alabama

2019: LSU 63 - 28 Oklahoma

Since 2020, we've had Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, Washington, Clemson, Cincinnati, and TCU (duh!) lose by 15+. Nobody cared about any of those losses going back to 2014 except for Cincinnati and TCU because they were smaller programs. Those two games, and the ones from the past weekend, are the only ones ever used to argue against expanded playoffs. Just a bunch of gate-keeping going on. Blowouts will always be a thing. That doesn't mean you stop playing the games.

[NT93]

The most ridiculous argument ever is the “TCU getting blown out means they didn’t deserve to be in the playoff” argument.  They BEAT Michigan in the semi-finals.  They won a playoff game, but they shouldn’t have been in the playoff?  What kind of illogical thinking is that? 

[GMG_Dallas]

8 minutes ago, NT93 said:

The most ridiculous argument ever is the “TCU getting blown out means they didn’t deserve to be in the playoff” argument.  They BEAT Michigan in the semi-finals.  They won a playoff game, but they shouldn’t have been in the playoff?  What kind of illogical thinking is that? 

Exactly this. And before winning it all, Michigan was 0-2 in the playoffs including a bad 20+ points loss to Georgia but I don't remember anybody saying they didn't deserve to make the playoffs. Only when it's the smaller guys do we use bad losses against them. 

[TripleGrad]

I thought this round went exactly as expected.  Higher seeds *should* win a home game in round 1.  One could argue the seeding, but overall this was a success.

[Graddean]

I

strange isn’t it when losses by SMU and Indiana raises howls, but not much noise when Tennessee, from the SEC, gets steamrolled.