Yep.....8 teams is inevitable. It just makes too much sense for it not to happen.
You take the 5 conference winners. That leaves you 3 at large, and it the committee decides to let in a Marshall/Boise/ECU type team, then so be it.
You play the first round of four games on the higher seeds homefield, so as to cut down on travel expenses for fans. From there, you do it just like it's set up now. I wouldn't even have a problem going back to an 11 game schedule, if the school President's think that's too many football guys as it is. I mean, it could conceivably be 16 games for two teams. 12 regular season, a conf championship, and 3 playoff games if you get to the finals. That's ALOT of football for collegiate kids. Right now it would look something like this if it ended today:
Ohio State @ MS State vs TCU @ Alabama
AZ State @ FSU vs Baylor @ Oregon
Play all four games on a Saturday, starting at 12ET. You could have some slight overrun, but start them every two and a half hours for TV purposes. 12, 230, 5, 730.
You take the 5 conference winners. That leaves you 3 at large, and it the committee decides to let in a Marshall/Boise/ECU type team, then so be it.
You play the first round of four games on the higher seeds homefield, so as to cut down on travel expenses for fans. From there, you do it just like it's set up now. I wouldn't even have a problem going back to an 11 game schedule, if the school President's think that's too many football guys as it is. I mean, it could conceivably be 16 games for two teams. 12 regular season, a conf championship, and 3 playoff games if you get to the finals. That's ALOT of football for collegiate kids. Right now it would look something like this if it ended today:
Ohio State @ MS State vs TCU @ Alabama
AZ State @ FSU vs Baylor @ Oregon
Play all four games on a Saturday, starting at 12ET. You could have some slight overrun, but start them every two and a half hours for TV purposes. 12, 230, 5, 730.
personally like the 6-team with #1 and #2 with a bye week....i haven't seen many years were #1 and #8 were so close that they deserved to be playing a KO game.
or even a 5-team with #1 getting bye....there's always been an aura around being "top 5" and that would make it really mean something.
Oregon is so envy of the SEC they scheduled another home & home series with a SEC team, Texas A&M came to their senses and cancelled it. :missingte
Your Vols had the balls that other SEC teams don't when it comes to playing a game west of the Mississippi so gotta give them credit for that.
Tell me this......why should an SEC team play someone on the West Coast? There is nothing to gain from it. If the SEC team wins, they were supposed to. There is zero budgetary reason to do it. There is zero recruiting benefits of such a game. There is just literally no reason for an SEC team to go out there and play.
Would I like to see Bama/Oregon? Auburn/Stanford? Ole Miss/Arizona? Sure. But again, there is just no reason to play the game. It makes much more sense to play a Big 12, ACC, or even Big 10 team. The SEC recruits those areas, so it just makes more sense as a program..
Im not bashing the PAC. I think it's easily the 2nd best conference in the conference. There are good teams at the top, the middle can beat you on a given day, and the bottom isn't Big 10/ACC level shitty. I enjoy watching the football out there. I just don't think it makes sense to play them unless it's a neutral site game in Dallas or Houston.
Anything would be better than 4 teams. This is one of those years where we happen to have 4 excellent teams in one division alone who are capable of beating anybody in the country on a given day. Then when you go out west, if USC ever gets good again, we could very well see at least 2 powerhouse teams from the Pac-12 every year. This is why we need at least 6 teams. But I still think 8 teams would erase all doubt of who should be in and who shouldn't. If they had it this year, both Baylor and TCU would be a handful for any team in the country. In an 8 team playoff we would probably get both of those teams in. Like I said, the excitement factor goes way up when you get these kinds of teams in the mix who aren't normally there.
You're recruiting and budget argument makes sense.. My problem is why did A & M and Georgia schedule these home and home games to begin with in the first place ?..Oregon wants these kinds of games , so when the cancellation comes we are left with an open date that might be tough to fill with a desirable opponent
I'm not to keen on the idea of 2 teams getting a bye , i think it "could" be a disadvantage to them instead of an advantage.
It works fine in the nfl where the playoffs start right after the reg season ends , but in cfb with the month layoff i think the teams not getting a bye would be able to shake off the rust and find a rythem.
I agree with you, and honestly, don't have an answer. They should have never agreed to them to begin with. If TAMU wants to play a tough OOC game, they could play a TX school or OK team. It makes much more sense. On Georgia, I don't get it. Recently UGA had OOC games with GT and Clemson in the same year.....to go along with their SEC schedule. That's just stupid, IMO. There is no reason to play those type of OOC games when you play so many big games in conference. If I were Oregon, I would play Idaho, Fresno, Wyoming, and maybe Utah State. Why play a tough OOC game? Oregon has nothing to gain, because they are a media darling(I don't mean that as an insult.....I mean it in the same way ND, Ohio State, Alabama, etc are).
I can see why Oregon would be frustrated with the scheduling. Ole Miss had that come up a few years ago with a big school, and we had to replace them with VMI or something like that. IT certainly leaves the school holding the contract at a big disadvantage from a scheduling conflict.
For the record, and I know it's somewhat off topic, Ole Miss and FSU just agreed to open the 2016 season against each other in Orlando. Should be fun.
Pac 12 teams don't have the luxury of playing 4 non conference games, they almost always play 3 non conference games to start the year.
With the new playoff system loading your schedule with directional schools can actually work against you.
You are already seeing teams start to schedule tougher non conference schudules, wait till you see a team not make the playoffs because they chose one team over another because of the other teams cream puff non conference schedule.
