Yeah, Tulane and JMU didn't do much to prove that G5 schools belong in this playoff. I think it was a good idea before NIL and the portal, but let's be real here...G5 schools can't keep up with P4 schools when it comes to all that NIL money. And I'm a fan of G5 football. I still maintain that P4 and G5 should be separated by division - each with their own NC. Maybe someday...
To be fair, some of the P4 schools that were 9-12 seeds last year got their asses kicked too. The #1 seed last year got crushed too. The #11 and #12 seeds should be losing to the #5 and #6 seeds so not sure that tells us too much as of yet. And the whole idea of these teams is they mostly lose, but occasionally can pull off miracles. That's what makes March Madness fun. Does the 6th best team in a conference really have some kind of argument that they need an opportunity to compete for a national championship?
But why? The playoff is not meant to be the 12 best teams. It's meant to be 5 automatic qualifiers and the next 7 best wildcard teams. You can win your conference or be one of the 7 best teams in the country not good enough to win their conference. Every team in the country has a shot to make it. Why is that so problematic? In March Madness, there are 68 teams - I think 30-40ish of them are wildcards and 30-40ish are automatic bids, so several "undeserving teams" get in and the 40-60th best teams often don't. Does anyone have a problem with that? Right now, the controversy is over the 6th-9th best wildcard teams. If you go to simply the top 12 teams, then it's just going to create a new controversy between 11-14. If you go to 16, it'll be the same with 17, etc. The people who are just barely left out will complain no matter what. But a few years ago, no one remotely thought that the 12th best team in the country should have any sort of right to a national championship.
Crazy that the 2 most fun Bowl Games so far were the first one and the one (the only one) tonight. South Carolina State vs Prairie View: SCSU 40-38, 4OT Cal vs Hawaii: 35-31 Warriors, Cal was up 21-0 in the 2Q (4Q possessions went H TD, C FG, H TD, C TD, H TD, Cal end of game) There's usually a lot more fun in the random bowl games than this. And yes, I know why things may be changing.
Isn’t that the crux of the debate right now? That it *should* be the 12 best teams? Everyone would still get their shot at it. Teams will always get left out and complain, especially when it’s being decided by a committee. But this would at least avoid scenarios where teams are jumping 10+ spots which is hard to justify given their schedules.
Would they, though, if it was all wild cards? If JMU went 12-0 against their scrub competition, would they have been invited over Texas, ND, etc this year? I'm guessing no. They wouldn't have gotten a shot despite never losing. But it's easy to justify giving 1 or 2 spots to a team that might be good but isn't given a chance to prove it because they don't get to play the big boys. You still have 10 or 11 other spots for the top teams. Why is 1 (or 2 if the ACC sucks so bad) spot such a big deal? You create a scenario where ND doesn't complain but now Texas and BYU do. And if JMU had gone 12-0, they'd have a legit beef being left out despite no proof anyone was better than them. Someone will always complain. I'd rather it be a team that's already lost 2-3 times and it ranked outside of the top 10 over a team that's never lost and at least theoretically could be the best team in the league. The playoff was supposed to be about deciding it on the field, but denying G5 schools is the opposite of that - it's taking the opportunity out of their hands no matter what they do, as long as a committee doesn't like it enough.
Boise State would’ve made it last year as a wildcard. Hell Cincinnati made the 4 team CFP just a few years back. Will one get in every single year? Probably not but don’t think that should necessarily be the case if one isn’t deserving. Also JMU didn’t go undefeated against their scrub competition and that’s kinda the point here. Did they really deserve a shot at it over a ND/BYU whose only losses came against CFP teams? Personally I don’t think so and I think you’re more likely to see that scenario over undefeated G5’s getting left out.
Sorry - to clarify, my JMU thing was hypothetical. They were barely top 25 with 1 loss, but they wouldn't have been top 12 even had they gone 12-0. So in your system, they could have done everything in their power and still not be able to play for a championship. I don't really care too much about ND/BYU - they both controlled their own destinies and lost games. BYU I don't think deserved it at all - I would say Vandy had a better argument than BYU. But regardless, going into the season, BYU had a path in: win their conference. In this current version of the playofff, every P4 and G5 team controls their own destiny. I think that's a great thing for college football - similar to March Madness. If no-name school from the Horizon league wins all their games, they will be national champs. I think the same should be true in college football. Once you've lost a couple and not won your own conference, I don't think a team deserves a shot at anything - if the circumstances fall right, then they get a 2nd or 3rd or even 4th chance as a wildcard, but I don't think anyone has earned it at that point. They just get lucky to be an opinion poll winner and get another opportunity. I don't want more wildcards at the expense of guaranteed bids where teams go into a season knowing they control their own destiny and knowing what they need to do to get in. (FWIW, JMU was also at least as competitive against Oregon as BYU was against Tech so even with the results, I don't think it was that clear-cut)
Since the playoff system started, there have only been 2 undefeated G5 teams in the regular season. I hear what you’re saying but don’t like dealing with hypotheticals when there are multiple instances of G5 (undefeated or not) making the CFP. In both of those instances, those teams scheduled major P4 opponents and either beat or played them extremely close. I’m not against G5’s getting in and think it’s more interesting when it’s a team that could possibly upset some teams vs one just getting in because they won the Sun Belt. If this the standard, they should just have a conference champions playing each other (which would admittedly be pretty fun).
