First let me start with my thoughts about the new format, and this will be quick: For all its criticisms, I love the CFP, and the fact that the two teams playing in the national championship game will finally have to play their way in, automatically makes it better than the BCS to me.
My main problem with it at this point is that there are so many unanswered questions that it's hard to believe. It's mindboggling that it's been almost a year and a half since the proposal was first announced1 and there are still so many things that are unclear.
Before I get to my questions though, let me review the information we know so far about the CFP, since I'm sure many still don't know much about it.
The CFP will include seven games each year: six bowls and a national championship game, whose location will be selected similarly to the Super Bowl location, with different cities placing bids. In 2015, it will be at AT&T Stadium and in 2016, University of Phoenix Stadium. The national championship game does not have to be at a CFP bowl location however, since it was announced last month that the 2017 game will take place at Raymond James Stadium. The national championship game will be played on a fixed Monday night in January that will always fall exactly 37 days after Conference Championship Saturday (the first Saturday in December).
The six bowls included in the CFP are the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl2. Each year, two bowls will be the national semifinals, and the other four will have eight elite teams (similar to the four BCS bowls). All twelve teams will be selected by a committee3. The committee will seed the top 4 teams, and the two semifinals will be 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3.
Here is the rotation for the semifinals:
In the years in which the bowls are not the semifinals, the teams that will play in them are:
Rose Bowl: Big 10 vs. Pac-12
Sugar Bowl: SEC vs. Big 12
Orange Bowl: ACC vs. SEC #2, Big 10 #2, or Notre Dame (Notre Dame can only play in the Orange Bowl if it is ranked 5-12 in the CFP rankings.)
Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl: at-large vs. at-large, or "Group of Five", where Group of Five indicates the five mid-major conferences. The highest ranked champion of these five conferences is guaranteed a CFP bowl berth if not selected for the national semifinals. If the Big Ten or SEC champion is available for a non-playoff bowl in a year when the Rose and Sugar Bowls are hosting semifinals, that team will appear in either the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, or Peach Bowl, but not the Orange Bowl.
The above information is all official, and now here are the questions that I have:
Since it is a committee releasing these rankings and not a point-based system as the BCS was, could there be some blatant misseeding that goes on to ensure a conference tie-in matchup for semifinals? For example, (as a complete joke) let's say that Washington State, Ohio State, Iowa State, Mississippi State, and NC State win their conferences next year, and all except Iowa State qualify for the national semifinals. If the national consensus in the AP poll and USA Today poll is that the teams should be ranked (1)Mississippi State, (2)NC State, (3)Washington State, (4)Ohio State, might the committee purposely seed NC State 4th and move Washington State and Ohio State to 2 and 3 to ensure that the Rose Bowl semifinal is Pac-12 vs. Big 10? I certainly hope not.
Another case of blatant misseeding to attempt to get a conference tie-in for a semifinal that I am afraid might happen would be (going back to the same example) if Washington State was 1, Iowa State was 4, and Ohio State was 5 in all major polls. In this case, I hope the committee would not purposely switch Iowa State and Ohio State, eliminating a deserving team, just to try to get the Rose Bowl semifinal to be Pac-12 vs. Big 10 again. Basically, I really hope that which bowl game is being a semifinal that year never affects the teams selected.
Going back to my first scenario where only the Big 12 champion did not qualify for the semifinals, my question is, in which bowl would the team play next year? Under the CFP's currently revealed information, the Big 12 champion plays in the Sugar Bowl, but the Sugar Bowl is a semifinal next year and not available for Iowa State. While an alternative has been made explicit for the Big 10 and SEC champions, nothing has been made clear for any of the other three conference champions. Under the current format, I would assume that Iowa State would qualify for the Cotton Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl based on their past Big 12 tie-ins, but this has not been made official, and I am surprised this hasn't been made clear, not only for the Big 12 and Pac-12, but also for the ACC for years when the Orange Bowl is scheduled to host a semifinal, such as the year after next.
Speaking of past tie-ins, my final question is: will the Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl really just become completely at-large bowls? This seems so unlikely to me, given the Cotton Bowl's history with SEC vs. Big 12, the Fiesta Bowl's past tie-in to the Big 12, and the Peach Bowl's long run of SEC vs. ACC matchups, that I find it hard to believe the official information that these will all become at-large. Unfortunately, unlike my first two questions, which I think will be answered before the season begins, I feel like the answer to this one will only be revealed over the next few years as we see which teams are selected for these bowls.
But again, going back to what I said at the top, I'm definitely happy with the CFP and believe that it represents marked improvement over the BCS, but I'm simply surprised at how much we still don't know.
Citations:
1. http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8099187/ncaa-presidents-approve-four-team-college-football-playoff-beginning-2014
2. http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/9208306/chick-fil-bowl-become-chick-fil-peach-bowl
3. http://www.collegefootballplayoff.com/story?id=9825420
And here is more information about the CFP in an interview with Bill Hancock: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/tony-barnhart/24400200/before-bcs-ends-the-whens-wheres-and-whys-of-college-football-playoff
No comments:
Post a Comment