Conference Realignment

[78pike]

Let them try to schedule 5 or 6 P4 games each year without the ACC tie in. Their other sports don't really matter for tv. When was the last time anyone else cared when ND played Duke in soccer for example. They don't move the needle in MBB either.

They may not move the needle much in men's basketball for the past few years but they certainly did for several years before that. And despite their level of play not being what it used to be they still have more fan support than most other teams and will still put more butts in the seats than the average conference team.

 

[CEB]

With a 12 team playoff they should have reseeding after the first round. Also, let Vegas odds makers do the seeding after the selections are made. With the current format, one and two seeds will get screwed often and might be better off losing (or sitting out) their conference championship games.

Reseeding a tournament is silly… defeats the whole point of a tournament. Not to mention, reseeding reinforces the bias issue.
If the 1 and 2 seeds are getting screwed, GREAT! They will almost always be a SEC and BIG champ anyway, so they should be able to handle it, right? If they complain about rematches with SEC /BIG conference mates, then maybe we should let in fewer of their conference mates?

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

I think you’re in the minority with wanting only 8 teams.

I could be convinced of 8 teams, but I have no desire having G5 champions in the bracket. Back in the day when I watched football on Jan 1, I thought how cool would it be to see Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Bama, ND, Michigan, etc in a playoff bracket. Not once did I think it would be good to include Northern Illinois who was playing in the Idaho Potato bowl in that bracket. But that’s just me.

I’m for 8. Top 8 conference champions. ND - tough luck.

 

[yeti92]

Plus, while they may not be full time members in football, they do play more ACC teams than any other conference and their brand brings more eyes for television which I think enhances our value come negotiating time though, it would certainly be better to have them as full time members in football, there is still some value to their part time participation.

They are not members at all in football, which hurts the ACC. If they were it would be a massive help because the games would be counted as conference games, but as it is ND wins almost every ACC game they play which hurts the perception of the conference and makes the OOC record look much worse.

 

[TampaBuzz]

I’m for 8. Top 8 conference champions. ND - tough luck.

I don't think there are 8 conferences, so I don't know what "top" 8 conference champions means. But I agree with the sentiment. Divvy all the FBS and FCS teams up into 8 conferences and the 8 conference champions go to a "Championship Tournament." If you don't win the conference; too bad, so sad....go play in the Fenway Bowl as your consolation prize. Simple; no beauty pageants, no strength of schedule discussion, no eyeball tests, no rankings. Win your conference, or go to some directional bowl game.

I imagine a college football world where the SEC and Big 10 (maybe ACC too) as we currently know them, would cease to exist. This is a world where schools/teams join a conference because they seriously want to compete for a conference/national championship - not just have access to more TV money.

 

[billga99]

I don't think there are 8 conferences, so I don't know what "top" 8 conference champions means. But I agree with the sentiment. Divvy all the FBS and FCS teams up into 8 conferences and the 8 conference champions go to a "Championship Tournament." If you don't win the conference; too bad, so sad....go play in the Fenway Bowl as your consolation prize. Simple; no beauty pageants, no strength of schedule discussion, no eyeball tests, no rankings. Win your conference, or go to some directional bowl game.

I imagine a college football world where the SEC and Big 10 (maybe ACC too) as we currently know them, would cease to exist. This is a world where schools/teams join a conference because they seriously want to compete for a conference/national championship - not just have access to more TV money.

There are 10 FBS conferences since Pac12 is trying to get it back together. Five Power Conferences (BIG, SEC, ACC, B12, P12) and five Group of Five Conferences (AAC, MAC, SunBelt, Conference USA, Moutain West). I still think 16 team playoffs with no byes is the way to go. Also everyone has to win the same number of games to be champions. Five Power Conferences (Assuming Pac12 can rebuild enough teams) and Top 2 Group of Five Champions get in with 9 at Large Teams. Question at that point is there a cap of how many teams one conference can get in? If you at least maxed it at 4 per conference, that would leave at least 3 additional slots for non-SEC and non-Big Ten schools.

 

[WreckinGT]

Reseeding a tournament is silly… defeats the whole point of a tournament. Not to mention, reseeding reinforces the bias issue.
If the 1 and 2 seeds are getting screwed, GREAT! They will almost always be a SEC and BIG champ anyway, so they should be able to handle it, right? If they complain about rematches with SEC /BIG conference mates, then maybe we should let in fewer of their conference mates?

Not really. If you are going to have an imbalanced playoff with teams getting byes then you run this risk. The NFL accounts for it. College Football doesn't. Texas lost to UGA and has an easier path to the Semifinals than UGA does. Penn St lost to Oregon and has an easier path to the semifinals than Oregon does. A system that punishes you for winning your conference championship and being one of the top teams is a poorly designed system.

 

[cpf2001]

Not really. If you are going to have an imbalanced playoff with teams getting byes then you run this risk. The NFL accounts for it. College Football doesn't. Texas lost to UGA and has an easier path to the Semifinals than UGA does. Penn St lost to Oregon and has an easier path to the semifinals than Oregon does. A system that punishes you for winning your conference championship and being one of the top teams is a poorly designed system.

Re: UGA having to (potentially) play ND… I don’t think it’s punishing a conference champ so much as blowing a bunch unwarranted smoke up Texas’s and Penn State’s ***.

Texas lost their championship game and gets to play the lowest seeded conf champ and then the next-lowest seeded one, but why are they ranked 3 to get that draw instead of ND?

 

[CEB]

Not really. If you are going to have an imbalanced playoff with teams getting byes then you run this risk. The NFL accounts for it. College Football doesn't. Texas lost to UGA and has an easier path to the Semifinals than UGA does. Penn St lost to Oregon and has an easier path to the semifinals than Oregon does. A system that punishes you for winning your conference championship and being one of the top teams is a poorly designed system.

I don’t disagree…I endorse @cpf2001 reply above.
That said, these big conferences knew exactly what they were getting into with this arrangement.
I think the committee was really worried about how to treat conference champ losers and probably over-ranked Texas and PSU. The flip side of that is inevitably that they would’ve had to reward ND with the 5 seed, dropping Tx to 6 and PSU to 7.
The 5 and 6 have an easier path in theory but they also have to win an extra game. I kind of think our perception as much as anything makes this look uneven. We’ll see if perception holds.

 

[forensicbuzz]

I agree with your first three sentences and then disagree with everything after that.

Most years you can typically see who the top 2 to 3 teams are in college football. Some years you can argue among the top 5 teams. When you include 12 teams, you are including enough fluff to produce a very high probability that you captured all of the best teams. The CFP is a competition among the best teams to determine who the best is. It’s not a reward or participation trophy, but I know some want to look at it that way.

You've got this all wrong. The CFP is not a competition among the best teams to determine who the best is. It's a made-for-TV event designed to attract viewers. It doesn't matter if Alabama is down this year, if not for Clemson beating SMU, 9-3 Alabama would have been in the CFP ahead of a 10-2 Miami team that everyone was talking about all year. So, don't fool yourself into thinking it's designed to find out who the best team is, because it's not.

Edit: By taking 12 teams, I agree that the best team in the nation that year is probably amongst the contestants.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Haha, ok. In 2003-2004 Tech played in the championship game in basketball. I think most people refer to the NCAA bball tourney as a playoff, and had Tech won, I think all of us would have called them National Champs. That year Tech finished 4th in the conference; they didn’t win the ACC tourney. The ACC had 6 of 9 teams make the tournament. The SEC only had 5 of 12 teams make the tournament.

...but i don't want a real champion.

The CFP committee doesn't crown a national champion, they recognize the winner of the CFP tournament. Other services (i.e., AP, UPI, etc.) still crown national champions.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Seriously, you don't understand how? The Prestige of the Notre Dame brand (deserved or not) puts butts in the seats at every sporting event they participate in. That means lots of ticket revenue. That includes football where they raise the average attendance numbers at every visiting stadium they play. The same holds true for basketball. In addition, their ability to make it to the NCAA tournament in sports other than football also earns the league revenue that is shared among all the teams. Plus, while they may not be full time members in football, they do play more ACC teams than any other conference and their brand brings more eyes for television which I think enhances our value come negotiating time though, it would certainly be better to have them as full time members in football, there is still some value to their part time participation.

ND's prestige doesn't put butts in seats for anything but football. Show me numbers in any sport other than football where the attendance numbers change. I don't think you can (because I don't think the numbers support that). So, I'm still asking how.

 

[forensicbuzz]

I don't think there are 8 conferences, so I don't know what "top" 8 conference champions means. But I agree with the sentiment. Divvy all the FBS and FCS teams up into 8 conferences and the 8 conference champions go to a "Championship Tournament." If you don't win the conference; too bad, so sad....go play in the Fenway Bowl as your consolation prize. Simple; no beauty pageants, no strength of schedule discussion, no eyeball tests, no rankings. Win your conference, or go to some directional bowl game.

I imagine a college football world where the SEC and Big 10 (maybe ACC too) as we currently know them, would cease to exist. This is a world where schools/teams join a conference because they seriously want to compete for a conference/national championship - not just have access to more TV money.

There are 9 conferences, P4 and G5.

 

[Richard7125]

You've got this all wrong. The CFP is not a competition among the best teams to determine who the best is. It's a made-for-TV event designed to attract viewers. It doesn't matter if Alabama is down this year, if not for Clemson beating SMU, 9-3 Alabama would have been in the CFP ahead of a 10-2 Miami team that everyone was talking about all year. So, don't fool yourself into thinking it's designed to find out who the best team is, because it's not.

Edit: By taking 12 teams, I agree that the best team in the nation that year is probably amongst the contestants.

It's definitely about the money. 100% agree. It's also about the competition. What the balance is between those is very debatable.

 

[cpf2001]

I don’t disagree…I endorse @cpf2001 reply above.
That said, these big conferences knew exactly what they were getting into with this arrangement.
I think the committee was really worried about how to treat conference champ losers and probably over-ranked Texas and PSU. The flip side of that is inevitably that they would’ve had to reward ND with the 5 seed, dropping Tx to 6 and PSU to 7.
The 5 and 6 have an easier path in theory but they also have to win an extra game. I kind of think our perception as much as anything makes this look uneven. We’ll see if perception holds.

I think this is also a self-inflicted problem of releasing ratings weekly for the hype/tv money/whatever.

The basketball tournament doesn’t have the problem of people criticizing pre- vs post-conference tournament changes. Or problems of “we had ND lower after their one loss and maybe it was too low but it’s hard for them to jump teams who haven’t lost since” or whatnot.

Just evaluate the teams and do the seeding after every game has been played. Stop evaluating frontloaded and backloaded schedules differently. Or having preseason position bias that’s so hard to overcome.

 

[forensicbuzz]

It's definitely about the money. 100% agree. It's also about the competition. What the balance is between those is very debatable.

It's much harder for a cinderella in football. App St / Michigan does happen, but not that often and definitely not when it's for all the marbles.

 

[cpf2001]

It's much harder for a cinderella in football. App St / Michigan does happen, but not that often and definitely not when it's for all the marbles.

Look at TCU.

Won a semifinal that not many people expected them to win against a blue blood program.

That’s still not what they’re remembered for though. Just for the one game where it all went wrong. Now used as a byword for “this is why we can’t let other teams in” despite winning a big game against a historical power and getting lots of eyeballs on TV while doing it.

 

[Root4GT]

Not really. If you are going to have an imbalanced playoff with teams getting byes then you run this risk. The NFL accounts for it. College Football doesn't. Texas lost to UGA and has an easier path to the Semifinals than UGA does. Penn St lost to Oregon and has an easier path to the semifinals than Oregon does. A system that punishes you for winning your conference championship and being one of the top teams is a poorly designed system.

You are making Bold assumptions on "easier path." We will know more after this year, until then we really can only guess who has the easier path.

 

[Techwood Relict]

Hey guys, most of you are Georgia Tech grads and the rest are pretty smart folks I'm sure. So I'm sure if you do not understand how the Notre Dame-ACC contract is one-sided then I have no f*****g idea how to splain it to you. That's all folks.

 

[awbuzz]

Benefits ND more in scheduling opponents and tv income. I could care less about playing them. Want a high interest game with lots of fans, schedule Tennessee or Auburn instead.

The obligatory question has to be asked...
How much less could you care? Asking for a group of friends