CFB offseason thread 2025

[Slacker]

https://sports.yahoo.com/college-fo...hes-hit-with-8-year-show-cause-221801690.html

Hahaha, sick burn ...

The Los Angeles Chargers coach was asked about Michigan's penalties from the NCAA for the Connor Stalions scandal after his team's 23-22 preseason loss to the Los Angeles Rams. And Harbaugh made his statement about the matter pretty simple and straightforward.

"Like I said to you last year, I'm not engaging," Harbaugh said in his postgame news conference. ...

In the moments after the win, the Rams poked a little fun at Michigan's punishment on social media.

 

[justgladtobehere]

An 'Other receiving votes' is going to get in? BC is making the playoffs!

 

[TigerVols]

This marks the one and only time I will be engaging with these announcers.

 

[Batman]

College football fans for 50 years: We need a playoff! Why can't we have a playoff!? Here's 27 different ways a playoff would work and you can keep the bowls! Get your heads out of your asses and give us a playoff!
<The college football powers that be come up with a playoff system that incorporates the bowls>
College football fans: This sucks.

 

[dixiehack]

I hear fans complaining about the playoff but I don’t hear a groundswell from them wanting more teams. Some do but it is far from a universal sentiment. That subject is being driven hard by schools and conferences, the same ones looking to shoehorn in extra NCAA tournament teams that viewers weren’t asking for.

 

[Batman]

I hear fans complaining about the playoff but I don't hear a groundswell from them wanting more teams. Some do but it is far from a universal sentiment. That subject is being driven hard by schools and conferences, the same ones looking to shoehorn in extra NCAA tournament teams that viewers weren't asking for.

I'm in that camp. Twelve is fine, 16 would be OK, but any more than that is becoming absurd. Like the basketball tournament shows us every year, no matter how many teams you put in there's going to be some team right on the bubble complaining about being screwed over that they didn't make it.

I hate the "the playoff devalues the regular season argument" because:
1) It doesn't. You still need to win 10+ games to get in, and there's still a path to play your way in by winning your conference like several teams did last year.
2) It doesn't make a loss on Labor Day weekend — or a close conference loss to another top team — a death sentence. In the old system, whoever loses that Texas-Ohio State game on Aug. 30 (or LSU-Clemson or Notre Dame-Miami) might run the table afterward and still have no chance at a national championship. Is that really good for the sport? At least in the playoff system you can still play your way back into the discussion.

That said, going to 24 or 28 teams does devalue the regular season. The regular season is the winnowing out process. There might be five really good, worthy teams in the SEC or Big Ten in a given year. But once you start getting down to the seventh- or eighth-best who often populate Nos. 20-25 in the AP Top 25 you're getting to the stupid point. Those teams showed over the course of 12 weeks that they're not good or consistent enough to be in the mix.
The only good thing that might come out of that is that you might get top players sticking around instead of opting out like they're doing for bowl games. If there's something on the line (and if it's written into their contracts) then maybe they'll play.

 

[dixiehack]

Alabama loses a starter at one of its weakest positions.

Jam Miller Sustains Upper-Body Injury, Expected to Miss Multiple Games

 

[Cosmo]

I've always been a proponent of 16 with every conference champion getting in, along with six at-larges. I want Bowling Green to be playing for something tangible, even if it's a 45-0 ass whipping in the first round at Ohio State. I could even see 20 with the best G5 team automatically going to the main bracket and the other four in two play-in games. Last year, it would have looked like this:

Jacksonville State (CUSA)/Army (AAC) at 1 Oregon (B1G)
9 Boise State (MWC) at 8 Indiana (At-large)
12 Arizona State (B12) at 5 Notre Dame (AL)
13 Clemson (ACC) at 4 Penn State (AL)
14 Miami (AL) at 3 Texas (AL)
11 Alabama (AL) at 6 Ohio State (AL)
10 SMU (AL) at 7 Tennessee (AL)
Ohio (MAC)/Marshall (Sun Belt) at 2 Georgia (SEC)

Your first teams out would be Ole Miss and South Carolina.

You'd only have to add one week for the mid-majors to sort things out -- one game on Thursday night, one on Friday night. Army-Navy maintains its highlight spot on Saturday. Makes too much sense to actually be implemented, though.

EDIT: To add that there would have to be some obvious moving around of things if Army or Navy was in that first-round game, as is the case in this example.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Twenty-four teams, no bowl participation trophies, and Army & Navy agree to move their game out of December.

 

[tapintoamerica]

Twenty-four teams, no bowl participation trophies, and Army & Navy agree to move their game out of December.

I don’t think the Pentagon would go for that. Pushes players closer to graduation-commission date. It’s hard enough for linemen to drop weight in that final semester.

 

[Chef2]

Nothing says big time football like Stanford @ Hawaii on big CBS at 7:30 this Saturday.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

Does Stanford have 13 games scheduled then?

 

[BTExpress]

If I don't have a knot in my stomach on the Third Saturday In October because "Eh, we can afford to lose this one," then there's no point IMO.

In the olden days you still might could have afforded the loss . . . but you didn't know it at the time.

 

[Meat Slapping Sound]

I'm in that camp. Twelve is fine, 16 would be OK, but any more than that is becoming absurd. Like the basketball tournament shows us every year, no matter how many teams you put in there's going to be some team right on the bubble complaining about being screwed over that they didn't make it.

I hate the "the playoff devalues the regular season argument" because:
1) It doesn't. You still need to win 10+ games to get in, and there's still a path to play your way in by winning your conference like several teams did last year.
2) It doesn't make a loss on Labor Day weekend — or a close conference loss to another top team — a death sentence. In the old system, whoever loses that Texas-Ohio State game on Aug. 30 (or LSU-Clemson or Notre Dame-Miami) might run the table afterward and still have no chance at a national championship. Is that really good for the sport? At least in the playoff system you can still play your way back into the discussion.

That said, going to 24 or 28 teams does devalue the regular season. The regular season is the winnowing out process. There might be five really good, worthy teams in the SEC or Big Ten in a given year. But once you start getting down to the seventh- or eighth-best who often populate Nos. 20-25 in the AP Top 25 you're getting to the stupid point. Those teams showed over the course of 12 weeks that they're not good or consistent enough to be in the mix.
The only good thing that might come out of that is that you might get top players sticking around instead of opting out like they're doing for bowl games. If there's something on the line (and if it's written into their contracts) then maybe they'll play.

Any expansion is going to turn down the importance of individual regular season games at least a little. If we were still at four, Ohio State's inexplicable loss to Michigan last season would have kept them out of the playoff instead of it just being a footnote on the path to a national title. Obviously, don't try telling Buckeyes or Wolverines that the game means less now, but in the grand scheme of it all, it does.

With four teams, you basically had to go 11-1. With 12, you need to go 10-2 to feel safe. With 16, maybe 9-3 will get you in. Losses mean less the more you expand, thus regular season games don't have the same weight. I disagree with those who use the word "devalue" because every coach, player and fan still wants to win every Saturday. But the emphasis is shifting more toward the postseason now. And I don't think anyone wants it to resemble college basketball, where the postseason is the ONLY thing that anyone really cares about.

I was a fan of the four-team playoff (until my team was kept out), but I think eight teams is the right number.

 

[BTExpress]

Given that most top-tier teams have only one "loseable" game among their OOC games, you're basically in the 16-team playoff mix if you go 6-3 outside of the dreck.

Tennessee loses to Alabama, Georgia and Florida but beats Syracuse, dreck, dreck, dreck, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Vanderbilt . . . and is playoff worthy?

That's just not a high enough bar IMO. And it's inching too close to college basketball.

 

[BitterYoungMatador2]

Most of us wanted a playoff and didn't give a good Goddam if the bowls survived, thrived or died. We knew the entire bowl system was designed 100 years ago to promote tourism to whatever region the game was played in and become nothing but a pork project for the conferences and the TV networks. Kind of like, when Americans were asking for universal healthcare, their idea was Medicare for all, not some goofy system where it is a law that you must buy healthcare and navigate some complicated process for purchase.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

Given that most top-tier teams have only one "loseable" game among their OOC games, you're basically in the 16-team playoff mix if you go 6-3 outside of the dreck.

Tennessee loses to Alabama, Georgia and Florida but beats Syracuse, dreck, dreck, dreck, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, Vanderbilt . . . and is playoff worthy?

That's just not a high enough bar IMO. And it's inching too close to college basketball.

That's exactly where I am, BT. As much of a fan as I am of my middle-of-the-road Big Ten program, and how I'd love to see them in the CFP, if there ever comes a day when Iowa is in the playoff, I'll know in my heart it's only because of a pool that's way too big, or it's a fluke, or it deserves an asterisk. Probably all three.

I'm content where it's at with 12 teams, ideally should be 8, I think 16 is too many, and the 24 to 28? GTFO. Make it mean something.

 

[dixiehack]

@BitterYoungMatador2 And then blame the frustrated consumer for "getting what they asked for."

 

[HanSenSE]

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the P4 schools wanted more teams in when they became megaconferences.

 

[MileHigh]

12 is fine with only guaranteed spots for conference champions. None of this SEC and B1G automatically get so many slots. No. If you're good enough you'll get in.