In response to
hellomrworld clean and simple 8 team playoff, left in a comment in my previous journal.
So no 2-loss Big East Champ Cinncinnatti? No acc champ? You rely solely on the rankings that everyone is upset about because they determined the winner of the big 12 south?
Problem number 1 with a playoff: Rankings, every system I see uses them, yet everyone who hates the BCS complains first and foremost about the rankings.
Problem number 2: The Conference Championship games. You are rewarding Texas and Texas for Losing. Oklahoma gets punished for winning the Big 12 south. They have to risk their playoff birth in a now meaningless Conference Championship game against Missouri. If they lose they get left out and any one of 5 teams jumps up and gladly takes their spot. So instead of people crying "But we beat them", we get "hahah you won!" In other words a situation in which one loss can greatly benefit a team. Tell me both how that is better and how that does not ruin college football. If Missouri wins the Big-12 we still may see this, which again highlights my point: The Conference Championships games are a big issue and killing the BCS does nothing to fix it. But the BCS could not reward Tech and Texas because if Missouri wins we could see USC or Penn St jump them, because they were able to win their conferences. Flexibility, a wonderful thing about the BCS, and something else we would lose with a playoff.
Right now the goal every team has is "Go undefeated." That's all any team can do. Yes it may not be enough and while that sucks and is "unfair", it is 1000x better than any situation that would reward losing a game, or make a game meaningless. There are only 12 games per team in a season, why have a top ranked team play a game that does not matter? Why have them play a game they can lose and still let them be at the top? How is that fair or better than what we have now?
Imagine if Alabama sat their starters for the Iron Bowl last week, and lost, and it did not bother them because they were preparing for the playoffs? Is that a better college football world than what we have now? No, it is not.
