Paul Johnson prefers 16-team playoff
GREENSBORO, N.C. - To Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, the adoption of a four-team playoff to determine a national football champion is merely a step in the right direction.
Johnson, who won two FCS (then Division I-AA) national championships at Georgia Southern by outlasting 16-team fields, said he would prefer a similar format for FBS.
“You take 11 [conference champions] and then you add five at-large [teams], give ’em a chance,” Johnson said this week at ACC Media Days. “If your conference hasn’t done well, you become the 16th seed. You have to go play against No. 1, but at least you had a chance.”
Of eight ACC coaches who were surveyed, three agreed with Johnson in expanding the format, although they favored an eight-team playoff instead of Johnson’s 16. Two professed a wait-and-see stance and two would like to stay at four.
Besides Johnson, those favoring expansion liked the idea of giving champions of the five “power” conferences – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC – access into the field along with three at-large teams.
“If you win a conference with 10 wins, then you ought to be able to play for a national championship,” N.C. State coach Tom O’Brien said. “If you go to eight teams, you can probably accommodate something like that. At four, that might not be good.”
Miami coach Al Golden and Virginia coach Mike London also supported expanding to eight teams.
“You’re talking to a guy that won the national championship [at Richmond] among 16 teams,” London said.
While an argument against a larger playoff holds that the regular season’s importance would be diminished, Golden contended that the automatic bids for conference champions and the chase for an at-large bid would retain the regular season’s importance.
With a four-team field, “one loss and you’re out for the most part,” he said. “But now you’re saying you’ve got to win your conference or apply this formula to be one of those next three [at-large teams]? I think that would be incredible.”
Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney like a four-team playoff. Fisher allowed that an eight-team playoff could give a team more leeway to overcome an injury-plagued stretch of the season, but pointed to the NFL for a reason against it.
“Does the best team during the regular season win the Super Bowl?” he asked. “Most of the time, not.”
Both Fisher and Swinney minimized the need for an additional playoff round by contending that conference championship games are de facto playoff games.
“I think what we have really protects that regular season and it also adds a little bit of flavor to the end of the postseason and maybe solves a little of the debate,” Swinney said. “I personally don’t think we’ve spent a lot of time arguing about the fifth and sixth team. I’m sure that’ll happen, but it’s been more the second, third, fourth team.”
Neither Boston College’s Frank Spaziani nor Wake Forest’s Jim Grobe were sure. Grobe cautioned that an eight-team playoff would create a considerable physical burden for players.
“I think if we went to eight, we’d have to cut back to 11 games [in the regular season], get one of those games off the table maybe,” Grobe said.
Spaziani said he didn’t know why playoffs were necessary in the first place.
“The [BCS] system was [considered] so bad, yet college football was going like this in attendance, excitement,” he said, raising his hand in an upward arc. “TV exposure went up and up, [but critics said], ‘It stinks! It stinks!’ … I don’t know. What’s wrong with that?”
Starting in 2014, the college football world will find out. And if Johnson wants to lead the Yellow Jackets into a 16-team playoff, he’ll have to wait until his 19th season to do so. The four-team format is contracted to run through the 2025 season.
Ken Sugiura, Georgia Tech blog
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192 comments Add your comment
Sam Houston
July 25th, 2012
8:37 am
Back when the conferences played 10 games everyone in the conference played each other, so at the end of the season you had a real champion. Since the conferences had less teams everyone had to play each other and could not schedule a bunch of cupcakes to boost their win column.
When play-offs were mentioned the answer was, to many games for the student athlete. But the next step the colleges took was to add one more game and some years later one more.
This means every school must play two extra games a year, verses a few schools having to play a game or two extra trying to win a national championship.
Bottom line the big boys couldn’t handle what the smaller colleges had been doing for years.
The smaller colleges have had their playoff and named their champion before the big boys even start their bowls. Sometimes having a four , five or six week break.
What the bowl system had become is rewarding teams for a 6-6 record and let them go to a bowl game and loose money and plaly before a half filled stadium.
Wal-Mart Retards
July 25th, 2012
8:38 am
Why do the low-life in-bred hamandegger Bullfrawgs on here like the idea of a 4-team playoff? It’s simple. They can only count to 4.
Birmingham Jacket
July 25th, 2012
8:50 am
@crackbaby
Yes, I did. Season ticket holder for 12 yrs.
The difference is, Johnson’s “lesser recruits” don’t beat Richt’s Dawgs!
gbal
July 25th, 2012
8:55 am
Can go with the 16, though I think 8 is the right number. But 11 confrence champs getting an auto invite? Com’on CPJ. Talk about creating some blowout games and wasted spots.
Be it 4, 8, or 16 teams in a playoff, the goal should be to have a system that insures the highest liklihood possible of capturing the best X # of teams in the nation to determine a winner of the NC on the field. It wont be 100% accurate and there will always be a bubble…but effort to get the best in the field, not “GIVE EVERYBODY A CHANCE” Com’on CPJ.
Bottom feeder confrrences will argee…. Everyone should have a chance.
Top tier confrences will agree…. Best teams should be in.
The true fans…. will want best teams IN
Strange Murphy
July 25th, 2012
8:59 am
Why does Paul even care? Not like Tech would ever make it.
gbal
July 25th, 2012
9:01 am
Look at the BCS system and rankings going into the bowl games.
The system got it right on 80% of the bowl games…. Meaning….
82 % of the bowl games….. the higher BCS ranked team won the bowl game.
The there exceptions… #2 Bama beat #1 LSU…. UGA looses to M.ST, and one other….
Thats a fact an a pretty good %.
Let the BCS formula pick the top 4, 8, or 16…. and let em play.
Hey HighTech
July 25th, 2012
9:02 am
One win against the Dawgs in how many years now?
gbal
July 25th, 2012
9:11 am
Everyone has a chance…. Before a season starts, not at the end.
Field a good team, schedule quality opponents, win your games against quality opponents….
Theres your chance! Not at the end of the season when you went 10-3, lose to GT, NC State, and SC but won your weak confrence….
TDS
July 25th, 2012
9:27 am
They don’t have conference champ games in the small school league.
Also with conferences expanding, it will make it harder to really determine a winner cause half the teams won’t even play each other and some teams like ga this year will get a soft and unfair advantage in scheduling. 16 teams is way too big. With the current conference format, 4 is fine but if we get these mega ones, 8 would be enough. When wake beat gt that year in the worst conf champ game ever, can u imagine that team playing bama or lsu. lol
Mike
July 25th, 2012
9:30 am
I like the fact he is for it, but I think it would be too hard to fit 16 into the bowl system. 8 is where it should stop. You could take the top 6 conference champs (or 6 current ACQ champs) with 2 at large bids. One at large would be given to Notre Dame if they qualify. Those 8 would be your BCS bowl teams. Play the first round the week after conference championship games. The four winners play New Years day in two BCS bowls for a shot at the National title a week later. The four losers play in the other two BCS bowls.
Mike
July 25th, 2012
9:34 am
Personally, I’m fed up with the coaches, administrators, and fans that want to coddle the most broken post season in sports. The regular season is not a playoff. it never is. 1-AA opponents or FBS bottom feeder teams or even average opponets that litter every team’s schedule dont make a playoff. Only quality opponents will be there. No one in college football currently plays a 3-4 game stretch as tough as a 8-16 team playoff would be….NO ONE.
Ramblnwrek
July 25th, 2012
9:55 am
I believe the main reason you wont see Div 1 playoff the resembles the Div 2 is the number of season games. Each team would have to give up at least one home game. That is a lot of money to the big schools. I remember reading somewhere, that Florida has seven home games every year. Which is why they are against the 9 game SEC schedule. It would mean that every other year they could only have 6. When you are not playing at home, you dont get the money. Try to get Texas and Ohio State to give up a home game. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but I dont see it.
Freezekalo
July 25th, 2012
9:56 am
I think going to an 8 team system works best.
Every year you have teams who jump out of nowhere into the rankings because they got a good system and players coming together and doing well in their conference.
Look at Stanford three years ago. In 2008, they were 5-7. In 2009, they were 8-4 and played in the Sun Bowl, which many mediocre teams do. And then Stanford wasn’t even ranked at the top of the season, but Andrew Luck and company started playing well, went 11-1 & made it into the Orange Bowl and blew out Virginia Tech.
So teams can emerge as potential national title contenders out of nowhere. And having a 4 team system only captures those who were in the top 10 at the beginning of the season who has 1 loss and possibly didn’t even win their conference – example of Alabama from last year.
So I believe the 8 team system that would open up the field with some at-large births would be better because a true contender can start out in the season as nobodies and whoop a ranked foe in the Orange Bowl.
The 4-team system will capture the top 10 teams and that’s it. But an 8-team system is more exciting and opens the field up for better games and a TRUE champion.
Freeze
Cliff Claven
July 25th, 2012
10:03 am
Of course he wants a 16 team playoff. Then Tech has a chance to make it every year and can do some damage since it’s difficult to prepare for their offense in only a weeks time. Glad he’s looking out for himself and not college football as a whole.
CFB Fan
July 25th, 2012
10:03 am
I am looking for someone to shoot holes in this scenario.
My non-poll solution to the current situation is two-part. The first part is to create 12, ten-team conferences (currently there are 11 Division 1 FBS conferences). The teams will play a total of 12 games (9 against the teams in the same conference, 2 against out of conference opponents to account for any current out of conference rivalries, and 1 against an FCS school). The season will start on the last Saturday in August and end on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. The second part of my solution begins when the regular season ends. Each of the twelve conference champions will receive automatic berths in a 16-team playoff. The remaining four teams will be selected in the following format:
1. Best record of the remaining teams
2. Head-to-head results
3. Total points allowed
4. Total yards allowed
5. Fewest penalties
You will notice that after the first two tie-breakers, I used two defensive statistical rankings rather than offensives statistical rankings to eliminate the need for teams to run-up the score to improve its chances of making the playoffs if it finds itself in a situation where it is subject to tiebreakers.
This format will use 15 of the 34 bowl games currently played, giving meaning to some otherwise meaningless bowl games. The games will be rotated among the following bowls, with the Rose, Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar rotating among the semi-finals and finals with the odd team in the quarterfinals.
Round of 16 Quarterfinals
Chick-Fil-A Sun
Texas Las Vegas
Little Caesars Gator
Outback Rose (BCS)
Cotton
Insight
Alamo
Holiday
Semi-finals Final
Fiesta (BCS) Sugar (BCS)
Orange (BCS)
Wilson Pickett
July 25th, 2012
10:04 am
You might get to 8 teams over time but you will never get the Presidents to go for 16. Beside the players can’t handle that much at Division 1.
@crackbaby…Bama lost three games in 2010 but was without a doubt one of the best teams at the end at the end and finished in the top 10. LSU by a touchdown and Auburn by one point. Give USCe all the credit for kicking Bama’s azz with almost a perfect game from the drunk QB and great playing from their defense as well.
JK
July 25th, 2012
10:05 am
The 4 team playoff is as perfect as it can get. There is no way the best team will be left out. The regular season will stay intact. The athletes involved will still be able to focus on academics rather than playing in a tournament style championship. Everybody wins. Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HighTech
July 25th, 2012
10:07 am
Hey HighTech
July 25th, 2012
9:02 am
One win against the Dawgs in how many years now?
—————————————-
1 out of 4 since CPJ became the coach. Thanks for caring.
Freezekalo
July 25th, 2012
10:13 am
@Cliff Claven
I am sure that CPJ didn’t say that so Tech could get int the top 16 to have a shot. GT will get the ship righted again and could easily jump up into the top 6 as it did in 2009-2010 when we are clicking on all cylinders.
But I think CPJ like the 16 game model because he has seen the effectiveness of it at the D-II level. I mean I watch the D-II games every year and it is exciting to watch.
Don’t forget, D-I football is the ONLY NCAA sport to not have a playoff at all. And so he is someone of the voice of reason and has seen what it takes to win a title with a 16 team playoff and has the right to claim it.
I don’t know if the same can be said for many other D-I coaches…
Freeze
JK
July 25th, 2012
10:14 am
@Wilson Pickett – Agreed, there is no reason to put the players through that much physical punishment at D1 level. They already go through enough. They already added an extra game not too long ago. Now the championship game will add another game for the two best teams. Enough is enough. As for Bama in 2010…sure that was a good team but the truth is, they didn’t deserve to play for a championship. Gotta prove it in the regular season. If feel that Bama also did not deserve to play in the BCS last year. They lost to LSU in the regular season. UGA would have a couple championships since 1980 if they were given the same opportunity as Bama was given last year. Under this format, that won’t happen any longer.
Supersize that order, mutt
July 25th, 2012
10:15 am
@ Birmingham Jacket……you continually bemoan the “fact” that CPJ “can’t recruit,” and therefore can’t beat the dwags. You probably think Gailey did a better job recruiting, although IMHO that happened in only one particular year, and yet his teams didn’t beat the dwags either. So how do you account for that?
CENTBACKER
July 25th, 2012
10:24 am
This is how the 16 team playoff would have looked like last year:
(1) LSU (SEC Champ)
(16) Louisiana Tech (WAC Champ)
(8) Wisconsin (Big Ten Champ)
(9) South Carolina (At Large)
(5) Stanford (At Large)
(12) West Virginia (Big East Champ)
(4) Oregon (PAC 10 Champ)
(13) Southern Miss (C-USA Champ)
(2) Alabama (At Large)
(15) Northern Illinois (MAC Champ)
(7) Arkansas (At Large)
(10) TCU (Mountain West Champ)
(6) Boise St. (At Large)
(11) Clemson (ACC Champ)
(3) Oklahoma St. (Big 12 Champ)
(14) Arkansa St. (Sun Belt Champ)
Only a couple of intriguing match-ups in that first round in Wisconsin-South Carolina, Arkansa-TCU, and Boise St.-Clemson, others would be yawners. So how is this better?
GTBob
July 25th, 2012
10:28 am
16 teams would be the only actual fair way to do it. Maybe then the NCAA would actually recognize the champion. Anything less and we are still guessing who the best team was.
GTBob
July 25th, 2012
10:35 am
So how is this better?
Every team could actually play their way into the playoffs instead of hoping that a bunch of old men at ESPN think they are good enough. Most of the teams in the FBS right now cannot possibly win a championship. Do you think that is a good thing?
Freezekalo
July 25th, 2012
10:41 am
@GTBob
Agreed! Agreed!
Master
July 25th, 2012
10:42 am
11 conf champions? is he on drugs? 3/4 of the conference champs are crap.
Master
July 25th, 2012
10:43 am
You’re an idiot Bob.
Rick James
July 25th, 2012
10:45 am
@GTBob
16 teams would be the only actual fair way to do it. Maybe then the NCAA would actually recognize the champion. Anything less and we are still guessing who the best team was.
———————————————————————————————————————-
16 teams is not the fair way it just increases the chances of an ACC team getting in.Under the four team system we may never see ACC team get in because of the weakness of the conference.
Master
July 25th, 2012
10:46 am
Too many conferences and teams in div 1. They need to widdle it down to about 64 teams and 4 conferences and then you can have a real playoff. Saying La tech or toledo or some wac or mtn west team is on par with the big conf schools is a joke. That’s the problem. Need to have tiers for college football. The smaller schools need to be in their own division.
gbal
July 25th, 2012
10:49 am
CFB Fan – My thought is that confrences would have to be totally realigned to make them even as far as quality of teams. This will never happen.
There are so many teams in college football that parity among confrences and teams is just not condusive to a system like this.
It works in the NFL…. Fewer teams and there is a DRAFT that helps to somewhat equalize confrences and teams. PARITY Also the league dictates out of division schedule based on previous years performance in an effort to neutralize the strength of schedule issues..
The NCAA D1 is just too big to work like this.
The BCS formula in my opinion actually did a pretty good job of ranking teams. Look at W-L records over the season and in about 83% of the cases, the higher ranked teams won. Thats pretty good %.
I think the BCS system in combination with an 8 team playoff with the big 6 winners getting in IF they end the season ranked in the top 10-12… then a couple of at large…. this would insure the best tteams in the nation are in the playoff and we have a great tournement to decide the final outcome.
5150 UOAD
July 25th, 2012
10:54 am
Master……If those conference champs are crap because of weak competition then they will not win so why do you care.
What conference champs in the playoffs will do is to spread more of the competition and recruits around. Not every great kid will just think of the SEC. IMO
Anderson
July 25th, 2012
10:57 am
I actually agree with GT CPJ that the four team playoff is merely a step in the right direction. I think four teams is too few as I would have liked to have seen at minimum a six team playoff format with the top two teams having a bye game.
I can see CPJ’s logic for a 16 team (11 conference champions and 5 at large teams) playoff format. It would obviously have to mean slicing a couple of games from the regular season. Personally, I do not have a problem with that.
HighTech
July 25th, 2012
11:00 am
Rick James
July 25th, 2012
10:45 am
@GTBob
16 teams would be the only actual fair way to do it. Maybe then the NCAA would actually recognize the champion. Anything less and we are still guessing who the best team was.
———————————————————————————————————————-
16 teams is not the fair way it just increases the chances of an ACC team getting in.Under the four team system we may never see ACC team get in because of the weakness of the conference.
——————————————————————-
I can understand why some would think this. Also, it is not likely that a C-USA team would ever beat a SEC “Superpower” in a playoff scenario. It’s never happened in a bowl game, has it?
gbal
July 25th, 2012
11:03 am
5150 – Just because in theory, when you get to a playoff, you always want the best teams in that playoff. Thats logical? I mean several of the 11 cnfrence champs were not even ranked at the end of last season an others were very low. You just want as competqive a playoff as you can possibly have.
gbal
July 25th, 2012
11:03 am
5150 – Just because in theory, when you get to a playoff, you always want the best teams in that playoff. Thats logical? I mean several of the 11 cnfrence champs were not even ranked at the end of last season an others were very low. You just want as competqive a playoff as you can possibly have.
Fan of the Game
July 25th, 2012
11:09 am
I really loved the old days when nobody really cared who the National Champion was. Sure you had final rankings but there just wasn’t that much emphasis on it. You played your regular season and then if you had a good year you were rewarded with a bowl trip. Certain conferences were locked in certain bowls. You had the Southwest to the Cotton, SEC to the Sugar, Big 8 to the Orange, Pac 10 and Big 10 to the Rose. These were big time rivalries and alot of pride in defeating the other conference. You also had smaller bowls which rewarded teams that didn’t win the conference championships. Bottom line was that it was fun for the fans and especially the players being rewarded for a good season. I wish we would go back to this. You aren’t filling stadiums today because of teams dreaming for the National Championship games, you are filling them because of college football being a great game and social event. The NCAA fell into this ESPN trap. They are running college football and raking in the money. Look over the last 10 to 15 years only a few teams actually compete for the National Championship. Lets do what is best for all go back the way it use to be.
GTBob
July 25th, 2012
11:09 am
16 teams is not the fair way it just increases the chances of an ACC team getting in.Under the four team system we may never see ACC team get in because of the weakness of the conference.
That’s perfectly fine. I really don’t care if the ACC makes it in the 4 team or 16 team playoff. However, if not every team can win a championship simply by winning football games then you don’t have an actual championship. You have the year end ESPN invitational tournament.
dawgfan
July 25th, 2012
11:14 am
Under Johnson’s plan the ACC Chump will get preferential treatment over an SEC team that won 11 or 12 games but didn’t win its conference. It happens ever year: 2008 Alabama. 2009 Florida. 2010 LSU. 2012 Alabama. The ACC Chump should get in automatically while outstanding teams like that have to hope for an at large bid? Simply laughable. Those 4 teams I just listed would have crapped all over the ACC Chump during those years. It sounds like communism or affirmative action to me. It sounds like Paul Johnson wants a hand out. Maybe he should think about beating Georgia and winning a bowl game and then we’ll start listening to what he has to say about a playoff. No free lunches. This is America Jack.
Class dismissed.
CFB Fan
July 25th, 2012
11:16 am
Master
If so many conferences are crap, why not create a new division that only includes teams from the 6 “power” conferences and move the rest of the conferences to their own crap division? Otherwise, if a team is in the FBS subdivision, then why should they start off the season with no chance to play for a championship (see Boise State)? Even if Boise ended the season undefeated, they would have most likely been excluded from the National Championship game. I here arguments about strength-of-schedule, but I do not factor that into who is the best team because, ultimately a team has no control over that, and here’s why.
Let’s say that today (end of July), I have the ability to create the schedule for UGA, and I want to make sure that I have the highest strength-of-schedule of any FBS team. I go out and schedule the top 12 teams from last season. Now, let’s fast forward to the end of the regular season, and UGA is undefeated, AND all 12 teams that UGA scheduled end up with 6-6 (or worse) records. Should UGA be punished (by possibly not being chosen to play for the National Championship) because its opponent’s ended up with poor records?
5150 UOAD
July 25th, 2012
11:16 am
This summers Iron Jackets
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151114349287667&set=a.39990422666.72937.704432666&type=1&theater
Alphare
July 25th, 2012
11:18 am
CPJ sounds logical to me. But the thing is, even the current 2-teams system is OK with me. One of the reasons college football is so popular is because people arguing so much which teams are the 2 best teams. 4-teams may still cause lots of controversies and thus talk, but a 16-team can quiet lots of people and thus less talk.
But is less talk a good thing or bad thing?
5150 UOAD
July 25th, 2012
11:18 am
US Women’s Soccer v France game at 11:30 on NBC Sports.
5150 UOAD
July 25th, 2012
11:19 am
Jay Inyoface Finch It’s not just lifting but 435 on bench 400 on clean and 550X3 on squat
GTBob
July 25th, 2012
11:20 am
Under Johnson’s plan the ACC Chump will get preferential treatment over an SEC team that won 11 or 12 games but didn’t win its conference.
You really think an 11-12 win SEC team is not going to get one or more of the 5 at large bids?
gbal
July 25th, 2012
11:20 am
CFB — Sorry, but you are out there buddy.
Joker
July 25th, 2012
11:22 am
What a joke. Tech coaches, players, or fans needn’t worry at all about the playoff format unless it become a 32 team event. They can watch it on TV after getting throttled by UGA, then maybe playing in the AA high school championship, aka, ACC Champ. game.
Master
July 25th, 2012
11:31 am
CFB fan
I wrote that in the next post. Hello???
5150 UOAD
July 25th, 2012
11:32 am
JOKER….don’t you have a movie theater to shoot up or bomb to make?
GTBob
July 25th, 2012
11:33 am
CFB Fan, you are right on the money. College Football for the most part is just the same teams playing each other every year. Teams will schedule maybe one quality out of conference opponent every year and that is scheduled well in advance with a hope that they will be good when the game actually happens. Its a bit of a joke. That’s why I laugh when I hear people say that an RPI system should be used in college football. It would never work.
Joe 12-Pack
July 25th, 2012
11:44 am
PJ is out of touch with reality.