With four weeks left in college football, six teams have a shot at a National Championship:

Alabama, Texas Tech, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, USC

If they had an eight team playoff with the BIG SIX conference champs and two wild cards,

Approximately TWENTY-NINE teams would still be playing for a shot at a national title.


ACC Champ - (FSU, Wake, Maryland, BC, N. Carolina, Va. Tech, Miami, Ga. Tech)
Big East Champ - (Pitt, Cincy, W. Va, Rutgers, UConn)
Big 10 Champ - (Mich. State, Penn State, Ohio State)
Big 12 Champ - (Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma, Mizzou, Nebraska, Kansas)
Pac 10 Champ - (USC, Oregon State, Oregon, Arizona, Cal)
SEC Champ - (Florida, Alabama)


On Edit:

I think it would be thirty because Utah may have a shot at one of the two wild cards.

...the odds are good that two of the top 6 will have been "upset". If those six are the only ones worthy of playing for a legitimate national title, why stretch it out to include two more?

I've always supported a "plus-one" playoff - four teams, only one additional game, and no time added to the season.

a title, but that's the current system.

In an 8 team playoff, only 4 teams will play more than they currently play since the first week of the playoffs would the same as their bowl game.


117 teams would play the same number of games as they do now.

2 would play 13 games

2 would play 14 games.

Maybe Utah. So that's seven. And when it comes down to it, your system wouldn't even bring all of the best teams to the dance - Alabama, Florida, Texas, and Texas Tech are all in the BCS top 4, and if Utah gets one of the wild-card spots, one of those four would be bumped entirely in favor of the ACC Champ or someone similar. Leaving Utah out of an 8-team tournament would be equally unjust.

It's very, very tough for me to envision a scenario where, at the end of a college football season, there are really eight teams that have a legitimate claim to play for the national title. Hell, last year, it was difficult enough to find two, and there is always the screaming match over who gets to be #2 vs. #3. Obviously, the line has to be drawn somewhere, but I think it's more reasonable to draw the line at 4, rather than 8.

They have one loss by one point and they are totally out of it now.

USC will end up 11-1 and has about a .0001 chance of playing for a championship and that's ridiculous as well.

Virginia could still win in the ACC, if they win out and Miami loses two. I can't get behind any system in which a 5-5 team that lost by four touchdowns to Duke still has a shot at the national championship. Same goes for a 6-3 team (Maryland) that got beat by Middle Tennessee State and routed by the 5-5 team that lost by four TDs to Duke. Or a team with a losing record (Rutgers) that got beat by Fresno State and Navy. Or most of the other teams on the list--I like some of those teams a lot, and I'm happy to see them in the running for conference championships and good bowl games, but I don't think they're worthy of a national title.

And the 8-team playoff wouldn't get rid of questions of fairness: why should West Virginia get a playoff bid by virtue of being conference champs, when another conference champion (East Carolina) who thoroughly dominated throughout the game and won by three touchdowns would not? Personally, I think neither West Virginia nor East Carolina deserves a shot at the national championship.

and if a conference champ doesn't, then there is another wild card spot.


But even if you didn't do that the question remains which is worse ... Giving a mediocre team a tiny chance at a championship or giving 12-0 Utah, 11-1 Penn State and 11-1 USC (and potentially 11-1 Oklahoma if they beat Texas Tech but Texas gets the Big 12 South tiebreaker) teams no shot at all?

I'm an Oklahoma fan, so I'm certainly hoping that they take the tiebreaker, but if they'd beaten Texas in the first place this wouldn't be an issue. They (like Texas, Penn State, Florida, and USC) couldn't get it done on the field ...

grr...

Well, we'll see what happens on the 22nd.
Go Sooners.

only 5 wins you are not bowl eligible.