2018 Potential College Football Playoff(based on my proposals)

2014 intro
Flaws on current system 2014
Take on Autobids and Conf Champs Games
Preferred 16 team playoff plan        Alternate 8 team playoff plan

This is a yearly tradition for this not so popular blog. After the 4 college football playoff(really an invitational) teams are announced and the final rankings are released, I make two hypothetical brackets based on "my"(I'm far from alone from making these kinds of proposals) college football playoff plans, links are above.

But before that, here are my thoughts on the committee's current selections for our current invitational system: They were pretty good. I would have put Notre Dame in front of Clemson as Notre Dame played a tougher schedule but that's no big deal. But those are definitely the top 4 teams. Ohio State shouldn't have gotten blown out by a 6-6 team. Oklahoma isn't a small name like TCU or Baylor, so the committee wasn't gonna pull a 2014 on them.

Of course, I have to address the elephant in the room: UCF. UCF has gone at least 25 straight games without a loss, yet they still will not get a chance at the championship. UCF's schedule justifiably kept them away from the top 4 in the rankings but this just further exposes the flaw in the system. Your schedule alone should not eliminate you from a chance at the championship. Teams have little control on how strong their schedule is. If you want to rank/seed a team lower because of their schedule, that's fine. But it shouldn't completely eliminate them like it does it this system. UCF could possibly be the best team in the country, but they are again not given a chance at championship despite not losing a single game. This is a broken system, that would be fixed (or at least significantly improved) by a shift to one of the playoff plans linked above(or below).

Well enough of that, here we go:

16 team playoff plan(this one):
Based on 2018 season.

Automatic bids:Alabama(SEC), Clemson(ACC), Ohio State (B10), Oklahoma(B12), Washington(P12), UCF(AAC), App State(Sun Belt), Fresno State(Mtn West),UAB(C-USA), Northern Illinois(MAC)

At-large bids(trying to think like committee): Notre Dame, Georgia, Michigan, Florida, Washington State, LSU

At-large bids were messy this year compared to years past.

Snubs: A lot of 9-3 teams this year. There's a bunch of teams that could argue. Penn State, West Virginia, Kentucky, Syracuse, Utah and even Fresno have decent arguments. But those teams had their shot, they failed to win their conference.

Seedings/first round matchups(Trying to seed/rank them like a committee would):
1. Alabama vs. 16. Northern Illinois
2. Clemson vs. 15. UAB
3. Notre Dame vs. 14. App State
4. Oklahoma vs. 13. Fresno State
5. Georgia vs. 12. Washington State
6. Ohio State vs. 11. Washington
7. Michigan vs 10. LSU
8. UCF vs 9. Florida

Comments: Looks like an entertaining bracket to me. Alabama and Clemson should cruise, but UAB is a wonderful comeback story. Would be great to see them on a stage like that. Notre Dame has struggle against some mediocre opponents, they could be vulnerable against a good App State team(obligatory App St Michigan reference.). Oklahoma has a bad defense and went to overtime against Army, so they could be vulnerable against Fresno too. The rest of the bracket looks great. That Florida vs UCF matchup would be incredible, especially if they played in Orlando. Massive improvement from current system.


8 team playoff plan(this one):

Based on 2018 season.

Automatic bids:
Alabama(SEC), Clemson(ACC), Ohio State(B10), Oklahoma(B12), Washington(P12), UCF(best of group of 5)

At-large bids(trying to think like committee): Notre Dame, Georgia

Snubs:
Washington State(10-2): Perceived weaker schedule. Bad loss to USC. Sorry Wazzu.

Seedings/first round matchups(Trying to seed/rank them like a committee would):
1. Alabama vs. 8. Washington
2. Clemson vs. 7. UCF
3. Notre Dame vs. 6. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma vs. 5. Georgia


Comments: Looks great to me. Every matchup is very intriguing. The UCF-Clemson game would probably be more interesting with a healthy Milton but still a good matchup. This would still be really good and is a huge improvement over what we've settled for now.

Hopefully, some day greedy executives can realize that they can get even richer and improve the sport if they expand the playoff in a fair way. Maybe someone of importance can miraculously come across this obscure blog and be enlightened to the truth.(That sounded really arrogant). (I copy paste this every year but I really mean it.)