Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenBears
West Virginia, Boise State, TCU, Oklahoma State or Stanford from 2005-2015 would've won at least one title between them if not two
More access is almost certainly going to lead to more cinderellas winning it, not fewer. There is just so much more access - instead of getting 1 cinderella in the final 4 every 2-3 years, we will have a couple in the final 12 every single year. Eventually the stars will align for one of them and they'll win.
The chaos can compound, same way it does in march madness. Just like a 10 seed can make a sick run because they got to face a 2 seed in the second round then a 6 seed in the Sweet 16.
Tulane makes it to the playoffs, and they get a lucky draw and play a no-defense USC in the first round and beat them. Then instead of getting dismantled as a 14 point dog to an Alabama juggernaut in the second round, they get to be a 7 point dog to a K-State team who upset Bama as a 7 point dog. Last year TCU smoked Michigan and got humiliated by UGA and everybody was like "oh jeez the cinderella can never win." You're telling me that TCU couldn't have sometimes beaten an Ohio State team that got smoked by the same Michigan team they just beat? Ohio State was a play away from beating UGA. Chaos compounds the more teams you put in.
Per capita, cinderellas may have less success, but there will be so many more of them and so many more paths for chaos, that the odds of one of them shipping the title have gone up by an order of magnitude (which isn't hard, as the current baseline is zero)
I think this playoffs was actually a great example of this, as this year was closer to a 12 team playoff than a 4 teamer.
Taking UM out of it, Georgia and Oregon were the two best teams, and both of them got knocked out in the de-facto quarterfinals. The chaos will compound.
Take the second tier of teams like Missouri or Kansas State or Arizona or whatever - the 10-15 "really good but not great" teams. In the 4 team playoff system their odds are basically zero since the ceiling is either 10-2 team that finishes like #10 or an 11-1 team that doesn't garner enough respect and finishes like #5-#7, and so they don't get in. Now, at least a couple of those teams will get in every year, so their odds are not zero.
And, even when such a team did catch lightning in a bottle (Michigan State, Cincinnati) they had to face Georgia and death star Bama and they got smoked. Sometimes that will still happen in the 12 team system , but sometimes they will continue to run hot and other underdogs will clear the way for them.
Like K-State might make it and face a gauntlet of Texas, Oregon Georgia and the sportswriters are like "they just don't have enough talent to win those 3 games in a row" but once in a while, they upset Texas, then get to face Washington instead of Oregon and then Bama knocks out Georgia who gets knocked out by Michigan and boom, they have tangible equity.
Not to mention all the times over the past decade where the #5-6 team that barely missed the cut (TCU, Stanford, Ok State, Boise State) might genuinely just have been the best team in the country that year
Next year is going to be sick. My only complaint is that the last minute conference realignment has really given us a dearth of big OOC games, and the schedules are crazy unbalanced. Like, Iowa going 10-2 will probably be less impressive than if Florida somehow manages to go 8-4. And, I really, really wish we could break up the K-State/Arizona and Utah/Baylor games and get some B1G/SEC opponents for the Big-12