W hy is the BT Talking About 24 or 28 Playoff Teams

[Graceland Tar Heel]

It is not about getting as many D1A (FBS) conference champs into the playoffs as possible. The BT has a very long history of acting to inhibit competition to it can claim just to be the best. The SEC allying on some level with the BT in that regard is behind much of the worst crap we've seen lately and behind virtually all that we should fear is in the pipeline.

So what is the BT doing and wanting? WE have heard much talk for a couple years from both BT and SEC people about their belief that those 2 leagues, and only them, deserve to be given 4 auto bids to a 14 or 16 team playoff. If they fear some kind of lawsuit that forces them to accept a whole of teams from not just ACC and Big 12 but the rest of D1A, then they may well think that thy could accept that if they each get 8 auto bids per year. 8 BT + 8 SEC =16 teams. 2 leagues with 2/3rds of the teams guaranteed in a 24 team playoff.Yes, BT and SEC could live with that. The 28 is probably what BT people have set as the max of teams they will be OK having that are not in BT or SEC.

And that will screw the ACC even more in every sense, vibes s vis not just the BT and SEC but also vis a vis all the leagues now ranked below the Big 12. And that is on track with historic BT actions and current SEC desires: to act so that there is basically a Top Tier, even if informal, that is just 2 leagues. Every other league is marked as being clearly lesser, clearly poorer, clearly weaker. Every other league must accept crumbs flicked at them by SEC and BT.

Again, the ACC faces something that is akin to permanent demotion. If the ACC stands pat, that will happen. 100% certainty. Why? Because the SEC and BT will be offering all the top value ACC members both more TV money for regular season deals and many more opportunities to get into the playoffs, which the BT and SEC will control between them as no truly strong 3rd conference has emerged. So we would see both SEC and BT expand to 20, maybe 24, at the expense of theACC. Like the Pac, the ACC would survive, and certainly have 1 charter member at least (Wake Forest), and the ACC would be anything but a Major conference. With no realistic possibility of ever regaining that status.

For the ACC to be able to step up and deal with SEC and BT as equals, meaning that 3 leagues rather than just 2 will work on defining how Top Tier CFB operates its post-season, the ACC must reposition itself to gain more of what makes for CFB wealth and power. The ACC needs to drop CFB dead weight in terms of value to TV and replay with greater value to TV. The ACC also must act to prepare for the moves he SEC and BT will make to try to cut the ACC out by claiming it has much weaker value, hence it deserves many fewer teams in the payoffs. That is what all the Sec and BT talk about those 2 schussing a bunch of OOC games between is signaling: they will play each other OOC and play the ACC as little as possible.

The ACC needs to become super sized so it easily can play 10 leagues games in football.

In past times of conference crunch we had first Idaho left out of the reconfigured Pac, and then Rice left behind permanently when the SWC dissolved. The ACC faces an existential crisis. Hoping for the good will of SEC and BT, ESPN and Fox, is worse than naively stupid. Doing nothing waiting for top value schools to leave is just plain lazy cowardice.

[Charleston Pony]

The initial FBS playoffs with 12 teams and the 4 highest rated teams getting 1st round byes left a lot of pretty strong teams thinking they deserved a shot. If the FBS adopted the same format as the FCS has (with 24 teams competing and 8 teams getting 1st round byes), the SEC & B1G could throw everyone else a bone and still have multiple bids. What if the 8 byes were awarded to the Power 4 Conference champs AND champions of the 4 highest rated conference champions of what has become the G6 (American, PAC, SBC, MWC, CUSA & MAC). That leaves 16 "at-large" bids and you could re-seed after those 1st round games are played allowing some of the at-large winners to host a lower rated conference champion. While the SEC and B1G might dominate the at-large selections in most years, the ACC and Big XII should have multiple participants in most years and in any give year the G6 would even have an opportunity to get 2 teams in. This would be football's version of March Madness with the strongest conferences having multiple participants while giving (almost) everyone a shot. The networks do like the David vs Goliath games with the possibility of exciting upsets and I suspect they would like to see an expanded playoffs (vs bowl games that are basically like basketball's NIT of CBI/CIT).

Even if it could be accomplished, I'm not sure an expanded ACC (All Coasts Conference) constituted of the 18-24 strongest football programs outside of the SEC and B1G is necessarily going to be a conference that would be valued as highly as those two because they (for the most part) consist of large public schools with huge enrollments, alumni and fan bases by comparison with many of the schools in other conferences.

[fan]

What the Big 10 has proposed kinda lines up with what our head football coach was talking about a while ago although he was talking more about intra-conference 'playoffs'. His suggestion that an expanded CFP would interest more fan bases seems to be what the Big 10 is trying to get at in this day and age of mega conferences. The 7-7-5-5-2-2 model means the ACC could get 7 teams in but at worst get 5. That's probably not a bad deal for the ACC or the Big 12 for that matter.
Would it be enough to keep the band together? Who knows.