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The first 12-team College Football Playoff concluded Monday night, and, by Tuesday morning, the suggestion box was stuffed with ideas to improve the product.
Stop automatically giving the four highest CFP seeds to conference champions. Play the first and second rounds on campus sites. Tighten the schedule so the title game is played earlier than Jan. 20.
Over the last week Phillips shared several ideas the league will consider:
Giving the regular-season champion a bye and matching the second- and third-place teams in the ACC title game in Charlotte.
A similar idea is being discussed by other conferences.Having the league’s No. 1 and No. 4 teams as well as the Nos. 2 and 3 teams play in the final week of the regular season, with the winners a
That one is outside the box, a different way of approaching the post-season.
The goal, of course, would be to boost the league’s chances of getting as many teams as possible into the 12-team field. I salute the brain-storming and debate. Making the ACC format different would bring ACC attention it needs.
But there are questions, questions, questionsI like Phillips’ idea of rewarding the regular-season champion. Showing dominance over eight games is a greater accomplishment than being the best team over 60 minutes.
But … you’d would have to designate in advance which team would be given the ACC’s automatic playoff slot. That’s how it works in basketball. The conference tournament winner automatically goes to the NCAA Tournament, In leagues that typically earn only one bid, the regular-season champ often gets burned.
If you said it was the regular-season champ, a second-place team that was on the bubble could be knocked out of consideration with a loss in the ACC title game. And if the third-place team already had a pair of losses, they would not be a playoff lock by beating the league’s second-place team
SMU would have bypassed the ACC title game —and made the playoff anyway because the Mustangs earned a spot in December even after losing the ACC title game to Clemson.
In the changed format, Clemson would have played Miami, not SMU. Regardless, only the Tigers or the Hurricanes, not both teams, would have made the playoff.
Net result: Still 2 ACC teams in the field.
The second idea is more intriguing and challenging. Matching the first- and fourth-place teams as well as the second- and third-place teams in the final weekend of the regular season with the winners advancing to the ACC title game.
This season, that would have created a Clemson-Miami game in one semifinal. The other game would have matched 8-0 SMU against one of the four teams that finished 5-3 in league play — Louisville, Duke, Syracuse and Georgia Tech.
