So far, in every American professional league, there is still some regular season-based cutoff for who deserves a shot in the playoffs. What's the point of tha cutoff, if not to determine who is good enough to be eligible. But maybe ELA's all-team, double elimination tournament is the right answer? Not for me, but it solves this particular riddle.
And to repeat something I've said many times before, which is the better team? Team a played every other team in the league twice, once away, once at home. Team A won 90% of its games, more than any other team in the league (each of them playing every other team twice, home and away). Team b beat team a both times they played, but overall it won 50% of the time. I think the answer is obvious: team a is the better team. But it may be that team b matches its strengths better against team a's weaknesses than any other team. So in that matchup, team b is superior; but against the entire league, team a is superior. Team a should logically--to my mind--be the league champion. That is the standard international football recipe. But that's an extreme example, and doesn't equate for things that happen over the course of the season that can impact a game here or there. For that reason, I think playoffs make sense to crown champions--and, in any case, the point in sports is to win. So taking the best cohort of teams and making them play each other makes sense for crowning a champion. But should team b, in my example have a shot at the title, assuming it is a middle-of-the-pack team? I don't think so.
As utee and I have both already said, we've talked about this many times over the years, and my opinion doesn't matter to CFB. But I think 24 is too many. 12 probably is, too, but it's at least closer to defensible.
