Under the current system, there is absolutely no way to play your way into the playoff with certainty. This isn't debatable. It is a fact.
First, you say this like it is a bad thing. I would argue that the uncertainty is part of what has driven CFB fandom. You can't just win every game 10-9 because that *MIGHT* not be good enough.
A team can win all their games 10,000-0 and this does not guarantee their spot in the playoff.
This is just plain silly. It is "true" in a theoretical, legalistic sense but it is obviously false realistically because clearly there aren't going to be FOUR other teams who won all of their games 10,001-0.
As a practical matter, in the 25 years from the inception of the BCS through last season (1998-2022) there have never been more than three undefeated major conference teams at the end of a year. That happened once during the BCS (2004 Auburn was left out while USC and OU played for the title). It has also happened at least once in the CFP era (2019 LSU, Clemson, and tOSU all got in).
As a practical matter, forget about the 10,000-0 nonsense. If Ohio State this year morph's into an even closer version of 2002 and wins their next 11 games all by 10-9, they'll be 13-0, B1G Champs, and IN the CFP.
You don't know until all the games are done whether they mattered or didn't.
That is kinda the point. Ohio State's game against Notre Dame *MIGHT* matter in terms of CFP access or it *MIGHT* not. If Ohio State ends up either:
- Losing three other games (say UW, PSU, and M), or
- Winning all of their other games
Then it probably doesn't matter whether or not tOSU beats ND because a 9-3 tOSU with a win over ND isn't getting in any more than an 8-4 tOSU with a loss to ND and a 12-1 tOSU with a B1G Championship and a loss to ND is almost certainly in while a 13-0 tOSU with a B1G Championship and a win over ND is an absolute lock.
Similarly, the game referenced above by
@ELA ended up not really mattering to Ohio State in the NC determination, it only allowed the Buckeyes to hang on to #2 for one more week. After surviving the Hoosiers the Buckeyes:
- Lost to M (Cooper era) the next week and dropped to #6
- Passed Colorado the next week when they lost to Nebraska thus moving up to #5
- Passed Nebraska the next week when they lost to Texas (B12CG) to move to #4
- Beat #2 ASU in the Rose Bowl and passed them along with #1 FSU who lost to #3 Florida to finish #2.
OTOH, an Indiana win there might have actually cost
@OrangeAfroMan 's gators the NC, here is why:
- Ohio State and Northwestern did not play that year.
- In the final league standings the Wildcats and Buckeyes finished tied for first at 7-1.
- Ohio State won the tie based on the longest loser rule because Northwestern had gone to the Rose Bowl the previous year.
- If Ohio State had lost to (or tied with) Indiana and we hold everything else unchanged, Northwestern would have represented the Big11Ten in Pasadena and likely lost to the undefeated Sun Devils of Arizona State. Since Florida and Florida State split their two-game series that season that would have left ASU as the lone undefeated team and the likely National Champion.
That is getting pretty far off into the weeds. Bringing this back, the point is that a bunch of Michigan fan kids stopped their game to run inside and watch IU/tOSU because it *MIGHT* have been important. Note that it really wasn't important to their team. Going into that game their team already had two losses with both coming in league games and one to a Northwestern team that only had one loss. Michigan may have had some crazy hypothetical mathematical chance I guess because:
- IF Ohio State had lost to IU (didn't happen), and
- IF Michigan had beaten tOSU (did happen), and
- IF Northwestern had lost BOTH of their last two games (didn't happen), and
- IF Michigan had beaten PSU that day (didn't happen)
- Then I think Michigan ends up winning a tie with tOSU for the Big11Ten.
The bigger issue with that game for a bunch of Michigan fan kids, I think, was the potential impact on the NC race.
You keep wanting guarantees but my argument here is that the lack of guarantees is part of what made the CFB Regular season so intense and so compelling. There was always a chance in any given week that Ohio State could lose an NC on a bad afternoon in Bloomington or at home against MSU (1998).
That is the issue, as I see it, for fans of Helmet (and helmet adjacent) teams like you and
@Gigem and
@OrangeAfroMan and I. The regular season games have necessarily lost a lot of their juice because now our teams are MUCH more likely to be able to win an NC in spite of a bad day against VaTech in an early season game (2014 tOSU).
The issue for the non-helmet fans is a much bigger problem. You (
@MaximumSam ) keep telling them that they should love this, they have a guaranteed path! You haven't convinced them. The point I've made repeatedly is that
@ELA ,
@betarhoalphadelta , and
@utee94 's TxTech fan friend aren't just run-of-the-mill fans. These guys were SUPERFANS of non-helmet teams and we are clearly pushing them away. That is a problem.
Here is what I think we've done to them:
- We've dropped their chance of an NC from miniscule to zero
- We've substantially decreased their chances to knock off a helmet or two
- We've substantially decreased their chances of winning the league. For Purdue it went from basically a once-in-a-generation thing (2000, 1967) to now more-or-less impossible
- We've taken away the Rose Bowl reward for winning the league or at least diminished it then (about to) replace that with a playoff berth where they are guaranteed to lose (maybe not first round but they aren't winning 3-4 straight).
- We've taken a lot of the fun out of knocking off a helmet because if they do, instead of that completely derailing a potential NC season it merely *MIGHT* cost the helmet a spot or two in CFP seeding.
I might be missing some but I think that covers the main issues.
