I'm mildly surprised that prohibiting rematches got more votes than prohibiting games between teams from the same conference.
From my perspective, I'd rather prohibit games between teams from the same conference because those are games we see reasonably frequently even if not that year. For example, if Ohio State and Oklahoma played then re-matched in the CFP the same year I don't mind that. We don't get to see tOSU/OU very often so I don't mind seeing it twice in a year. On the other hand, if Ohio State missed Wisconsin in a given year I'd rather not see them play Wisconsin in the CFP because tOSU/UW is a reasonably frequent occurrence and I'd rather see games we don't normally see.
Example:
Suppose that Bama and tOSU lost only close games to LSU and PSU respectively and both missed their CG thus ending up as the two highest ranked non-Champions and getting the #5 and #6 seeds. Then suppose that LSU and PSU lost the SECCG and B1GCG to Florida and Wisconsin. Further, suppose that both the SECCG and B1GCG results were major upsets as UF had four and UW three losses.
So the teams relevant to this example end up being:
- #3 seed Wisconsin at 10-3
- #4 seed Florida at 9-4
- #5 seed Bama at 11-1
- #6 seed tOSU at 11-1
If we just played according to seed the match-ups among those four would be:
- #6 11-1 tOSU at #3 10-3 Wisconsin
- #5 11-1 Bama at #4 9-4 Florida
My thinking here is that tOSU/UW and Bama/UF are games that we see reasonably frequently. I'd rather see games that we don't see very often:
- #6 11-1 tOSU at #4 9-4 Florida
- #5 11-1 Bama at #3 10-3 Wisconsin
Ie, would you rather see tOSU in the Swamp and Bama in Camp Randall or tOSU in Camp Randall and Bama in the Swamp?
Per Stassen:
- tOSU has played UW 61 times, 27 in Madison
- Bama has played UF 41 times, 10 in Gainesville
- Bama has played UW twice, once in Madison
- tOSU has played UF twice, never in Gainesville
I'd rather the CFP provide us with once-in-a-generation games such as Buckeyes in the Swamp and Tide in the Camp than frequent match-ups such as Bama@UF and tOSU@UW.