This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/GreekGodofStats on 2024-11-24 21:30:46+00:00.
People who want to build arguments that one team is better than another based on who would be favored if the two teams played are talking nonsense. There’s no need for a playoff to resolve this type of debate. This is what we had the polls for, back when the polls decided the national champion. The final poll (and every week’s poll, in fact), was simply a record of who the pollers believed would be favored in a neutral-site matchup. So whoever was ranked number 1 in the final poll would favored in a matchup against any other team. The reason that the Bowl Alliance, and the BCS, and the CFP even exist is because presidents and ADs have been so unanimous in their agreement to determine the national champion on the field, rather than in the polls. To use an example from this season: if you’re going to decide that Alabama is better than Indiana because they would be favorites in Vegas if the two teams played, you don’t need a playoff at all. There will be one team that would be favored to beat any other (probably Oregon thus far); you can just name that team the national champion if you want.
The problem with that approach is that there can be more than one power conference team that goes undefeated, but never face each other and are required to face some other conference’s champion in their bowl game. That’s why the Bowl Alliance and BCS existed. We now had a way to determine who should “really” be the national champion in cases where we don’t really know what the line should be or which team should be the favorite.
The 4-team playoff and now the 12-team version, beyond simply being ways to print more money, have been portrayed as ways to give more weight to conference champions, and to give non-power-conference teams a chance at the title. Note, however, that both of these arguments in favor of the expanded playoff run contrary to the poll / betting line philosophy of presuming who would be favored in a matchup. They are both ways of determining who is better on the field, and part of that process is taking seriously the past results which have happened on the field.