Never in the history of college football have there been eight teams that had even an argument for deserving a shot. Four is more than enough.
I"m not aware that there's ever even been four. If you (or anyone) can point to a year and disprove me, I'll stand corrected.
There's just no reason to have it. It's dumb. Terrible idea. There really isn't a reason to have four most years. Usually you can pin it down to two.
I don't know of a year. I'm just playing it safe because there might have been one during the ninety years of football with which I'm not very familiar. I don't know for sure that there wasn't a year where there weren't 8, but the odds of it are so statistically small as to render it essentially impossible.
You don't know of a year because there hasn't been a year. To be clear: the ground rules here are you look at the body of teams at the end of the football regular season and you try to determine the best one. This is a resume test. There's not a year where a reasonable argument can be made for a fourth team (the word "reasonable" there is key, but mitigated by the fact that it's necessarily gotta be a resume test). Again, if you or anyone can point to a year, I'll stand corrected. And it of course follows there has never been anything loosely resembling a situation where the 8 seed has an argument to be the 1 seed. And there never could be.
That's a really really stupid way of looking at it -- and I mean that in a non-dickish way -- and the result of that analysis is a virtually all-inclusive tournament.* But if you want college football to just rename itself college basketball, then that's the way to do it. *Upsets happen all the time, ninja.
I would like a flex Cinderella spot to be an option. If a Boise or whoever goes undefeated, it seems a little rash to just lock them into a playoff game, or on the other hand to exclude them (unless they obviously suck). Maybe face them off against a strong BYU-type, or maybe against whoever you have seeded 4th. If one more Cinderella game makes sense, put somebody up against #3. Or don't have one at all if there are no non-power conference teams deserving of a shot. Notre Dame should probably have to go this route unless they are a consensus top 2, but too late for that I guess.
An optional play-in game/s at the discretion of the committee, geared towards letting undefeated "non-BCS" teams earn the place at the table that their schedule may not.
Who is this stupid poster of whom you speak? And it was a show on ESPN today that was run by morons. Wouldn't it be more like the NFL?
His vagina can't handle someone arguing the guy who can't beat out Brian Hoyer might be a bust. And that that person is better at betting then he is.
I think BYU would have a 30 % chance against Ole Miss or LSU, and a 10 % chance against TAMU. If they run the table and there aren't 4 other major conference undefeated teams, I think you have to give the benefit of the doubt to BYU-- assuming they played at least a couple of legit teams.