Because its not really the top 4. Its the top 4 winners of the conference championship games, which is a whole de facto round in itself. Even if you only consider the P5 conferences its 10 teams.
Are you a trailer dweller now?
Arbitrary? Its a semifinal. Every semifinal ever played has 4 teams. Consider the CGs and super-quarterfinal or a play-in or whatever. Its basically 3 rounds of competition to determine a champ. There is simply no reason for wild cards.
Don't forget, part of my scenario was eliminating divisions within conferences so the top 2 teams in each conference would be playing the quarterfinal round. No 1-loss Bamas would be sitting out.
It is exactly the opposite. Too much money in bowls.
Not sure what big compromise would need to happen. If all you did was eliminate divisions, 90% of this debate goes away. Most of the debate is spurred by leaving a 1 loss Bama or OSU type team at home. Simply putting the two best teams from each conference into the CGs makes it a much clearer picture and also makes the CGs more exciting and the regular season more exciting.
A one loss Barn who beat Bammer and destroyed Ugly would he sitting out?
No the Barn would have been the first team in. They beat both other teams and were ranked higher than either of them. The beauty contest would have been between Bama and UGA. Bama was still ranked ahead of UGA even after the Iron Bowl loss.
It has nothing to do with Bama for me. Its all about maintaining the significance and intensity of the regular season. Its the greatest regular season in sports because any single loss can end your season. That creates incredibly intensity week in and week out. When you minimize the impact of losses, you start to take the juice out of the regular season. Back in 06, the entire CFB world was convicted OSU and Michigan were head and shoulders better than everyone else. What they missed is that college football is a regional sport. Teams generally just play teams in their region. I'd much rather give a conference champion from a different region a shot at the title, than give some team that failed to take care of business in their own conference a second chance. Something tells me Earl Everett and Reggie Nelson would agree.
