The bye week is more random, I'd say. It's more like the #1 seed in the conference getting a week of at playoff start.
The "rest or rust" argument has been going on in the NFL since the playoffs expanded.
However, tean
Teams that get bye weeks in the NFl are assued of a home game, the first game after the bye.
College doesn't have that. So, neutral field, plus rust might be an issue
Also, the bye teams haven't just had one week to rest. Most of the team didn't play for a couple weeks anyway.
So, the first round bye in this format might cause even more "rust" than for NFL teams.
Finally, a few of the bye teams got the seeding to draw a bye because they won a conference.
But, those conferences result in a lower strength of schedule, so maybe were just inferior teams that lucked into a bye.
So we have more rust, plus weaker team, plusa neutral field. Seems like we're compounding pretty fast
There a whole lot of variables in this, and I don't know how they fix it, without going to 16 teams, which I don't support.
Drop it to 8 & eliminate the bye? That's 4 fewer games of $, so they're not going to do that!
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