It truly looks like the G5 may not stand a chance. Undefeated Cincinnati ranked 6th with a top 10 win over Notre Dame. 1 loss Oregon and Ohio State are 4 and 5.
1) Georgia
2) Bama
3) Michigan State
4) Oregon
5) Ohio State
6) Cincinnati
7) Michigan
8) Oklahoma
9) Wake Forest
10) Notre Dame
Other ACC: 19) NC State 25) Pitt
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Of course Bama's 2.
And if they lose the SECCG to Georgia, they'll be 3. smh
All about the $$$. The committee exists only to keep the SEC (and to a lesser extent the Big 10) reeling it in.
Half the entire southeastern conference in the top 20 and Wisconsin and Minnesota somehow being ranked proves this
It just means more.
6-0 made the playoffs last year.
The 4 top teams are either coached by Saban or are coached by his disciples. So it sounds like we just need to snag a former Bama coach and we'll be good to go? Paging Bill O'Brien
Can we hire Jeff Banks? I hear Virginia allows emotional support monkeys...
Dude I thought about doing a OT post on this. Was going to call it "The special teams coach, the monkey, and the pole assassin".
LINK
I believe The Twerps followed this same strategy. It's not working to well for them...
He wasn't a Saban disciple, he was a rehabilitation project, and well looks like he needed more time.
Would Love Bill O'Brien. Maybe we could get Wiggins back maybe as an OC. They got Jonathan Galante as an Analyst too. Maybe get him in here as a Special Teams coach
I mean...are we surprised? Undefeated UTSA doesnt even get a congratulatory 25 ranking. 5-3 Miss St gets a nod, though. AAC teams at 1 loss don't get a sniff either, so Cincy doesn't get to add ranked wins to their schedule. Meanwhile Minnesota is ranked with a loss to Bowling Green. Talk about rigged.
This is a P5 invitational, not the college football playoff, and they just need to come out and admit it.
Goes hand in hand with your comment
Tbf Miss St has wins against A&M, Kentucky, and NC State, and one of their losses was due to an egregious and admitted officiating error. They are not the team on here I'd single out.
Kentucky's ranking seems to be entirely buoyed by the fact they beat Florida (who is 4-4 and not ranked). And NC State is definitely shaky at best.
I think once you get past a certain point it's hard to compare a lot of these teams because of lack of nonconference P5 games. I'll be the first to admit, I have no idea how to go about comparing BYU, Baylor, ND, Okie State or even Pitt to Miss St, A&M, Ole Miss and Kentucky. You could argue most of these teams for being better than one or the other.
Until standings actually mean something this will always be the case. Until a CFBP exists in a way that rewards winning your conference, and not just your conference affiliation, this will never end.
No issue with Georgia and Bama at 1 and 2. They are clearly the best two teams in the country.
Michigan State and Oregon are there because of their wins over Michigan and Ohio State and because they are P5 schools. Schedule and wins other than that not very impressive, and certainly not significantly more impressive than Cincinnati. Ohio State has at least been smacking lesser teams and looked convincing winning over Penn State. I think Cincy definitely should be top four.
Do we just forget the Bama A&M thing happened because its Bama
They should get penalized, but I also realize that they are Bama and pass the eye test. Oregon is also getting a major pass for that Stanford loss and haven't looked nearly as impressive as Bama.
Being totally fair I would probably put Georgia at one, Cincinnati and MSU at two/three and Bama at four. I think Bama is the best between the other one-loss teams in Oregon, OSU, and Michigan. But I also realize Bama passes the eye test and that's why voters have them at two right now.
Someone made a point on the radio this morning, and I think it's pertinent here.
With quite a few of these teams now, the voters aren't evaluating the actual team anymore. They're evaluating the brand.
Yup. It's not fair, but how do you pick against Bama with the success they have had and continue to have? This will be a thing until we institute auto-bids for conference champs. Then we can squabble brands/quality wins and losses for at-large spots.
With the caveat "past results do not guarantee future successes."
It's also how Texas starts every season nationally ranked despite being a dumpster fire fueled by underachievement and mediocrity. The brand alone gives them a bump that few other teams would get.
You go full "Sport" and hold a tournament.
This subjective committee horseshit is an Invitational.
in the purest sense, yes that's how to do it. We dont have any of this BS in pro sports and that's because the regular season matters. Practically speaking, hard to do in college athletics because there are so many schools. The best you can do is have enough teams involve tournament style (see basketball, baseball/softball) that take 1) the conference champs, 2) non-champs that pass the eye test, and 3) take enough that the teams that dont make it are clearly not in the same class as the top seeded teams.
There's not even a comparable sport like this in college.
I agree that a solution might involve splitting up the Power 5 and Group of 5, similar to the current FBS/Actual Championship Subdivision (FCS) split. It's a high contact sport; an infinite length season is not an option.
But telegraphing 4/65 teams in a 130 team league and calling that a playoff is, well...
a playoff is doable-ish... it will be difficult, but doable. #1 you have to make the regular season mean something and reward the conference champ. This means ALL 10 conference champs.
Impacts:
- (Likely) Notre Dame and all other independents will be scrambling to find a home
- (Possible) we have the inverse of the conference realignment problem. We'll have large schools potentially looking for weaker conferences to increase their chance of appearing in a playoff.
#2 Need to make a realistic set of teams at 12/16 (16 being my personal preference) total teams for a playoff. Given that the conferences (for now) are not on equal footing this is where I would put the rankings and CFP committee to work. Just like the NCAA BB tourney, the committee would be responsible for seeding the teams based on their body of work. With 12, the top 4 would get a bye. With 16, we get the chance to see a #4 (16 overall) seed knock off the #1 team in the country in the first round.
Impacts:
- Adds 2 more weeks to the season. We're now at a point where these teams are potentially playing a 16ish-game season.
- the bowl committees are going to lose their minds and cry foul over how this isn't respecting the tradition of the bowl season, lost revenue, blah blah blah.
I completely agree with the 16 team playoff. The 8-4 MAC Champion Toledo Rockets should get every opportunity to get the snot rocked out of them by Ohio State in the first round of the playoff. They've earned it.
There are a multitude of ways to combat the longer season. A few key rule changes make the games effectively shorter, and there's still plenty of low-hanging fruit as far as that goes. While this breakdown is more NFL-centric, Jon Bois makes a terrific case on why Kickoffs are both Stupid and Bad.
As for the Bowls, they're parasites that have taken advantage of the unmistakably hollow postseason in one of the most popular sports in the country.
You don't spend money and effort looking for ways to appease your jock itch- you get rid of it.
This is a fantastic sport with an arbitrary and insufferable post season. There are ways to fix it.
I'm OK with that, OR the 8-team playoff with all the P5 champions plus whoever they feel the other spots should go to.
I'm not so keen on the SEC or Big 10 getting multiple spots.
Hypothetical question:
Let's say Clemson has a run as an untouchable dynasty. This happens to coincide with some peak Virginia Tech seasons.
We're "clearly" not as good (according to most voters' earball test), but we go nearly undefeated, too. Three years in a row, comfortably ranked in the top 10. Even after they beat us in the ACCCG (once handily, once in overtime, and once by a touchdown).
You'd be okay with sitting out of a 10 team post season?
In a bracket that could just as easily seat 16?
It's my opinion that the injustice isn't in who gets the at-large scraps. The scraps are where the objectivity ends and that subjectivity belongs. (I'm not sure how hard a cap on at-large teams per conference would be to include, but it seems to me that well over 75% of the representation of teams and conferences would be all for it.)
The Big Ten and the SEC will typically get the lion's share of the at-large bids. I see nothing wrong with THAT.
A post-season made up entirely of only 4 at-large bids? Yeah that's dumb. (And yet, somehow light years better than what we were doing 25 years ago).
I'd be depressed, but not upset. We didn't win our conference and didn't get in. Those are clear requirements to get in. Compare that to now where its all about a subjective eye test and opinions. I would rather get shutout from a playoff because of our record / not winning enough vs. shutout of a playoff because of someone's opinion that we didn't look good enough while winning.
I'd be upset. Even taking each conference champ by itself isn't objective. It subjectively assumes that all conferences are equally as difficult, or that the champ is more qualified than the second place finisher in another conference. If a G5 conference champ limps to the finish line with 3 losses, but wins their conference, they'd get the bid over the runner up in a hypothetical situation in which Georgia and Alabama are both undefeated going into their conference championship?
And who was better in 2016 - us or Ohio State? We didn't play each other, but we did have one opponent in common - Clemson. We lost to Clemson in the ACCCG 42-35. Clemson beat Ohio State 31-0 in the first game of the playoffs. Everyone always say the Big10 is better than the ACC, but their conference champion got shut out. Ohio State scored 58 or more points 4 times that season and couldn't score once against Clemson. Not saying we belonged in the playoffs, but just additional thoughts for perceptions of conference strengths and champions of one conference compared to non-champions in other conferences.
There's just something sanitary about a ten team playoff bracket that I'm fundamentally opposed to. Even a 12 team bracket is unnecessary and forced.
I agree that a ten team tournament would be more fair than the proposed 16-team tournament.
College sports already use subjective rankings; both to seed, and round out playoff brackets. I'm okay with that. College sports are, at their core, a collection of messy and unbalanced competitions.
The problem with College Football is that every year an intensely exciting and popular sport suddenly transforms into a Beauty Pageant. A panel judges the personalities, the looks, and just for fun they toss out some bathing suits and head someplace warm for a little obligatory exhibitionism.
Under the "holy" and "sacred" premise that some grifters must monetize and host a couple of the participants for a week or so.
I think the last shoe dropped when the players were allowed to monetize their likenesses. Now a Belk's Gift card and a commemorative tiara are no longer reasonable excuses to "make it all worth it for the players". College football is left at the table with all of the cards and all of the chips. There's really no reason left to bargain with the opportunists anymore.
All we have left is some nostalgia. From back in the day.
Ah yes, back when the post-season of a ridiculously popular contact sport was played out through a system of nonsensical exhibition matches and voting.
You want to keep the Meineke Car Care Bowl forever attached to the great sport of college football? Great, you're round 1 of the East bracket. Now fork over some cash.
The next logical leap is an 8 team playoff right now. And I'm all for it.
From there, either just another short decade or two to:
1) something wacky like relegation,
2) something severe like splitting from the G5, or
3) something easy, like going to a 16 team bracket.
In any of these cases, we then have a sport that includes a dignified post-season. Played out on football fields.
That's the part that's broken.
I don't think you ever fix the lack of parity. It's built in, and it's fundamental to the design.
You certainly don't need to feed the disparity, or make it worse. Bowls and popularity contests do just that. Let's at least get rid of that unnecessary crap.
It's infinitely better than limiting it to the current 4 eye-test teams. You'll also give players an argument to go somewhere other than the SEC, so there's that kind of overall fairness, too. Share the wealth, already. At least among the power 5. And you preserve the ability to send in a G5 team if they're blowing the doors off.
16 teams is fun, but that one extra weekend (and additional Top-Seed-playing-a-patsy factor) push me away from a 16 team playoff. The hardest route to the championship would of course be the middling champions who would be seeded against each other by the committee.
If you take the top eight, you'll boil it down to a championship with a defensible argument. Everybody there will have to have played someone pretty good, and beaten them.
I agree it's better. Infinitely better. Heck yes.
Rigging the post-season against the best conferences, with the most money, is a solution with real limitations and consequences.
The top seed playing a patsy is boring, but it's nothing new. And it's the de-facto alternative for first round byes (a luxury that 130 full-contact college football teams vying for a championship is probably not ever going to have).
Win your conference; you're in. It's simple, everybody else uses it and nobody seems to hate it.
Every conference gets 1 team, each school gets a vote to which team to send. Votes are published weekly.
I don't think Bama at 2 is clear at all. I think they haven't looked great against UF or A&M, and look (relatively) beatable this year.
They looked like they'd put up 50 on UGA in the first quarter of UF. Then they kinda of forgot to continue the beat down. They look like they cant put a full game together, but if they do then they are #2, however they should be ranked like that on a maybe they learn, instead rank them like that when they learn.
#1 take away for what the committee says: screw Cincinnati.
I know they have not played that well in some games, but pretty asinine to not have them in the top 4 if they win out.
its not "screw Cincinnatti", its "Screw the non-P5 (except ND)"
College football used to be fun. I can't tell if it's because I'm getting older or if it's just more and more obvious that the system is rigged but I am quickly losing interest in the sport
It's more obvious. They used to actually try and convince us they cared about the sport. Now they don't even try to hide it's about the money.
It's rigged to the point of being a joke. At least with the BCS you had the computers to balance things out.
Now if you want to know the methodology, just look at the yearly TV contracts. Bama and Georgia are worth $46 million a year and Cincy is worth $7 million. That's the only metric that matters.
I like to think of it as its always been rigged, its just that now the money involved has increased so you see it more.
This is actually one of the best features about college football to me. As a fan it sucks, but as a coach and educator its great because you get to teach the lesson of no matter how good you are, some times your name matters more. It's fantastic prep for life. Do you think UCF is any less proud of their obscure national title a few years back? They worked hard for that, and I am sure they were all proud of what they accomplished even being left out of the playoffs. And if not they should be. Just because the hardwork isn't acknowledged doesn't mean you can't be proud of yourself.
Makes it harder to get recruiticorns when they know the game is rigged.
Eh. Maybe to some extent, but if Clemson was it's usual powerhouse self and was undefeated and we were as well and beat them in the ACCCG, there's no way in hell we don't go.
Even the computers were rigged, though. A lot of the rankings had alternate rankings just for the BCS, because the BCS mandated certain parts of the algorithm (mainly strength-of-schedule). At least two rankings that I know of turned down BCS inclusion over this.
Bama and Georgia are worth more than $46 million a year. They're only getting $46 million a year because conference money is shared evenly with Vandy and Kentucky and the Mississippi schools.
To me it's less about being rigged and moreso that the CFP rankings, which are (at least stated to be) rebuilt from scratch each week, are designed to lean into the discourse/controversy driven elements of the sport. There's really no reason to even start doing them this early if not for the pageantry of the reveal show each Tuesday. Imo, they usually start out with a mix of crowd pleasers (Ex. Oregon over Ohio State, Mich St top 3) and rile-em-up choices (ex. Bama at 2, Cincy outside top 4) when they know they aren't beholden to these choices at all.
Barring significant chaos, Bama's path is clear to the playoff, they have to beat Georgia, and if they fail they probably slip out. So is Ohio States, they need to win out and win the B1G. Oregon looks like they may well have another loss in them. MSU still has to play Penn State and Ohio State.
My favorite thing was when the first ever CFP rankings dropped and had Ole Miss, Miss St, and LSU in the top 4 and I got to enjoy watching all these people shoot steam out their ears and scream SEC bias until they were red in the face, when all three of those teams still had to play each other (2 games each + Miss St and LSU had to play Bama) and it was guaranteed none of those teams would stay that high unless they truly earned it. None did, and none of those 3 teams were in the convo by the last ranking. All that anger was for nothing.
all you're saying is that it's rigged to incite heated debates among fans. Still rigged. That just isn't interesting to me.
Re-phrased: It doesn't matter if they are rigged or not because these early rankings don't impact anything materially. So many of these teams still have to play each other/4 more games left for most + a conference championship where relevant. They are also not sticky (at least in stated terms), so they just completely rebuild them each week. They are ONLY for entertainment (TV reveal show) and driving discourse/controversy which is good for the sport. You want people talking about it, writing articles against it/defending it, getting worked up online because it is driving interaction.
manufactured talking points are less interesting than actual talking points. There is very clearly a caste system in college football (always has been but it could sorta be ignored in the past, it's front and center now) and forcing conversation because you think it might not be there if it isn't forced isn't good for college football. Rather it is an admission that the sport is in trouble.
But be honest, if VT were a "have", we'd be OK with it.
Good thing about the BCS was that it was actually a big deal if a top team lost a game. Don't mean shit now apparently.
I think it's the CFP. We used to celebrate the whole sport; now we only celebrate the <10 teams who can win a championship. 11-2 used to be a special season. Now (for most fans) 11-2 doesn't matter since it's not a National Championship.
I love how they threw OU under the bus so they could claim the same with Cincy.
How is anOSU that high? Their best win is over a 3 loss PSU. They didn't look great in that game either.
I see why they put Bama, but I can see them losing again, they just don't have that put 4 quarters together mentality this year (yet). I can see MSU, undefeated, big win against Mich. But they struggled with Indiana and Nebraska, and honestly Rutgers. So Oregon is tough because they have won of the best 3* wins (MSU and Cincy have the other 2). So really have to say to yourself that losing to a 3-5 team is just character building. And that the um err, hmmm, stony brook win was decisive enough to pull the trigger on number 4.
*A&M of Bama is a top win too, but A&M isn't vying for the playoffs
This whole system needs to be overhauled and yanked away from the beauty contest that it is and go to an objective format that emphasizes conference champions over anyone else.
Spare me the complaints about how fair that system is. I don't care anymore.
That being said, while this needs to happen, it also needs to happen after the CFP exclusivity agreement with ESPN ends, because there is an automatic 10 year extension that gets applied to said agreement if the format changes before then. And, yeah, ESPN is the devil when it comes to college football. They are the ones pulling all the strings and they are close to single handedly responsible for the devolution of the sport over the past 25+ years.
I'm shocked the network that turned maybe the best all around morning sports show (First Take) into a close up of Stephen A Smith yelling into a microphone for three hours, would be this blind to what their viewers want
For me the beginning of the end was the failure to make the CFP conference champs only. This cleared the way for ESPN to dominate CFB media coverage and turn everything into an SEC bukkake party. My interest in the sport has fallen off a cliff in the past 5 years to the point where I can't even name half of VT's starters.
In contrast to all the schools getting bent over the barrel, I am absolutely flabbergasted that they put Wake in the top 10.
I'm not arguing that Wake should/shouldn't be there. It just seems like one of the schools for which they would happily add another barrel.
That's also Wake right now, but aren't these projections as if these schools win out? If Wake wins out, you wouldn't include them in the top 10?
You misunderstood me. I was saying that I am surprised that the committee actually put them in the top 10. Of course, I think they should be there.
I was saying that I am surprised they didn't screw WF over as well.
I agree with you.
At the same time, if Wake was, say UNC, Miami, or VT with this resume, they'd probably be Top 5 right now, and if Clemson they'd be #2.
I've echoed this point as well.
Wake Forest is too low to start at #9, should be at least 6 or 7. If they go undefeated, they cannot be left out of the playoffs. this committee is a joke
Wake is a really good and well-coached team, but no ACC team should sniff the playoff this year. The conference is hot garbage.
A 12 team playoff that has all conference champions in it that allows a team to prove it on the field rather than be damned because someone doesn't feel like they are good enough can't get here soon enough.
Oh I agree, I would rather see it play out on the field. But with a beauty contest format and only four spots, no way the ACC gets in this year.
I really can't stand the argument by some that auto bids devalues the regular season somehow. The current playoff has completely destroyed the regular season and conference races. ESPN starts harping in the summer about who is going to be in the playoff. Why even play the regular season - they are going to find a way to put the sexiest brands in one way or another.
Seriously!
If anything, making it a requirement to win your conference to get into the playoff would make the regular season more important because it turns the entire regular season into a group stage of the playoff just like in the World Cup. The way we have it now, at least 2 of the Final Four teams are decided in February before the season, another one is decided by the end of September, and the last one is generally down to 2 teams by the end of the regular season. There's just no drama anymore. The regular season we have right now is worthless.
Another argument I hate is the "(Insert undefeated team here) just isn't as good of a team as Alabama, OSU, whatever other blue blood is up that year. We have to have the best teams in the playoff."
There are a couple of reasons this argument pisses me off.
1. Crazy things happen in sports all the time. Sure Alabama would likely beat Cincinnati, WF, or whoever, but I don't understand how you look at kids that have done everything they possibly could to make it to the playoff and tell them they have absolutely no shot because of who they are or who they played. They controlled what they could control and they should be rewarded for it.
2. It perpetuates the disparity in recruiting and ensures that no one will be able to compete with the blue blood schools. If kids know they will never make it to the playoff if they go to their home state school or the place they would really shine, of course, all of them are going to sign with the blue blood schools unless they literally don't have a roster spot for the kid.
And that's exactly why any system they come up with will be bullshit until they either create 16 conferences and make teams have to win their division and then the conference championship to go to a 16 team playoff. Or break up P5 and G5 schools into separate divisions with separate national championships, 8 conferences a piece and do the same thing I said before with an 8 team playoff. Or come up with some system and math where every conference champion goes to the playoff with a few wildcard spots for damned good teams that had one hiccup.
The bottom line is no team that goes undefeated should ever have absolutely no shot whatsoever in making the playoff and possibly the national championship. Because at the end of the day it's about the goddamned players.
It is garbage. Saying the best teams on paper deserve to get in defeats the entire purpose of playing the season. Sports are a funny thing, and sometimes the "best teams" don't win. As Chris Berman says, "that's why they play the game!" The playoff as currently devised is just a bs ruse to get big brand names in for tv ratings. Unfortunately, I think it's backfiring, as last years Bama OSU game was one of the lowest rated title games since Bama LSU. A bunch of eyeballs are going to tune out after seeing the same teams over and over.
Exactly.
But, seriously, name another sport...any sport...where you can go undefeated and not even catch a whiff of a shot at the championship?
Idk I score a lot of points in golf but haven't won anything
And some how the Pac12 is worse.
Replace Wake Forest with Clemson and have the exact same schedule and scores as Wake this year, Clemson would be 3rd at worst. Same weak schedule, same weak ACC, but Clemson brand >>>Wake brand
Perfect comment. Clemson would easily be in the playoff Top 4 right now with Wake's schedule and results
My point exactly, if it was Clemson or say Da U or Maybe even UNCheat - they'd be easily 3-5. Wake deserves it
Couldn't disagree more. A P5 undefeated team will have done everything in their power to deserve a spot in the CFP. It is under no control of their own if the rest of the conference under-performs. If other conferences don't like it, elevate the ENTIRE SPORT and not their own private conference.
I'm all in favor of going to a "conference champion first" type system. Incentivize parity and competition throughout the sport.
You can't put Oregon in there and say Wake doesn't belong. And as for the ACC being hot garbage, at least Wake is undefeated and we have three 6-2 schools. The PAC 12 has Oregon with one loss - to the worst team in their division. There are no other teams in the PAC 12 that are better than 5-3. Oregon's ONLY good win is Ohio State, and I'd argue that getting beat by Oregon, who lost to such a crap team, means maybe the Big 10 isn't as hot shit as everyone thinks. And maybe the Big 10's top few schools are better than the ACC's top schools, but the bottom of the barrel is worse. There are 4 teams that have 1 or less win (in conference) in the Big 10, compared to 2 in the ACC. Plus, the Big 10 hasn't played their toughest matchups yet. If none of them gets to their championship with fewer than 2 losses and Wake wins out, would you still say they didn't belong? Even if our conference isn't as good, winning all the games in a P5 conference is incredibly tough.
Ok, looking back at the initial playoff rankings versus who was selected for the playoffs.
2020, All 4 in the initial rankings made the playoffs. Different spots, but 4 for 4.
2019, 2 of the 4 in the initial rankings did not make the playoff 4.
2018, 1 of the 4 " "
2017, 1 of the 4 " "
2016, 2 of the 4 " "
2015, 2 of the 4 " "
2014, 3 of the 4 " "
While things went "smooth' last year, it was also the odd ball with the altered schedules and craziness that was in the world of who was actually playing and what not. Otherwise, every year, at least 1 of the teams in the initial rankings did not make the playoffs. There's still some games left, so here's hoping things shake out and get the 4 best in there. (Not holding my breath...)
Great post on Reddit about how these CFP rankings are unprecedentedly weird, even by the Committee's standards:
The thing that's infuriating is Bama at #2. Bama's best win is over #16 Ole Miss. Cincy's best win is over #10 ND. Mich St's best win is over #7 Michigan.
At the end of the day, the initial rankings don't matter; they'll sort themselves out with time. At this point, it's just a reality TV show.
Dead wrong.
They absolutely matter for teams that have gotten the shaft on their rankings and will only move up if teams above them fall.
The committee says they rerank teams every week, rather than 'move teams up and down.' As skeptical as I am about the committee, I do think think they actually do this (or at least they have in years past).
To date, we have never seen a 2 loss team get into the playoff. We have never seen an undefeated P5 team get left out. And we have never seen a 1-loss non-conference champ get in over a 1-loss conference champ (For P5 at least). I don't expect any of that to change.
Cincy is the question here, but I do think if (1) Houston wins out, (2) Cincy beats houston in the AAC championship, and (3) ND comes close to winning out, Cincy will be in (if they win out). We will see.
Cincy isn't the only question. As quite a few others have pointed out, if Clemson had the exact same schedule as Wake and was undefeated they would already be in the top 4. With the standings as they are, there's a whole lot that has to happen above them before they move into the top 4.
And you have much more faith in the committee than I do. Which is none.
I don't have much faith in the committee, but I do think they've gotten the final 4 right every year, at the end of the year.
Leading up to that, and outside of the top 4, not so much...
I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, so this is the last time I will say it.
You never know what will happen in sports. Upsets happen all the time. And if you have teams that are undefeated (I don't care who they are) and they have absolutely zero chance to make the playoff much less the national championship through no fault of their own, THEY AIN'T GETTING IT RIGHT!!!
The saying goes "If you want to be the man, you gotta beat the man."
Well, how the hell are you going to beat the man if they will never let you play the man?
Didn't Ohio State get in over PSU when PSU beat them head to head and was the B1G champ?
PSU was 11-2, with a 30+ point loss to Michigan, and had one regular season win over a ranked team (OSU).
OSU was 11-1 with a close loss to PSU, with wins over 4 ranked teams in the regular season.
I don't think it was an inexcusable decision.
New rule:
Tie (or pretty much even) should go to the underdog.
And you actually believe that?
As long as this is dominated by a subjective committee that debates behind closed doors and not a completely transparent objective, its going to be rife with BS like we're seeing right now.
I actually do.
This, I 1000% agree with. Every committee member should be forced to submit an individual ranking with explanation to the media.
I think Ole Miss is notably more dangerous than ND, particularly the healthy version that Bama faced, and Miss St is a much better second win than Cincy's next best. Then you add wins @Florida and Tennessee who looks much improved. Way better resume than Cincy.
ND played US, TOLEDO, and FSU as equals. They are lucky to be a one loss team right now. It looks good on paper, but I'd bet every dollar I own that any top 5 team would rather play Notre Dame than Ole Miss. Nothing is scarier than a dangerous offense and high-caliber QB, both of which are unquestionably advantage Ole Miss.
Can't disagree regarding ND, but if that's the case, then the committee should've put Ole Miss above ND.
Regarding Bama's Resume vs Cincy's - that's fine, but what about Mich St?
16 team playoff, 11 conference champs and 5 at large. Use the same model as every other level of college football. Until then, it is all BS. If you win your conference in every other team sport and every other level of college football, you play for the national championship. Why DI hangs on to this archaic nonsensical approach is pure poppycock.
I would rather a 16 team playoff then a 12 team. No bye's and it would be a true championship. No complaints about UCF or TCU being left out.
I have absolutely no interest in watching Bama play the MAC champ or Ohio State face off with the CUSA or Sun Belt champion.
I think they need to do a separate playoff for the G5. Talent differential is too significant and there's not one trend, whether recruiting or the portal, to suggest it will get better.
But then you have the Boise States that knock off Oklahoma, etc. Everybody can have a bad day and sometimes the little dog gets the bone.
I would love to see a MAC/CUSA/Sun Belt team let it all hang out in a shot at a perennial big dog. You know they would absolutely give it their best.
Boise, TCU, UCF, Cincy had/are having special runs as G5's. They were the exceptions to the rule, not the rule. There is maybe one solid G5 champion in any given year that could win a playoff game in an expanded pool. I don't need to waste my time watching the others.
People would watch this for a year for the novelty and then the ratings would absolutely tank when it became clear it was nothing more than selling hope. An expanded playoff is not going to fix the parity issue.
Let G5's play their own playoff, win their own national championship trophy with the confetti raining down, and do their big parades or whatever. It will be like UCF, but they'll actually have the trophy in the trophy case.
But then you'd never have UMBC beating loluva...in kind.
Boise had more than just a fluke year, they had several years of great runs and P5 upsets (sadly we were one of them)
If they go the 16-team route, they need to give top seeds a bye like the NFL and have a play-in round. Have your wildcards/at-large teams and low seed conference champs sort things out first. If a G5 champ gets blown out by an at large team, then you don't have a toss away game vs a top team. If they win and prove themselves, then maybe they're a decent team.
Why though? If they are so good, shouldn't the "better" team win in any case? Why the extra burden on the "lesser" team but another extraordinary benefit to the team which is already getting the benefit of playing the lower seed?
It's potentially more of a benefit to a Bama or Georgia to play a MAC champ round one than to have to play the winner of an at large/low seed champ. I'm all for giving all conference champs a shot at the title, but we have to recognize the talent disparity via the seeding of the playoff. Giving a low-seed champ a chance vs a wild card team seems like a better option for both sides, rather than throwing them to the wolves game one. It will never be a perfect set up, but I can see the OPs point in having essentially a throw away game between the Bama's and a MAC or C-USA champ every year in the first round. More often than not they won't have the talent to compete in a game like that, but on the occasion they do, they can play their way in against a fringe playoff team first.
Multiples of 2, or 16 team tourneys are simply the mathematically convenient method of making sure teams aren't playing infinitely long seasons in a rare contact sport where that has to be part of the calculation.
In all recognizable tournament formats (8, 12 or 16 team playoffs), there are "leftover" spots for at-large teams. The multiples of two are arbitrary.
Nobody's designing a 16 team playoff just to turn around and make the lower seeds play an extra (5th) football game. You may as well invite 32 teams if we're playing 5 extra games.
In the 16 team format, the #1 seed plays the lowliest, typically far-from ranked winner of the MAC or Conference USA.
That's their "bye", and it's a plenty fair consolation for the team that earns it.
I am not interested in fan interest, although way more people will watch that game versus a Virginia Tech vs Rutgers mid-tier bowl.
I want to determine a true winner, and a true winner comes from letting teams play their own way in, without any kind of interference. However, because of the distinct tiers, the big money won't let that happen. So, you have five at larges, but no team that wins their conference should be left out. Winning your conference should mean something, just like it does in every other team sport and level of NCAA football. D3 champions play 15 games. Make it happen.
D3 is the textbook example- how many times has Wisconsin Whitewater or Mount Union blasted a weaker conference champ in Round 1? At least you gave them a chance to win/lose it on the field, rather that us or people in a board room saying "oh, they can't compete."
I have some experience with this- before D3 had automatic bids, 4 teams from each region were selected. We were 10-0 in my junior year, won the ODAC, and were left out. I have a real burr up my ass about this, to this day.
I understand the theoretical desire for a playoff like this and the desire for fairness.
My personal belief is that no organized sport in the entire world (Including European soccer) has such an enormous lack of parity as college football. While the talent gap in soccer can be similar, the means of scoring in soccer make it more likely that an underdog can score a single goal whether through a crazy, low% deep shot or a lucky deflection on a corner kick, and then just sit deep and defend like crazy to seal a 1-0 upset. There really isn't any way to do this in college football. If the MAC champ scores a lucky TD (Think prayer at Jordan Hare) against Alabama or something, they can't just sit on a 7-0 lead in a college football game. There's just too many moving parts on each play, and the talent gap is too significant, particularly in the trenches.
I think it would be best to treat G5 and P5 as separate postseason tournaments. It would give G5 teams something real to attain each postseason.
I'd watch UCF vs Georgia in CFP instead of Bama/Georgia or Clemson/Bama or whatever in a given year.
Upsets are fun. Bama/Clemson 3 years in a row isn't.
VT Bowls withstanding, the most fun I had watching a bowl game was Boise vs. Oklahoma.
The one ending in the statue of liberty play? That was an incredible game.
This just comes across as super condescending. G5 teams have and will continue to win games over P5 opponents. Even those that are more talented. The G5 and P5 designations have very little to do with talent distribution and a lot to do with how the power and money are divided in CFB. And the desire to keep the G5 schools away from the money is the driving factor in preventing them from being involved at the highest level of the post-season.
edit: i don't mean to say that I think you are being condescending intentionally, just that it can be read that way
Plus it doesn't make sense to paint all G5 teams with the same brush. The divide between Akron and Memphis is far far larger than the divide between Memphis and Ole Miss, Tennessee or Oregon etc. In terms of fielding a comptetitive football team.
Comparing them to Georgia doesn't make sense either. The best G5 teams can compete against them better than most of the teams in their own conference.
Best case scenario is either 8 or 12 teams (top G5 team(s) get in regardless of winning their conference). Obviously bring back the computer rankings.
8: P5 champs, top G5, 2 at large. Cap 2 teams per conference.
12: P5 champs, top 2 G5, 5 at large. Cap 3 teams per conference.
I don't ever want to see a cap of three per conference. 2 is enough. If you aren't one of the top 2, you shouldn't be in a playoff.
Wake should compete for a different playoff than Memphis or East Carolina?
Wait... 11 conference champs? P5 + G5 = 10. Where's the 11th? Outside of the math I agree and have the same opinion and format preference.
Sometimes we forget that the WAC no longer exists. 😄
Cincy needs a reach around at least!
They got college game day this weekend against Tulsa. Should be super exciting. /s
Unless Gameday is in Blacksburg, does it even really matter to us?
This thread contains:
Bukkake
Poppycock
Burr up my ass
Pole assassin monkey
The committee has put themselves in quite a sticky situation.