Turned on the celebration bowl so I could see the bands at halftime and it looked like SC St was DOA. 7 minutes into the 2nd half and it looks like a ballgame.
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This game is fun and I am a bit jealous of the quarterback play.
And SC St takes it in 4OT
Great game, and I had SC (just for 2 points), but Prarie View got completely jobbed on that call on the SC conversion.
I agree. Dude swung the non ball carrying hand over the pylon but not the ball in my opinion.
Are we counting Army-Navy in this thread? GO NAVY BEAT ARMY
Go Army
Battle of the fewest possessions possible.
17 minutes in on the third total possession
Go Navy
GREAT game
Got fights going on in D II playoffs.
Bunch of ejections so Ferris St may regret it if those players have to sit next week for the National Championship
I'm still drinking my morning coffee and there's already a game on today. Western Michigan apparently had their coffee as well, while Kennsaw State has not... 21-0 with ~7 minutes left in the first quarter.
Western Mich making Kennesaw re-think the move to FBS
Oof, my bowl picks are falling apart already.
41-6 WMU LATE IN THE 3RD AND I PICKED THEM :)
Did Kennesaw have a lot of opt-outs? This game just feels like its been a total mismatch. Maybe it was a REALLY bad 1st quarter that just took them out mentally for the game, but they couldn't do a damn thing on offense.
Only one opt out. CB Caleb Offord
Bowl games, especially anything below the CFP are such a crap shoot anymore. Whose playing in the games? Too much to keep track of.
Loved the idea of a second NIT style playoff with 8-16 teams and just getting rid of the bowl games. The only problem with 16 teams is asking players to play 4 more games. That is too much. 8 teams, best of the rest, bowls for the top teams only, no more 6-6 pillow fights on a Wed afternoon with mostly backups thanks to opt outs. NIL prize money awarded as teams progress in the tourney, that will hopefully limit the opt outs to high round picks only.
They're paying them to be professionals, they work like professionals.
They're not really there to play school.
Saw odu won their game and got a 10th win
Turns out ODU and Vanderbilt were pretty good this year.
NC State dogwalking Memphis and their diminished roster
31-7 halfway through the 3rd Qtr
Hope everyone else is boycotting the game tonight 🫡
Screw Alabama. May they lose by 50.
I hope to hear about it tomorrow morning when I'm watching the pregame for Miami 🙏
I don't think I've watched a single CFP game live. Not about to start now.
I only saw parts of ASU-Texas while at the gym last year, its the only playoff i've watch in like 5 years.
I love the CFP now especially the first round on campus games. I'm so excited for this weekend.
Oklahoma looking like they came to play. Alabama looks like they were born on Third base and not prepared to football.
Live look at Venables on the sideline
3 things I've been psyched for at the end of this year 1) Stranger Things 5 2) CFP 3) Fallout season 2. Still haven't seen episode 1, don't know when I'm going to find time to watch it.
I'll be pulling for Miami tomorrow night:
Personally speaking, I'd rather eat glass. I hope Miami gets blown out.
If Miami gets blown out, then we gotta hear even more shit from Notre Dame. Best case scenario is a one score loss.
Notre Dame is my second team, so that argument doesn't work to well for me haha. I just like watching Miami getting exposed, not to mention they lost to two teams that weren't that good anyway and probably should have been left out.
SO close.....
The best case scenario was a Miami win, which (sort of) proves the ACC belongs in the playoffs.
Would have been even better if Alabama lost.
True in most contexts
On the other hand, the ACC office needs to learn a few things....like how stupid their tiebreakers and schedules are.
Their tie breakers were the same as everybody elses tiebreakers. The scheduling is abhorrent.
In their defense however, mega conferences mean that the scheduling can't be simple. That and unlimited free agency are what is going to kill the sport.
Yeah, so far Alabama looks outclassed.
Venables has Deboers number. I expect OU to win
OU currently has more points than Bama has yards
Bama just got their first 1st down, 9.5 minutes left in Q2.
Too bad, I wanted to see Ou shut out bama.
OU having a stroke now turning what should have been a rout into a football game
Much rather see the chaos like this than the blowouts many of these games have been in the past
I'm always happy to see bama blown out.
More OU screwing up than bama playing well.
The WR sold that like an Italian soccer player.
No way that was an OU first down
It looked awful close.
I guess it was more clear from the side, didn't seem to be much protesting.
That overhead shot showed he was a half yard short when his forward movement stopped. They likely would have gone for it but seemed to be worth a second look.
What an epic choke job by OU. Bama really isn't a great team this year either.
The OU O line has been a mess
The starting center was the Troy Everitt from Lord Botetourt, but he got injured about the 4th game and was lost for the year. Was recruited by both Fuente initially and by Pry went he hit the portal out of Appy State.
He was the one who followed his girlfriend to app state if i remember correctly and people on here turned it into "we're losing head to head battles with a sun belt team!!!!!!!!"
Is App State in the SBC?
Did he ultimately choose App State over VT (regardless of reason)?
if there's only ever one option in mind, is it really "a recruiting battle"
if the reasoning has nothing to do with sports, is it really some indicator if relative standing
is reductionist logic void of all nuance and common sense
Their punter has had two massive mistakes that will probably cost them the game.
That drop in the first half and that terrible punt at the beginning of the 4th
...and now their FG kicker all but assured it
Oklahoma finished their playoff run sooner than anyone.
I'm not a "it's the refs fault" guy, but reffing seems very questionable tonight
Eh, Oklahoma did plenty on their own to lose this game. Mistake after mistake after mistake
I hear a team with zero chance to win the title won the participation trophy game
I fucking hate Alabama.
This game did nothing to convince me they belonged in it.
Well they get Indiana next so that should tell the tale
I agree, but they did enough to win. We'll see if it is enough in the next round.
As much as I dislike Alabama, this is exactly why it should be possible for any team to get to the playoff. Once you are there, everybody is 0-0 again. Win and advance.
Pulling for JMU and Tulane today
I think Monty is calling plays for Miami today.
Run the ball for 3, 4, 5 yards or more then proceed to throw a screen pass for negative yards, then drop Carson Beck back to try and complete a pass on 3rd and long.
I think Miami could control this game if they simply leaned heavily on that OL.
I don't understand why they don't run the ball more, especially when Beck starts throwing picks. Their running game is more than capable of controlling a game.
And then they decide to run up the middle with 1:30 left lol. I'll never understand Cristobal.
He's burning clock and staying in the middle of the field 8n case they want to go FG.
He took the TO with him to halftime too lol
A&M looking like the better team so far. They're moving the ball, but keep shooting themselves in the foot. Miami REALLY needed that punt return TD.
Sheesh... Mario Cristobal channeling his inner Mike London and Brent Pry with that end of half clock management.
He's got be be such a frustrating coach if he's leading your team.
The Cristobal v Franklin match-ups are going to be so hard to watch.
I'm so not worried about Miami long term if Franklin gets this thing rolling. Franklin may not coach you to a win, but I don't think he'll coach you from a win to a loss. Cristobal will. We'll always have an opportunity as long as he's on the sidelines regardless of how well they recruit.
Boring game points-wise. However, Miami totally shutting down A&M should help deteriorate the public (*cough* Disney) opinion that conference affiliation alone means superiority.
Is that what making adjustments at halftime looks like?
This Miami/A&M game is a special teams shit show. Did Holt take over both teams' special teams?
No, because both teams were capable of calling fair catches on kickoffs to get the yards.
I second the opinion from the telecast crew - make the ACC review audio and live look-in the standard across college football
That's about the only place where the ACC is actually ahead of everyone else.
Yet sadly a year to late to stop the multiple Miami favoritism fiascos of the previous year's games.....
This gave just flip flopped from Miami looking to drive to score to blowing it with a fumble to then having an even better drive to end the fam here.
Michael Irvin looks happy
Someone finally scores a touchdown with 1:55 left in the game. A&M defense looked tired on that drive, gave up a lot of yards on the ground.
Wow Mario is kneeling it. He never does that.
Im not gonna say go miami. But I like seeing the "vaunted" SEC get handled at home by the "lesser" P4 team.
Edit: cant wait to hear what nick Saban has to say about this sec loss.
Saban can EABOD
I' think Saban wouldn't have any trouble devouring Paul Finebaum...
A lot of people probably didn't see what you did there.
But I did. Well done.
Thank you thank you
I'm honestly not sure who's taking the bigger insult there.
You know, it's gonna be really funny when the only SEC wins in the CFP are against other SEC teams....
Ehh they are still laughing to the bank. Two CFP games so far and the SEC banked $12M in appearance money. They are getting a minimum of $24M now with 5 teams in and Bama
Oklahomaadvancing.Who wants to tell him about OU?
Yeah meant Bama...typing fast watching basketball...amount is still correct
The distraction is real when bouncing between 2 games and 2 TKP threads
Or three with Beast of the East going on with wrestling
I was kinda hoping for OT in that game.
Does Miami advancing mean more money for us? I honestly can't remember what the rules are for splitting the postseason money.
Yes, Miami advancing brings the ACC share to $8M vs $4M. Advance again and its $14M. Get to the ship and its $20M
If Miami had kneeled at the inch line game would have been over. Scoring isn't always the answer kids.
I typically agree going down there is the move, but Miami's kicker was 1/4 on the day due to high winds.
3 downs with fletcher from the 1 inch line I like the odds.
Ole Miss not messing around. Looking to be the first SEC home team to actually win a playoff game this year.
Is this the replacement coach game?
Sumrall is still coaching Tulane
Florida fans must be losing it right now.
Sumrall is also mourning his father. He passed Thursday.
Tulane looking really overmatched on offense.
Looking a little more balanced now, maybe settling in a bit
We've all been watching the wrong game. FCS Semifinal Montana @ Montana State is on right now. Brawl of the Wild Pt. II or Brawl of the Semifinal. It was 27-23 in the 4th, but Montana St. just scored a TD to go up 34-23.
Raise your hand if you thought the first Virginia team to score points in the CFP would be JMU...
Technically speaking, the BCS was a one game playoff and we scored 29 points in that one. I think that playoff system was a bit more exclusive than the current one.
and this
I'll say the quiet thing out loud. The original BCS had it right all along. Play the top two ranked teams. Oh wait, ratings, ratings, ratings. More games, more $$$$.
Only college football could format their playoffs in such a way that I'd miss the BCS. I wish I could time travel back to, like...my 2008 self and be like 'no actually you don't want this'
Correct.
Now...
Conference championships don't matter.
Bowl games don't matter.
Player development doesn't matter.
Program loyalty doesn't matter.
I won't go as far as to say the BCS had it right... but the CFP definitely found new ways to get it wrong.
We really need a post season that matches the regular season/current conference alignment. The current 12 team model would be perfect for the 2008 conferences - when you had 5 power conferences, a 6th quasi-power conference (the BE), and a variety of G5 conferences that could punch up (the MAC, the mountain west/WAC, etc).
TBH, now that there are these super conferences, it really would be fine to just pin the two highest ranked conference champions against each other.
Yep nothing wrong with top 5 conference champs and 7 at large if the PAC was still a thing and OU, Texas were in the Big 12.
Under those parameters, we'd have 6 champs and 6 at large.
What about a combination of the two? Like, still have 12-team playoff, but get rid of the selection committee.
Edit: Nevermind, just saw Soup's comment further down.
I honestly thought that JMU might surprise some people. Boy, was I wrong.
JMU played only one P4 team (Louisville) and lost by two TDs. They had zero chance in this game. At most they have two or three players that are even good enough to be on Oregon's roster.
79th strength of schedule
It's even worse than that. #121 ranked strength of schedule.
Oregon is one of the top 5 most talented teams in the country. Oregon spends more money on a single player than JMU spends on its entire roster. I thought JMU might make it a little competitive but the problem is that JMU is a second half team. They couldn't afford to be that tonight.
The most glaring statement that is being made to me is just how awful the ACC is. JMU, as bad as they look tonight, would have finished near the top of our fledgling league. Miami needs to keep reloading and figuring out how to play an entire season. Clemson needs to stop Clemsoning. FSU needs to get its shit together. And VT needs to get back to where it was 15 years ago.
JMU lost by 14 to the 10th place ACC team. They probably would have had 3-5 losses playing a full ACC schedule depending on who they had to play.
They lost to a fully healthy L'ville team who beat Miami. Are you suggesting that L'ville could win the Playoff? NSCU beat UVA, are they better than UVA?
I seriously don't see more than 4 teams better than JMU in the ACC.
EDIT: According to the ESPN SOR index, only Miami (in the ACC) is better than JMU. Every other team is below JMU.
Why are you trying to play transitive property now? JMU went 0-1 against the ACC. Realistically they are probably a middle of the pack ACC team this season due to great coaching and QB play. The remainder of their roster just isn't good enough to consistently beat the top half of the ACC.
Edit: #18 SoR is a bit deceiving when their SoS is #121.
No, that's what you were doing, I was only engaging in that same conversation with you.
Again, the ESPN SOR index tells the story.
Well, I don't think I've ever seen a punt get blocked by a teammate's ass before.
Yeah both JMU and Tulane had no business being included. Not like I want 2 more SEC or B1G teams instead but those games were not a good look for "playoff" football.
In any other sport, playoffs are the mechanism employed to sort through great teams to determine the best team. Not sure what having JMU and Tulane included is but it is not playoff football.
That's like saying UMBC didn't deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament the year they beat LOLUVA because they were the 64th seed, and 64 is only one away from 65.
No one has this problem with the Big Dance. Why is it suddenly such an issue in college football?
I said this in the other thread but I've been seeing this everywhere the past few days, and it really feels like bad faith propaganda getting pushed by angry Notre Dame fans/potentially also delusional SEC homers. This line of thinking is dangerous for VT's future chances to make the playoff unless you're counting on us to get swept up into the greater P2 in future, which is fine if so but I'm certainly less bullish on that prospect, JMFF notwithstanding.
and before anyone starts with the "this is about the sport as a whole, not VT-centric" nonsense, I do not care to participate in a college football landscape where my favorite college football team has no access to the sport's highest levels. I will not be making my arguments from any other position.
I'm on this side.
To paraphrase someone from years past:
'Imagine you go to Boise State spring practice before 2006 season. And you say to the team-"ive got some good news: y'all will go 13-0 this season!.... bad news: you won't even get near a shot to play for the National championship. "
There's something, to me just un-American about not rewarding excellence. Flawed, yes, but
If you win your conference, you get a shot. If you don't, you shouldn't.
Yes, some are not competitive, but we know because they played yesterday and not because of sportstalk debate. Im ok with that.
Of course, my sec wife thinks it's a travesty to have 'bad conferences' (ie all but sec and maybe big10) get a shot, because...sec.
FTFY
FTFY.
I like your correction. My statement was idealistic, your correction is realistic.
Like Duke would have done better
Agreed. My criticism is against the current playoff structure.
A lot to unpack here.
Yes, both teams were overmatched.
They got in because they won their respective conference, as it should be
The talent gap last night was highlighted because Oregon's team is built to win the Big10, and JMU's is built to win the Sunbelt
Now, take away the conference consolidations, blow the conferences up, and put things back regionally (also, the way they should be) and enforce that records matter. Conference championships matter. Polls do not. It will start a new race across college football for programs to reconstruct how they approach the sport, and we'll get a bit more parity.
I could not agree more with your solution. And I totally agree with putting conferences regionally and making conferences championships matter.
My statement and opinion (that is all it is) is based upon the current structure. My statement is that JMU and Tulane simply are not 2 of the best 12 football teams in the country. Now there are so many reasons why that is the case, however the reality is that they are not.
There are plenty of instances in the NFL where division winners really have no business being in the playoffs when there are better teams in crowded divisions. But winning your division gets you a spot.
NCAA bball tourney is a better example of proper "sorting out the best teams." However, it has the flaw that there are wayyy too many teams to be able to definitively say "these are the 68 best teams this season." At least it makes for some great stories when you have Cinderella runs and major upsets. If it always sifted out to 2 of the #1 seeds playing for the championship every year, it wouldn't be as much fun to watch.
Basketball also has the advantage of rarely being impacted by weather, games can be stacked at a single location much more easily and played with more frequency. The logistics of football discount being able to shift that direction.
The difference is the NFL is set up to attempt to level the field with equally resourced teams competing. Yeah I get it there are some years it doesn't work correctly but by and large it works fairly well.
This playoff system of including G5 schools will likely (imo) give the same result every year. I do not ever expect a Cinderella story coming out of this system with the current extreme disadvantages that G5 schools have.
As Alex Kirshner said on SZD - it's a weight class thing. JMU has two guys >300lb. Oregon has 7. 70% of Oregon's starting linemen are over 300 lbs. JMU didn't have a chance.
There anybody else that would get the amusement of Miami might be able to win a national championship game before they could actually win the ACC?
I would not be amused.
I'm in this boat. And I hate myself for it. I hate that college football has found a structure where I find myself hating other conferences more than my second most hated rival.
If it was UVA I'd be rooting for them to get blown out though. Fuck UVA.
I hate Miami more than UVA, but I would love to be able to say to the SEC and B1G members our third place team beat your best teams.
I don't root for teams in the ACC just because they are in the ACC. But I will absolutely root against teams because they are in the SEC (or Ohio State or Notre Dame).
Miami is benefitting from being in the right place at the right time as far as my rooting interest goes. It would be the same if they were Miami (OH) in this instance. If they were opposite Indiana, go Hoosiers.
EDIT: ^^^^ Responding to above ^^^^ Posting before the first sip of coffee often has unintended results.
It would simply be proof that we have, and have had, the toughest conference in the nation.
I wouldn't mind a combo BCS/Playoff format.
Computers rate/rank the teams and the top 12 make it regardless of conference affiliation, championship game participation, etc.
That's my belief:
It's not perfect, but it's an improvement imo
Pretty good plot writing for a soap opera.
I can't believe we have this perpetual argument over how hard we need to go to script a competitive team sport.
Pro-wrestling doesn't even pageant this hard.
Sagarin really screw PSU by putting them 13th they should have made it
This is what I've been saying... New format:
- Conference champs, regardless of conference, get an auto bid.
- Seeding determined by BCS ranking
- At-large bids awarded to top-x BCS ranked teams that were not conference champs.
I actually really would have enjoyed watching JMU battle Tulane rather than what we got. Would have been a much better watch and depending on the bowl, each school likely could have gotten more than the $4M first round appearance money.
1998+ CFB Bowl records (Conf & Team)
Who made this? There are tons if inaccuracies. Apparently our loss to Cincy in the military bowl in 2018 didn't count
Neither did our win over Tulane.
let's split the difference and say the one from 2018 didn't count
What's the pattern on Utah St's helmets? Is that a cow print?
Yup! Go Aggies!
Home of MJ Collins now who is having a season for the ages for them. Shooting like 50% from 3.
Toledo with a DC Wilson special- two #12's on the field on their punt reception team . Louisville punted and had touchback almost downed at the 1. Louisville decided to try long FG instead of re-punting. Toledo blocked the field goal attempt an got it at the 45 instead. Ironically , one of the #12's was on the field for the FG try and was the one who blocked the attempt! Some folks get all the luck/breaks!
(Toledo ended up scoring a FG on the drive following the blocked kick)
They just got 12 men on the field
crazy 4th quarter though!
Blocked kicks; runbacks for 2 points; fumbles; just a wild 4th !
This is the kind of game that makes me roll my eyes when people bitch about bowl games
Pie dough hydrating, fudge made, done with work for the year and enjoying some whisky and CFB.
There aren't too many bowl games, people just aren't appreciating what this time of year has to offer
Southern Miss with a dumb miss on a 4th and 1 from their own 35. Then WKY says hold my beer with a dumb interception.
I also enjoyed the PI by the back judge there
So apparently there is a trophy for best percentage of wins for a conference. They can already award it. One pac 2 team played in a bowl and won it. Therefore they have a 100% and can't drop below that.
Loophole -- the bowl tie-ins for the Pac-whatever are filled based on the teams who were in the Pac-12 before it imploded.
Anyone still pining for Mullen?
Colandrea looked like his former UVA self. UNLV turned the ball over twice, had a punt partially blocked and a touchdown wiped out by penalty in the first half alone. They did just about everything wrong that they could. Both turnovers were by Colandrea. Fumble on 1st and Goal and an interception from the Ohio 32 yard line.
Big game with national audience, of course a Hoo was going to choke.
Cal gives up the TD with 10 seconds left to lose the Hawaii Bowl.
Unreal how bad their D was in the 2nd half....
I was shocked and apparently both schools got into a fight to celebrate winning /losing.
When the teams were getting the after game snacks from the team mom, one of the players said "who wants a Hawaiian Punch?" and all hell broke loose
Owen McCown is smallish but could make some decent NIL $ next year and should eventually get a look in the NFL
Pitt seems to have their hands full with ECU.
Just fumbled and ECU recovered.
Still scoreless, but so far a messy game.
Do I root for the ACC or against LOLUVA today at the Gator Bowl?
that's tough because its SEC but im a big fan of who cares about conferences so go tigers!
I feel so dirty sitting with all these UVA fans. I've never seen this many in person before.
When you say 'this many' you mean like 50, right?
More UVA fans than Mizzu fans but it's nuts, we have season tickets and there are not even more than 3 people sitting in the inside club areas or getting food. The stands are closed in upper deck and lower deck is 40% on UVA side 30% on Missouri side.
Grunkemeyer, playing for Penn St right now against Clemson, is rumored as a transfer QB target for us, right?
No idea. But do we have a list of potential PSU guys that are playing in the game to watch? Just saw a TE haul in a nice grab. We're supposed to be getting the whole TE room apparently.
Grunkemeyer may not make it through this game alive.
Am I the only one who thinks Druckenmiller every time I hear Grunkemeyer?
A couple of good drives in the 4th quarter
Yes, made some great throws and reads today
ECU getting the VT treatment-inadvertent whistle negated all but 14 yd of a 68yd TD run on 4th and 1 ! THEN two plays later Pitt forces a QB fumble and scoops and scores. So instead of 17-7 ECU it's 14-10 Pitt!
Klempson with like 7 drops so far
Klubnik looks like Drones too
Clock operator took a vacation in game. Referee has asked for clock to be reset 6 times now.
ECU-
Pitt has become an interesting game in the second half. TOs, momentum shifts. Hard to want either team to win though.
Narduzzi manages to blow any chance of winning by wasting 2 minutes by not kicking the FG with 3:30 to go (while needing a TD and FG both)-instead they had 1 minute and no timeouts to go length of the field and failed miserably!
Why in the fuck did I take eat shit pitt.
At least I only had em for 16 pts.
Lost me 22 points and Clemson trying their best to lose me 23 more if they don't get the comeback win. Army managing a 7-7 tie right now- I picked them but only for 5 points...
I'm gonna lose every fucking game today at this rate.
I'm 1--2 so far but teams I picked are leading in the 2 games going on now. I'm holding at 13th place but on the bright side, only one other of the 21 players has a higher possible maximum score at this point...
Dabo is such a d!ck. I think he genuinely hates his players.
Prop Bet on Dabo: Over/Under 2 more years at Clemson??
I would be tempted on the under at this point.
His Offense is putrid and save another Elite-level QB walking in the door, I don't see any improvement coming.
I tend to agree. Low Energy and just a lack of game breakers anymore. If he doesn't learn really fast how to use the portal he is done.
Klubnik hasnt been good, but the rest of the team has been misses like no other. Clemson won its first championship with top 20 classes, not top 5. They hit on a lot of players and had great coaches but for about 5-6 years they've not recruited or coached well. This is why you dont alway promote from within, which Clemson has done a lot.
I don't think the (primary) issue is his disinterest in the portal - If I were a clemson fan, I'd be more concerned about players just not be developed. Clemson used to be the place that turned a top 15 class into a top 3 team. Lately, Dabo's been turning top 15 classes into top 40 teams.
Does Penn State have a Defensive Lineman doing their kickoffs?
He's a 300 pound punter and kickoff specialist.
Klempson defense has quit
GT's clock management would make Mike London and Brent Pry happy.
Too soon to bring up bad memories of us. But jabs at those zima-drinkers are welcome.
Haynes King just threw it away but had 15 yards open field to run
The Jackets clock management has been terrible in this two minute drill
post pop tarts bowl is sooo cringy
It's the best part of bowl season so far!
But why did the swole Strawberry one chicken out?
The Post-Game was drawn out waaaayy too long.
Its a fun concept but its getting close to jumping the shark territory.
That last series by GT was absolutely baffling
UVA is so bad.
I, for one, very much welcome their fall from grace
Glad those hoos got in their generational football W against a historically bad Tech this year.
Next year: we return the favor.
Mizzou's offense looks like ours. Their qb transfers and they throw the ball on 5 of their 6 plays in the 3rd quarter. They go 3/5 for 8 yards and a pick. Their one run gained 5 yards. Yet they insist on throwing it. Down 6. Sideline interview before the 4th q and coach says they're timid throwing the ball and just need to get better throwing it 🤦
Run the fucking ball, dipshit
And now they have to start their 3rd drive inside their own 5. My guess is first down run up the middle for 1 yard. Second down pass incomplete. 3rd down pass for 3 yards. Punt.
Run for 2
Run for 4
Qb draw for 3
False start on 4th and short. Lol. That is sooo VT.
If uva gets a fg (starting near midfield) that probably ends the game.
Welp. If nothing else, watching Mizzou shit this game away with awful offensive coaching has made me realize VT is not the only team in the world that is pathetically bad at offensive football. So there's that. I guess
To your point, I continue to not understand the Eli Drinkwitz hype.
Missouri is okay...their offense is okay...why is his name on so many coaching search lists?
He was believed to be option #2 behind Kiffin at UF, Arkansas wanted him, his name at least came up for PSU and even Michigan..
He parlayed all that to a big $$ extension.
I just don't see it.
If nothing else, his mismanagement of Hardy last night was monumentally stupid, and ought to disqualify him from anything worth qualifying for. He even admits he screwed the pooch. And yet again this season, UVA lucks out.
Front page news of ESPN....first 11 win season in 122 year program history
and probably their last, unless they buy another solid team.
I think there are two main issues with coaching today, first the easy one, we just lived through Nick Saban who is the greatest college coach of all time. Very few people alive have seen dominance like that, the late 90s/early 90s had miami/FSU doing what Saban did, but that was two teams. Before that was OU's 47 game win streak in the 50s. This is why people want to fire Ryan Day who has the best winning percentage ever.
The 2nd is that football has changed so rapidly that its really hard to evaluate coaches because what makes a great coach, in the 90s we had Spurrier and Beamer who won with inventive football, Miami and Bowden both won with talent, Osborne won with execution and steroids. I think the changed from 2001-2025 dwarf the changes from 1975-2000. The offenses are so different, the defenses had to change, coaches use math to determine what to do. Recruiting is completely different.
There 4 are coaches still coaching college that won a national title as Head coach (Chizek is now a DC). That's it. In 2007 we had 15 coaching all as head coaches. Also Pat Dye was an Atheletic director.
Eli Drinkwitz has a better winning percentage than Frank Beamer. For a program like Mizzouri thats great, same for Arkansas. It's also higher than UFs historical winning percentage. And better than all but Spurrier, Meyer and Mullen in the last 50 years.
Drinkwitz has only coached 88 games. Do you think that win percentage is going to go up or down? Get back to us when he has coached over 400.
That's why he's not a HoF coach, but to wonder why he would be in competition for high profile jobs, well he is winning at a rate higher than lots of coaches.
I tend to agree re: Eli. He's fine. He has mizzou regularly punching above their weight class, in a better conference. But he's not doing good enough to get a job somewhere else.
Holy shootout...the UNT SDSU game was a blast to watch.
1150 yards of offense.
694 rushing yards.
Sat in front of a VT fan whose wife and daughter went to UVA so we go to bond over wanting the SEC team to lose but not cheer for UVA. I also found out there stupid new years song they all sing isn't even their fight song.
This is more "it's not a campus it's the grounds" stuff from the Wahoos. They sing it after every touchdown. They can pretend it isn't a fight song if they like, but no matter how pretentious they are, words mean things.
They do have a completely separate fight song. They probably think that fight songs are beneath them, so they use the new year's song instead.
Either way, it's them being pretentious.
Sounds like a tough rationalization. Nice work handling it.
They won't be singing much next year, they lose 19 starters this year minimum.
On another note: DUUVVAALLL!
GFY hoos. That is all.
The asteroid just wouldn't come.
Underrated comment
I'd add the refs to this too. It's pretty shitty to force out the starting QB in a bowl game with only 1 play left in the game with a chance to win the game.
Disagree completely he clearly took a head injury and needed to be pulled
The more egregious error was not calling uva for roughing the passer
This part.
Ya hate to see it...
And like clockwork rocky top will be pre season top 10 again come the summer like always.
It just means more.
I so want VT to get good again, and then play and beat them.
Fuck TN again ! Screwed me all year!
And of course , Vandy shits the bed too! Screw the entire state of TN!
They announced DJ Harvey as the USC safety during a touchdown late in the Alamo Bowl. That dude has had himself a journey.
TCU needs to hit this FG to send the game to OT.
...and still could be there or somewhere else next season, possibly two
TCU overcoming the penalty in Overtime to win over USCw on a check down to the RB who broke three tackles to skirt the sideline for 35 yards.
I was ready to root for Vanderbilt this season until Pavia showed himself to be an irredeemable douche. Not I'm enjoying every time that Iowa gets a sack
I want him to go somewhere crappy in the NFL just so we can see the result in the big league.
Personally want him to not even get a camp tryout
I hope he took his finals, cause I don't think football is his future unless he gets eligibility into his 30's.
Vandy with the illegal punt. Cannot say that I have ever seen that before. LOL!
Being one foot over the line while punting is penalized more harshly than 3 guys targeting simultaneously.
No more than an illegal forward pass
Was it a loss of down penalty? Would that result in a turnover at the spot of penalty since it was 4th down?
Something I had never contemplated
It is a loss of down penalty
So was it a turnover at the spot then?
Plus an extra 5 yard insult.
C'mon Hawkeyes!
I haven't heard commentators say a players name over and over again like that since the days of John David Booty
GO HAWKS
My Hawkeye bride and I were quite pleased at the outcome of the game.
I finally figured it out:
Ummm.... Starting to think Miami's defensive performance against aTm wasn't a fluke,,,
And Miami already silencing anyone complaining that ND would have put up a better fight...
fucking hell i hate having to root for anOSU
Maybe I'm the one with my wires crossed, but why are you cheering for an OSU? I hate Miami, but I hate an OSU WAAAAY more
Im not rooting for Miami. I am rooting against anOSU
...fix yourself bro
I've only managed to cheer for Ohio State once (as a Christmas present to my wife), because they were playing Notre Dame in a bowl game.
I don't get to actively cheer against them, but I'm silently enjoying this game so far.
Still, Muck Fiami.
I have to root for the $6M add to the ACC Bowl Pool.
Look like Miami keeps all that. Which is fine, because that means we'll be able to keep all of our CFB money down the road.
Really bad spot.
replay was insane though. How was that possibly "clear and obvious"?
It wasn't....
VT was more competitive against Miami that an Ohio State.
How did our o-line get in this game for anOSU?
They did take Bowen as their OL coach.
I thought Miami might keep it close and that +7.5 Line was tempting, but I did not see this.
Miami looks like the much better team.
Edit: Hmmm...this comment looked way better 90 minutes ago
LOL "Ohio State plays a lot of bear front"...
Good thing Ohio State fans have no honor- I know of at least two who have promised Hari-Kari because of that sentence.
the fact that they haven't called any penalties in three quarters is just patently absurd. A suplex, some false starts, some targeting and uncountable holds. Someone is going to die before they toss a flag
This has been a genuinely violent game, and I feel like the lack of calls is just adding fuel to the fire.
The fact that SEC refs are calling the game and the next opponent is Ole Miss/UGA has my conspiracy brain humming.
they finally threw one. Not on the obvious OPI or either of the two false starts, but on a questionable defensive holding
It's customary for Miami OSU games.
Just missed another one there
they finally called a hold and it was the one play where there wasn't really holding
The refs have let what I thought were several egregious holds go on both sides.
I hate that the current state of CFB has me so excited for Miami winning this game.
Off topic: Michael Irvin's coke dealer in Dallas is a about to have a great night.
Dude Michael Irvin's coke dealer is already the busiest man in America.
I think his dealer could give him Styrofoam and he wouldn't notice normally but he wants the real stuff tonight
That right there is funny...and true
I cannot agree with this more
I could only be enjoying this Ohio St loss more if Diego Pavia were their QB
Dont count it out at this point.
2031 Pavia for Heisman straight from Columbus
Miami winning tonight feels like a conjuring of an episode of Futurama, what with the conjuring of heads of famous corpses from centuries ago and all.
Glad they won. Hope they fall into a pit of lava
I would like to congratulate Arch Manning in following his family's tradition of winning the citrus bowl with a quote from Spurrier, "You can't spell citrus without UT"
that run he had was pretty nice
"he get it from his momma"
So far no team with a bye has won a playoff game
I find it hilarious that they stripped the byes from the conference winners after one set of anecdotes with the exact opposite intention.
Fuck this playoff committee.
Well technically last year everyone with a bye was an underdog, miami is the first upset, but yeah, im rooting for chaos again this year.
We are still going strong with lower seeds always winning after the byes
looking at the crowd, i have never seen so many trashy people in one place at one time
Now I get why SEC fans root for the conference. Rooting against them has been great fun this bowl season.
God it feels amazing - living in Ohio when OSU loses. These tears will sustain me for weeks.
On the other hand
I'll never root for Miami again
Same, brother. Same.
You dont need to...just root for the ACC Bowl Pool since we still have to suffer in it
Just remember Miami might be able to win a National Championship this year, but they were still third place in the ACC.
Behind Duke and UVA no less
Well, they are in such a top heavy conference. The SEC and B1G teams wouldn't be able to survive the grind of an ACC schedule week-in and week-out
I'm not surprised at Miami winning, even though it was the biggest spread of the quarters. Also not surprised on the under hitting, although I'm slightly surprised that it got all the way to 38. I would be shocked if Alabama and/or Ole Miss won. I think Texas Tech is going to pull the upset.
I'm pretty shocked that Ole Miss won, but they played great tonight. I thought UGA had improved since the first matchup (I picked Ole Miss in the first game). Expected Indiana to cruise.
So...I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess Pete Bevacqua won't be issuing a formal apology to the ACC here soon??
Maybe he will just crawl back into his hole and not talk ever again...might be the best strategy for everyone involved.
Nah they will just turn their "fury" on Bama if they lose.
This Oregon/TTU crowd in Miami is the reason CFP needs to abandon the tradition of the historic bowl games and make the "home" team actually play at home. This stadium is maybe at 50% capacity... the designated team sections seem to be decently populated but the rest of the stadium looks like a typical Saturday noon kickoff for Miami.
Or maybe it was just the view when 3EB played their halftime set... in which case I'm shocked that the stands were 50% full
So JMU having a much better performance against Oregon than Texas Tech is clearly an indicator of...
(fill in the blank)
Commonwealth of VA superiority
TT being overrated!
JMU had a good 2nd half... after a nightmarish 1st. I think it does indicate that TTU may have been slightly overrated, and maybe Oregon deserved the 4-spot. I would definitely have been up for watching JMU vs TTU in round 1.
Yep, kudos to JMU for playing well in the second half, but Oregon pulled all of their defensive starters at halftime to avoid injuries. If you watched the full game, you saw that Oregon could have maybe won by 70 if they kept their foot on the gas.
It seems every player named "Ryan Williams" is excellent at the FBS level
Bama really trusts their defense going for it in plus territory there
...and it bit them in the ass
I keep telling myself this every time I watch them but IU is completely serious and not at all a fluke.
Happy with J Frank but in16 we could have had Smart and 21 we could have had Cignetti.
Doubt we had any chance at Kirby back then. But 100% could've had Cig at any point if we had just Googled him.
Indiana Football = Well Oiled Machine
That may be the nail in Bama coffin.
We'll see how their first drive after halftime looks
so long as iu doesnt give it away like ou did
Can we get a game today where both teams score points? This is a waste of time
Letting these lesser conferences into the playoff really makes for some boring games
hey now, the sec is guaranteed at least 1 more win after today!
looks like theres gonna be a lot of battered spouses and kicked dogs in bammerland tonight sheesh
Maybe rooting for Miami doesn't actually help us at this point....
which is why i kept getting annoyed at the rslurred tech fans rooting for scum last night
HEY! I was rooting AGANST an OSU! There's a difference!!!
Also I don't know what rslurred means, but I'm assuming it's not nice.
i made a promise to tone it down on here
an rslurred person is a highly regarded individual
It's the r-word slur for someone who is mentally deficient.
This was not in place last week so if its true then its new and another example of incompetence in Charlotte
Not seeing it anywhere else yet. I am wondering how they would be able to just decide after the fact to redistribute millions of dollars. Seems like a fast track to a lawsuit
Is this really how this works? It's hard to believe.
I'm a bit shocked, but this is the same ACC that allowed Virginia and Duke to play in their championship, instead of Miami.
Just remember Miami might be able to win a National Championship this year, but they were third place in the ACC and have never been ACC champion.
I STILL don't think they should get to keep all the playoff money.
So all the other teams have to share theirs, but Miami gets to keep that?
I just can't see any way or reason the other member programs are OK and onboard with this. If it is true, there has to be something beneficial to everyone in doing this...but that explanation escapes me.
How would any of the former ACC/CFP participants, who did share their earnings per the conference bylaws, see this as fair and not immediately file a lawsuit?
Looks like it was part of the solution that made the FSU/Clemson lawsuit go away.
https://www.wralsportsfan.com/acc-schools-have-a-new-path-to-more-revenu...
The ACC never ceases to amaze me in how it continues to find ways to sodomize itself.
I wonder if the non-CFP-participating ACC members saw this as a "winning the lottery" type of thing. "Look, if we agree to this, and we most assuredly go to the CFP next season, we'll get to keep ALL the money!!"
I mean, it could work out really well for us. If James Franklin performs to his history we'll be making the playoffs at least every couple years and be able to pocket all the money.
Did Indiana just put in their backup in the 3rd quarterNo, but 'bama had to
Raise your hand if you IU blowing-out [insert anyone] in the Rose Bowl at the start of the year.
Me. I've been an Indiana and Cig believer (and bettor) since last year.
Alabama needs to quit playing with their food or they're going to get a $care.
Reminder: ODU scored two TDs against this Indiana team and held them inside the 5 twice.
"The SEC is just better" 😂😂 Joey, Kirk, Paul and anyone else saying that suck me
Deboer be like..... 'maybe I should have put in for the michigan job.....'
Nobody wants to watch this shitty blowout. They should have never allowed Indiana into the playoffs in the first place.
I'm not sure who you are poking fun at, but I'm here for it.
It's just not good TV. I don't care if they won their conference. I don't not pay good money to care about teams advancing in their sport... objective qualifications... blah blah blah.
We
wantdeserve to consume a competitive matchup. Get these mouth breathing Hoosiers off my tv and let me watch real football schools play a tough, hard-fought battle.Q1 loss for Bama wonder how it will impact their preseason top 8 ranking next season.
It'll drop them down to 10th.
Jesus, is Indiana that much of a juggernaut this season or is Bama not worth the 12 seed they rode in on?
The job that Cignetti has done at IU is amazing. IU should be held up as the golden standard of what NIL+Transfer Portal can do compared to the shitshow that was CU when Prime rolled into town.
All joking aside, the SEC is just nowhere near the hype they've had all season. They always get the benefit of the doubt (especially by ESPN) but they are usually still pretty good if not as good as ESPN pretends.
This year, the hype has been especially egregious.
Agreed. SEC typically gets the boost from pre-season rankings and the incestuous echo chamber of "the SEC is so good so the fact that the team lost to SEC schools just means that the SEC is so good.
they haven't lived up to the hype for like a decade, but since its been legal to pay players the SEC just lost a step.
Because the SEC probably has been doing it for several decades.
Probably???
--> cue belly laugh
I was making to subtle a glance that Vanderbilt probably wasn't.
Also, a template on how to win after a bye in the CFP.
Play 'bama?
Mendoza is the first football robot I've ever seen shoehorn the word "conglomerate" into his on-field victory interview.
I'm not quite sure how to feel about that.
Usually kids that into trains pick Purdue.
or are autistic (source: autistic son)
Cignetti has resting DGAF face.
I 100% expect to see this reaction when they win the Natty:
When people worry that we will never be able to claw back up from being down, remember this was Indiana back in 2021:
Let me know when we have Mark Cuban cutting checks to our football program. Thats what Indiana has going on in the background
I feel like there is plenty of room for improvement between where we were in 2025 and "billionaire hobby project" though
Sure, no doubt on that
Would have preferred to see Notre Dame instead of Alabama. Surely they could put up more than 3
Rooting for UGA this evening but please don't give me another snooze fest like the last 7 hours have been
Don't undersell the ability to see Alabama taking belt to their ass on New Year's Day.
Yeah that will never get old. Not for another 10 years or so anyway
Getting to see ND whooped and embarrassed on national TV will also never get old.
ND deserved to be there over Alabama, no doubt.
On the other hand, ND shits the bed in major bowl games even more than Miami does around Halloween.
Man, I'm so glad we let 3 loss alabama into the CFP; it just means more getting dog-shit walked by Indiana
Can't wait for Ole Miss to smoke jawja too
Edit: deleted
How much did The Black Keys make for being the theme song for ESPN today?
Dae'Quan Wright oof
Edit: Dae'Quan Wright clutch
Harrison Wallace III played at Penn State for 4 years prior to transferring to Ole Miss for his RS-Sr season
ESPN at their finest here with everything backwards.
Unfortunately Lane Kiffin getting another bonus tonight.
Is the game really over this time??
Jesus, that was painful. Refs just couldn't end it.
We really went from no flags for three quarters last night (despite some pretty egregious penalties) to refs wanting this game to never end
For all the people who don't like the playoff or wish we'd go back to the BCS or 4-team, if we had the BCS this game wouldn't have happened and neither would last night's. Oregon, Ole Miss, and Miami wouldn't still be playing in the 4-team.
The only team in the final four that has outright won a national championship is Miami, and that's been 25 years. The only nattys that Ole Miss can claim are thanks to polls in the 50s and 60s. Whoever wins the Peach Bowl hasn't won a natty before.
We're finally seeing something different.
And really, today's slate was quite enjoyable. Obviously, the Sugar Bowl was the best game. While the Orange Bowl was a shutout, it wasn't a runaway shutout and was closer than the final score let on (since Oregon did go for that extra TD at the end that they didn't need and Texas Tech couldn't stop). And then the Rose Bowl featured the SEC (specifically Alabama) getting bitch slapped by freaking Indiana.
It's a start. But we can go further.
I dream of the day there's only 1 or 2 SEC teams in the playoff
That's right. The BCS National Championship Game would be a rematch of the B1G Championship Game. Ugh.
(it wasn't the B1G it was the SEC but I'm not letting that stop me) yes, I too remember 2011.
I want to go back to before the BCA, we've change what a national title means. Now it is a champion not the team that did the best. You can have a team that beat every opponent and not be champion, you can have a team lose to a 6-6 team and become champion. The playoffs dont prove who had the best season, just who played the best in december/January.
Indiana is the only team so far to not be upset in the bowl round or later. That's 1-10 at the time of this comment. Great seasons aren't rewarded.
The playoff is a must now because of the conference expansions which has messed up scheduling. OOC regular season games are slowly being eliminated for conference games. No one plays each other on conference so tie breakers are a mess, the only way to find out the champ is a playoff, but that is a symptom of the growing cancer (well one of them) in college football
Underrated point here.
I get your first point, but I disagree. Good/Great seasons are absolutely rewarded... with an invitation to the playoffs. There are TONS of examples across all sports where an underwhelming regular season for a team ultimately ends up with a championship (one of my recent favorite examples being the 2019 Washington Nationals - HORRIFIC start to the season, got hot, got lucky, and beat a juggernaut team to win it all). That Cinderella story doesn't happen without a wildcard. Washington did JUST enough to get into the playoffs with their regular season and they got rewarded with the last WC spot, while the top teams got rewarded with some extra time off.
As for the conference scheduling, that I do agree with. This is a response to the system we are living in, and it will take another change (eg playoff format, playoff entrance criteria, something) for it to impact conference alignment and scheduling.
Bonus point... given how inconsequential the non-CFP bowl are, can we/should we have something like an 8-16 team NIT-style tournament for the non-CFP invites? Would sure make the bowl season more interesting, give some teams an extra home game, and still give some of the non-CFP marquee bowls a chance to showcase (looking at you Pop-Tarts and Duke's).
College football was different, it was great because of that, it's now becoming more conformed which makes it lose its uniqueness. Yes lots of other sports have lesser teams win championships but those sports often have very regulated schedules and parity between the teams due to salary cap.
What if March madness was replaced with am NBA style tournament, it would suck. We love March madness because its different. Because its fun. I like the college sports because they were different.
Agree. But the greed - NIL, TV deals, networks, etc have all ruined it. That genie isn't going back in. The one unique thing that college ball holds onto is the rankings, which if you ask me is also one of the key things holding the whole sport back. Given when the sport is today I would rather jettison the rankings, make records really matter, and never look back rather than try and save what used to make the sport unique.
Then you have to fix conferences and scheduling. Which goes against the greed.
But you want to salvage a once special sport by making it not special at all, then what's the point
There's no going back. College football is getting closer every year to truly being a minor league for the NFL. With the way things have been evolving it's not going to be long before NFL franchises take an ownership / sponsorship stake in college teams. I would be a fool to think that the likes of Jerry Jones haven't already looked into the legality of sponsoring Texas, aTm, LSU, Oklahoma, etc. it's either going this direction or we're going to see the sport have a day of reckoning and see it all come crumbling down.
I hate to be negative about it, but those glory days are long gone and they are never coming back.
I agree you can't go back, you have to move forward but to me the only way forward is to fix scheduling. UF never playing an OOC game outside the state for 30 years is an issue. Bama crossing the Mississippi for a game foe the first time in 100 years is an issue. You can't compare schedules. The conferences are too large and have just become an echo chamber. Miami is the lowest at large team and they are in the top 4. They were the last in and there was great argument that ND should have been in their spot. ND best them so ND probably would have been top 4 too (maybe not if ranked 9th). Until you fix scheduling then the teams in the playoffs are just random guesses.
All of those issues were in place when we still had conferences as small as 8-12 teams. The conferences don't regulate the OOC schedules enough to overcome those issues that you raise. Even in the current landscape where the only requirement is to schedule a P4/P5 team, Florida can just rest on their series with FSU or occasionally add Miami.
We're at a weird point where the conferences are both too large and too small. They're too big to do what they were doing in the 14 teams or fewer era, but not large enough to go all in to standardize anything.
I recall an argument, but not a great one. Actually, most of the arguments I recall were how the committee screwed up by having ND ranked above Miami for so many weeks prior to the championship games.
I'm wondering if you left out a word or you're getting the facts mixed up. Notre Dame played Miami during the regular season and lost. Had ND won that game, they would have been a 1 loss team ranked high enough to not worry about their placement in the CFP and Miami would have definitely been left out.
The issues existed but they are so much worse now with 9 game conference schedules and FCS game counting every year. That has taken away 1-2 games for every team (1 game in the 11 game season era). VT will have one opening for an OOC p4 game each year in the future. And thats if they go that way. There is no way we keep Ole Miss and Wisconsin on our schedule, so good by Wisconsin game.
The ACC has played the most P4 OOC games over the last 5 years than any other conference, the SEC is 2nd. Those will be cut in half as both conferences go to 9 game schedules.
What makes the sport unique is its personality -- the crowds, the lore, the rivalries, random trophies, the crazy traditions at the schools. That stuff won't get lost while using more objective metrics to find a champion.
It was stupid because of that. Randomly assigning postseason games that matched up teams with sometimes wildly different records and arbitrarily deciding the national champion based on purely on voting while sometimes splitting the championship was fucking idiotic.
Why not watch the pros then?
What would stop anybody from watching the pros?
Because I like the on-field chaos of the college game - the poor quarterback play (for real it makes it more interesting), the atmosphere, the rivalries, college kicker situations, the big upsets, the standout players, the wide hashes, the different offensive styles. The ridiculous insistence on retaining the idiotic postseason system because of "tradition" held the sport back for decades.
But everything else you mentioned is changing and why keep rivalries? for tradition? Will vlbe asked. We we've played our main rival 3 times in the last 20 years. The traditions are what make all that other stuff happen.
Without rivalries, it's unlikely sports in general are as popular as they are today. There are good traditions and bad traditions in all walks of life. The old bowl postseason was a bad tradition, which is why no other sport does it. Rivalries are a good tradition, which is why across all sports, rivalries are often the most watched. Ohio St-Michigan, The Iron Bowl, The Egg Bowl, UNC-Duke, Yankees-Red Sox, Steelers-Ravens, Leafs-Habs, Caps-Penguins, Celtics-Lakers, Dodgers-Giants, Bears-Packers always do numbers even if the teams are mismatched. Darby days in European soccer are the focal point of domestic seasons. El Clasico is the most watched soccer match every year, in October it was watched by 650 million people.
If college football doesn't preserve rivalries, it will die. College football replacing bowls with a playoff, like every other subset of college football already has, will likely increase the sports popularity. 3 of the 4 quarterfinal games had higher viewership than the NCAA Mens Basketball Championship Game, most of the World Series games, and Game 7 of the NBA Finals!
Do people really miss Oklahoma/Nebraska? Just one example.
Yes, but Nebraska miss a lit of things like winning
Gotta second king james here... One of the cool things about CFB is that every game, any week, could ruin your chance at being a national champion.
Now there's more games that matter, but no single game matters as much as it once did.
The sport is better for it. More games mattering > one single game mattering.
I don't feel so confident in that.
Ohio State versus Michigan effectively doesn't matter anymore. Up until 15 years ago, it was impossible for a team to lose that game and still win their conference or a national title. Now it's possible for those teams to play each other three times in a single season. It's possible for Ohio State to lose that game and then win a national title.
I understand that I'm cherry picking here, and I obviously recognize that having more games that matter makes for a significantly more interesting last five weeks of the season
But I do think that if we could redesign this sport with a blue sky vision, we could find the perfect medium.
That situation is a product of the conferences ditching divisions, not the CFP.
Losing to Michigan helped anOSU last year by having then skip the conference championship game, that could have easily been true with or without divisions.
It would have been better for UGA to rest their players vs GT and take that loss. They would have had a home game instead of the SEC championship game.
OSU vs Oregon did not matter last year. UGA vs Ole Miss did not matter this year. None of those had anything to do with divisions or lack of divisions.
I was referring to the ability to play three times in a single season. That's only possible because of the divisionless conference championship games.
If they had lost to GT, they still would have been in the SEC title game, and then they would have gotten the home game in the first round.
They took away conference championship byes so you think 11-2 UGA gets a bye when 11-1 Oregon is right there? Also 11-1 A&M.
Sorry I missed read at 4 am, yes a home game in the first round against Tulane or JMU which most likely puts them in the bowl games which they have a great shot at winning since they would be a lower seed. The likelihood they would be in the final four would be way more if they lost to GT based on empirical evidence.
It's a product of both. The idea that OSU could lose to Michigan and still win the Big 10 was unheard of for a long time. That's an issue with conferences.
The idea that a team could win a natty without winning their conference was not unheard of, but definitely rare/unusual. Now, it will happen frequently. That's an issue with the playoff.
But I agree - if we go back to 8-12 team conferences... probably solved.
Or if we push to bigger conferences but put the emphasis on divisions. And that would make later rounds of the playoffs be the conference championship.
Tell any player, student, or fan of either of those two schools that The Game doesn't matter anymore (yes I know you said "effectively").
But that game does effectively matter. Last year it was the difference between Ohio St. playing in the Big 10 Championship game, the result of which gave Ohio St. a home playoff game instead of possibly getting a first round bye. This year it was maybe the difference between Michigan getting into the playoffs, and I'm not sure how the tiebreakers would've worked, but Michigan might've had a shot at the Big 10 Championship Game (although probably still would've been Oregon). Ohio St. also got a bye this year, which likely would've gone to Oregon if they had lost to Michigan.
Ok so now that there are four left I am heavily rooting for Miami.
If Miami doesn't win it all then I'm rooting for Ole Miss to win it all right after Lane Kiffin leaves
I've been pulling for Miami from the beginning.
Also, re:the ACC distribution rumors, I'm pulling for the ACC to distribute the money around the ACC and not let Miami keep it all.
Who else can see the ACC saying keeping all the money only applied if FSU or Clemson had won in the post season, everybody else had to distribute.
I don't actually understand how it works. I look forward to understanding it better.
I don't mind if the team in the playoffs gets some level of compensation for that, but I don't think they should keep the whole bag. The whole point of a conference should be to benefit all of it's members to some degree.
Not that I want to help Miami out, if we were in their position we would as much if not all of that bag. While I do think that some of that money needs to go back to the conference, I also think Miami deserves to keep most of it because the did the work. The ACC did let do much else to help Miami other than re-air the ND game a dozen times.
So I know that in the previous season, all regular season/ACCN money was split equally, and any post season revenue was kept by the teams that played in those games.
Then this season, there was a change where revenue was split based on a 5-year viewership calculation.
What I don't know is if the 5-year viewership calculation applies to all games, or just the regular season/ACCN games (that were previously being split equally)
Ole Miss is UVA minus any pretense of academic rigor. No thanks
I don't know about all that, but they have an actual football team.
Even worse!
I'll say it again. Alabama, with three losses, didn't belong in the playoffs.
The SEC shouldn't be awarded extra spots in the playoffs.
I'm with you here. ND should not have been cut. Bama should have.
I bet Venables is happy he didn't have to run into a buzz saw though
You can't punish a team for playing an extra game. If Alabama is out then so are Ole Miss and Oklahoma because they didn't even make the conference championship game (I don't care about uneven schedules). Either get rid of championship games or deal with championship game losers getting in.
Btw, Alabama is one of only 5 teams to win a playoff game this year, so they absolutely deserved to be in.
False.
This is the same smooth-brained argument as a couple years ago when TCU got destroyed by Georgia and people said they shouldn't have been in the playoffs while ignoring that TCU won a playoff game to get to the championship game.
Think of it another way: Virginia Tech is ranked #9, we beat Miami at home but lose to them in the ACC Championship Game in Charlotte. Should other teams who didn't play at all that weekend leap us and we get left out of the playoff?
If you play an extra game (for example, a championship game), you absolutely CAN use that information to rate a team for the post season.
So sure, if you are terrible in a championship game it hurts your position in the post season, just as if you win your championship game it supports your candidacy.
Otherwise, what's the point of a championship game?
Taking your example further, if you lose to Miami in the championship game, shouldn't they be ranked ahead of you in the next ranking?
I'm not arguing that championship games should exist or not. I'm arguing in the current setup, teams that qualified for the championship game shouldn't be punished for playing an extra game by getting leapt by teams that got to stay home and being left out of the playoffs entirely. Especially in the Alabama scenario where they already beat the team they lost to in the championship.
Again, Alabama WON A PLAYOFF GAME THIS YEAR, so any argument that they "didn't deserve to be in" is null and void, regardless of the outcome of their second game (they played two playoff games jfc).
This is not a situation of "idle team jumps team that played an extra game". That's a head to head result and should be evaluated as such, as was done with Georgia getting a bye this year and Bama playing in the first round on the road. At no point did I argue that Bama should be ranked ahead of Georgia or not be compared to teams that played on Championship weekend.
If you dont want to be punished for a loss, dont lose, quite simple. If Maimi had played Duke and lost they wouldn't be in the playoffs even with the same record Bama had.
Doesn't matter if Bama beat them in October, only December and January matter, thats the point of the post season now. UGA beat Ole Miss and yet they had to play them again and got sent home.
Duke does not equal Georgia. Those are two very different losses. Yes it should matter that they beat them in October, just like it matters that Miami beat ND in August. So if UGA had lost to Bama in the SECCG, would you argue for them to be left out of the playoffs? They would've lost to Bama twice. How would you argue putting Ole Miss into the field over UGA considering UGA beat them? Would you bump Texas up ahead of UGA even though UGA beat Texas?
UGA lost to Ole Miss in the playoffs which is different than a conference championship game. Look, I actually do think conference championship games should be elimination games as the de facto first round of the playoffs, but that can only work if the conferences go back down to 8-10 teams.
It's a fine line trying to figure out what to do with a team that loses their conference title game. Yes, they should probably drop some, but how far can you legitimately drop a team when none of the teams around them provided any extra data points?
In BYU's case, it didn't really matter because they were below the cutoff and would have needed a win regardless. In Alabama's case, you would have to make the case that they should have dropped at least two spots. And while they now had 3 losses, they still had 10 wins.
Honestly, it would be a lot easier to figure out this point if the committee hadn't screwed up with the whole ND/Miami thing for the entire back half of the season.
I feel like we're on the same page here
Yeah, that was more of an agreement type of post where I'm still trying to work out my thoughts.
I don't necessarily like that Alabama was in the CFP, especially after losing the SEC championship, but I don't have a good argument against them, based on how the rest of the season played out.
I have been liking your takes.
preciate it, I've been a little bit on an island with this and I understand why
I'm arguing that if a team participates in a game, it's a data point, and can be used in one's perception of the team to determine whether they're included in the playoffs and what their seeding is.
Seems odd to me to only pay attention if a team wins, or if they're in the $EC.
We should also acknowledge the data point that none of the other teams in the SEC were good enough to get into the SECCG and we should take minus points away from them because of it. Your playoff ranking should be indicative of the entire season, not just the most recent game you played.
Sure.
But I still remember the rationalizations for keeping FSU out, though they were conference champions and undefeated.
This year proves that playoffs can still happen without Alabama and Ohio State in the semifinals. It'll be hard, but we can shoulder on.
And along with my Alabama stance this year, I feel very strongly that FSU should've gotten in that year. That was absolutely unacceptable from the committee.
Think of it another way:
Virginia TechAlabama is ranked #9,wethey beatMiamiUGA at home but lose to them in theACC$EC Championship Game inCharlotte.Atlanta. Should other teams who didn't play at all that weekend leapusthem andweget left out of the playoff?This is my point. If we were put in the exact same situation, how would people on this board react. I get fans are irrational, but you can't have it both ways. Either Alabama deserves to be out this year, and in the likely future where we're in the exact same situation we deserve to be out and I don't want to hear anyone on this board complain when we get leapt. OR Alabama deserves to be in, and in the likely future where we're ranked in the field but lose the ACCCG to a higher ranked team, we also deserve to be in.
The issue people have is it would never be that way, we got the gator bowl in 2000 because ND need to be blown out by Oregon, or Oregon state I dont remember which one. We would be upset because this always happens to VT and never Bama, or an OSU, or ND. Bama got a pass because they are Bama, and they bring in more money for ESPN than probably anyone else (maybe texas). Its not about making a fair system its about the system isnt fair and never has been and never will be.
I feel like I could buy into your theory more if the team that Alabama kept out wasn't Notre Dame.
Bama is an ESPN team, Miami too, ND isnt.
Not directly, but ESPN takes every opportunity to put ND on one of their main channels whenever they can. (Or they use them as leverage for ACCN, just like NBC uses them as leverage for Peacock.)
They made sure that the Notre Dame home playoff game last year wasn't shunted over to TNT.
well yeah ND will make the more money than not ND, they arent stupid, but this is Bama money
I don't know what smooth brained means and don't care to google it.
Alabama didn't deserve to be in the playoffs because they aren't a good football team right now. Their only win against a ranked team was early in the season, and they played them again and got destroyed. They lost to a 5 win team. If they weren't in the SEC there wouldn't be a discussion. The fact that the SEC had 5 teams in and all are watching from home now tells you what you need to know. If you need further evidence look at their bowl record.
And yes, there are far too many teams in all the "top" conferences.
Yes, but the $ec is so dang tough because they play each other week in and week out and it's hard to sustain against all the top teams in the country.
/s
at your service!
Lissencephaly, which literally means "smooth brain," is a rare, gene-linked brain malformation characterized by the absence of normal convolutions (folds) in the cerebral cortex and an abnormally small head (microcephaly).
Thanks! For the record my head is rather large, so no microcephaly here. Unless I was just being labeled small headed in that I'm not smart, in which case that is true in a number of ways but isn't a topic related to this discussion.
What you're not getting is that the amount of folds in the brain is roughly linked to neural activity. So when someone is called a smoothbrain, they're being called an idiot.
No I got it. I was trying to be nice.
Go Hokies.
Alabama didn't deserve to be in the playoffs because they
aren't a good football team right now. Their only win against a ranked team was early in the season, and they played them again and got destroyed. They lost to a 5 win team. If they weren't in the SEC there wouldn't be a discussion. The fact that the SEC had 5 teams in and all are watching from home now tells you what you need to know. If you need further evidence look at their bowl record.didn't win their conference.FTFY
A lot of problems in CFB would be solved if the playoff had been set up properly from the get go, but it wasn't so here we are.
It should have been 4 teams, conference champions only, committee picks the 4 conference champions based on *gestures wildly at cfb* bullshit they make up. So be it. Win your league, get a shot. Get picked, win the games to get crowned. Done.
i'd prefer all conference champions instead of making up reasons why some should be involved and others shouldn't. From there, let them settle it on the field
the problem with that is there are, what, 9 conferences now? P4 plus G5? In order to make a playoff work you'd have to have non-conference teams get into wildcard spots and I think that defeats the purpose.
Alternatively, you could force the P4 to go back to 5 leagues and then have a 10 team playoff where the bottom 4 teams compete in play-in games for an 8 team playoff and then go from there. So the committee would still have to arrange the seeding based on *bullshit* but each conference would then have a seat at the table, sorta. The bottom 4 play an extra game. Then for quality, you pit #1 vs #4, #2 vs #3, #5 vs #8 and #6 vs #7 in the first full round. Next round would be winner of the 1v4 against winner of the 5v8 and winner of the 2v3 against winner of the 6v7.
Had it been structured this way to begin with the PAC wouldn't have imploded. The SEC and B1G likely wouldn't have pillaged the other leagues and the ACC wouldn't have expanded either. Each league would still have reasonably sized conferences where they could structure conference schedules to determine a true conference champion. ND would either have to join a league or kick rocks (along with the other independents). And the G5 would get Cinderella teams into the playoff. In all likelihood, the P5 conferences would still win a vast majority of the titles but it would still retain a lot of the luster that made college football fun to begin with.
Next year there should be ten again with the PAC-12 (9 teams, 8 football) resurrection. Should rename themselves to the State plus Zag Con.
Oregon State,
Washington State.
Utah State,
Colorado State,
Fresno State,
Boise State,
San Diego State
Texas State for football.
Gonzaga joins in all other sports.
It's only a "moral victory," but I am still taking a little pleasure in the fact that the Hokies ran the ball better against Miami than both of the playoff teams they've faced so far.
We might be closer to the return of a monster ground game than we all think.
This year's CFP is proving conference championship games don't matter!
It's certainly proving that the redesign got some things right.
Last year's did the same. The powers that be really need to rethink conference championship games and how they fit into the playoff. Or change the playoff to better fit conference championship games.
I don't see the issue, last year we gave byes to champions and they all lost, this year was ranked by the committee and only IU won, maybe the committee is just the problem. Or maybe everyone is way closer in competition than the media wants us to believe.
The only thing that a conference championship did was allow a 3 loss Bama team in. Remember the playoff expansion wasnt about giving more teams a chance it was about give certain teams more chances. NIL and xfer portal screwed up letting traditional powers dominate, not the playoff.
Bama's performance in said conference championship should have been the thing that kept them out...
Yeah, the idea they were being penalized for playing in the CCG was baloney.
They gave themselves an additional opportunity by getting to the CCG. Then they blew it.
UGA also had to play in the CCG- they also were not penalized for playing the extra game.
Any argument that you're not allowed to use the data provided should be met with furrowed brows and chesty harrumphs.
I'm slipping as a person in my middle ages, keep reading CCG as GGC 🫨🫨🫨
If there wasn't an SEC conference game, then a 2-loss Alabama would have made it into the CFP with much less debate about their placement.
In the B1G, both teams in the championship game were ranked high enough that they both knew they were safe going into the CFP. In fact, thanks to the changes to the seeding this year, there wasn't really much at stake. At least if they were using last year's rules, the stakes would have been a first round bye vs a home game.
Yeah, it's easy to forget that SEC championship games count for the winner, but don't count against the loser.
And that the ACC championship game counts against the loser, but not for the winner. Miami was correct to avoid it.
I was just saying that winning a conference championship is pointless. It does nothing to help you in the post season. So what's the point? It's basically an exhibition game.
Thinking back on the game last night, the real MVPs should have been the stage crew who ran that stage on and then off the field 3 times in like 10 minutes. They probably had more rushing yards than Alabama did earlier in the day.
I'll credit Hokie Bird 94 texting me last night with the best take on the Indiana/Alabama game: "Alabama fans haven't been this sad since the Emancipation Proclamation."
Holy fuck. 911, I'd like to report a murder.
Last year I attended the Duke's Mayo Bowl and my wife and I were very sad that they had run out of free airbrushed Duke's Mayo t-shirts by the time we got to fan fest. This year we will be attending the fan fest, arriving at 1pm, and bolting to the airbrushed t-shirt vendor. The Mayo Bowl's mascot, Tubby, is only eclipsed as the best thing in bowl season by the Pop Tarts.
This guy fucks.
Apropos of nothing, I found this hilarious....
Coincidentally-NYE 2026 is the 40th anniversary of the very first bowl win in....the Peach Bowl!
Confirms that VT will win the national champ9ioship next year...it's science! (hopefully this is NOT /s)
It's kind of messed up that in both years of the 12 team CFP that we have a team (two total) that beat every team they played yet didn't win a playoff game.
I remember Richard Johnson saying this before the first 12 team playoff – college football fans are gonna have to get used to the idea that being undefeated in a regular season isn't that important. It's definitely a mindset shift for me. I don't love it.
It's one of the shortest seasons in sports, and mega conferences allow for weak seasons more than in the past. Both Oregon (2024) and UGA (this year) had an SOS around 30th in the country. This is much the same way that UVa tripped forwards into the ACC title game this year.
The cancer here are the super conferences.
And in the absence of a governing body, the field-surgeons best efforts would be requiring a 12 team field to have 10 conference champions admitted, which is how all other team sports work.
Not sure who's powerful enough to pry TVs grasp from our sport, but that's the reason the P2 are being gorged on the rest of the sport.
Agreed that conference structure is largely to blame, but it shows how badly seeded the playoffs are. Oregon and UGA got one game and that game was a rematch.
Im not sure what a SOS of 30 has to do with it, that's decent. UGA was 15th this year and UVA was 79th so UGA was a good team. It is just hard to beat a team twice in a season and we've seen rematches to teams that were very good (I think Oregon was very good last year especially dove their one loss was too the champions, who they beat earlier)
The ACC is just dominating bowl season.
Ugly ending to a great mayonnaise game. Miss State QB took every kind of bad hit possible in that game and left on a cart inside the last two minutes.
He prob should not have been back out there after bouncing his head off the turf. The cart was for an unrelated leg injury though
This is wild
FCS National Championship was an awesome watch. Came down to a blocked extra point in OT to settle it.
One of the best college football games I've seen all season.
Cool to see Antrel Rolle and Eddie Royal reminiscing the '04 matchup on the ACCN Fiesta Bowl coverage.
Miami doing Miami things. 2 pretty late hits that really should have been called in addition to two pretty stupid RTP calls.
Miami OC operating like Monty.
Grinding out 5, 10, 15 yards on every run and somehow he thinks it's a great idea to lean on Carson Beck and the passing game.
How many interceptions can you drop, let's find out!
Miami's secondary
I have never seen a team want to lose a game so bad as Miami here
Miami was playing with their food and now melting down.
Melting down worse than the United Center's ice rink
DaeQuan Wright just scored the TD to take the lead with 3 minutes left in a CFP semifinal for Ole Miss.
He made the right decision to leave, but I'm hoping that we can soon provide the caliber of team where these guys won't need to leave to play in big games.
Note: take message board rumors about players transferring out with a grain of salt, especially when they go to a big P4 program. This board was talking about how Wright had a poor work ethic at VT. He's had an amazing career at Ole Miss.
He's had an amazing career because he found a spot that was able to utilize his skillset.
His route running is still incredibly lazy. He takes plays off. And he is not interested in blocking. But if what you mean by, "amazing career" he was a fantastic pass catching TE then I concur. And I'm really happy that he found a place that would allow him to showcase that skill. Hopefully he can do the same at the next level.
I never said he was perfect, but he's been a major factor in the Ole Miss offense for three seasons which is probably the best 3 season stretch in school history and includes a CFP semifinal appearance.
You certainly didn't say he was perfect, but you did point out some things that people were saying about his game, which I think are accurate.
I think both of these things can be true at the same time.
I'm as big of a Fuente hater as they come, but he recruited one hell of a TE class that last year. Dae'Quan Wright, Benji Gosnell, and Harrison St Germain.
So may surrender cobras on both sides!
Ole Miss going Prevent 3 man Rush...
About to prevent themselves from winning...
Loki theme music absolutely slaps coming from a college band at the end of CFP game
i will forever hate ole miss for fucking this up
But the ACC sucks....
No SEC in the final. How sad
???
rather sec than scum
I could be wrong, but i read tMB's comment the same way I read "you hate to see it." With a heavy dose of /sssss
It was win-win
Either Miami loses or the SEC gets eliminated by the third place ACC team.
I'm rooting for whoever wins the other side of the bracket now. Either Oregon gets their first championship or perennial loser Indinia becomes an undefeated champion.
...at least Kiffins bonuses stop now
Telling that a league that put 5 teams in a 12 team playoff can't make it to the championship game. It just means more I guess.
*more playoff losses
Football hard when other teams can pay players....
SEC didn't beat a single non-SEC P4 team in the playoffs.
And the one they did beat was a founding member of the SEC
Seeing Miami win makes me want to throw my TV out of the window. I really need Oregon or Indiana to curb stomp them
Sorry, but I can't pull for the Big 10, either.
I'm not pulling for the B1G, more rooting against the team I hate the most. Miami makes me see red and I'm not entirely sure how it got to this point, but I would be more angry about them winning than satisfied about them losing. I dont give 2 leg shakes about conference pride when it comes to them.
I guess I'm showing my age but I can't wrap my head around so many here rooting for Miami. I don't hate them as much as I used to because we've sucked so long there's not much of a rivalry anymore but they've always been top of my hate list followed by UVA and WVU. Watching Cristobal and the UM players the last couple games though has started to bring back that hatred and have to say I'm enjoying it.
I hate Miami. I hate uva. I hate unc.
but above all else, I hate the E$ECPN narrative machine. I wasn't rooting for Miami, necessarily. I was rooting against the $EC. And I'm rooting for Indiana to win it all.
This.
I have decades of experience hating Miami, and I will most certainly be rooting against them in their next game. They are our archnemesis and I'm furious that they appear to be Bak(TM) before us.
But incredibly, I think I still prefer them to succeed over any SEC team out there.
Living in ATL, I'm just tire of the SEC a the false 'it just means more' attitude.
Miami winning another natty before an acc championship would be very #goacc.
Let this sink in:
Miami from the ACC has had 3 OOC P4 wins in this year's CFP. The 5 $ec teams in this year's CFP have combined for 0 OOC P4 wins.
If anyone that mattered cared, this CFP(and bowl season) has been a disaster for the ESPN/SEC/P2 narrative.
Yeah, i hope this opens a lot of people's eyes that have been fooled/brainwashed into the $ec nonsense. I believe this year will hurt their reputation and probably become a meme/mockery during the offseason and into next season; well by all the outlets not named e$pn
It won't. People don't pay enough attention. One of my close friends mentioned that his dad was talking about the BCS games this year, that hasn't existed in a decade and his dad knows about football, he just hasnt followed it enough the past 10 years due to life. I bet there are lots of people who only hear a clip from ESPN while in a bar, or doctors office or something and dont pay enough attention.
I think we're seeing why rankings and perceptions shouldn't matter when it comes to the power 4 conferences, and maybe one day the G5.
I also need to remind myself that if entrance into the playoffs was based solely on conference championship status and at-large bids for the remainder of the field, there's a really good chance Miami isn't here and Duke gets walloped in the first round.
I'm just happy to see the playoff unfold the way it has. The SEC has had their asses handed to them and wont even make an appearance in the championship, the Big10 wont have either Ohio St. or Michigan in the championship, and the ACC will have a team playing for the national title. I knew going into this season that VT wasn't going to be competitive, so to have this outcome (even if it is Miami) is about the best-case scenario to end the season.
Conference champions would matter if everyone in the conference played each other.
So it requires a bit of scheduling finesse that this year's ACC didn't have.
That's the one way I think a lot of this gets fixed... the question comes down to how. The conferences (P4 specificly) are simply too large. 67 team (i think) between the 4 conferences... Absolute impossible to implement a scheduling format with this many teams to anything like the NFL has. Maybe this ?
There - i fixed college football
One thing I forgot to add - by default, this keeps ND and any other independent out of a playoff in year 1. If they want in, they need to join a conference. I would rub it in even further, as commissioner of the new college football order, by telling all current independent teams that since they dont have a conference record to speak of, they will need to start in the bottom tier and work their way up to a promotion.
Unfortunately, they broke it on purpose, and they'll KEEP it broken on purpose.
Indiana is still the only higher seed to win a CFP bowl game
That has more to do with the seeding though. Vegas favorites have a winning record.
Yup but they changed the seeding and it still is happening. To me it just means the committee doesn't know ball like vegas
This is what happens when there's a difference between the "best team" and the "most deserving" team (something that is very unique to CFB). The best team may not have the best record or be deserving of a higher seed. But at the same time we can't be giving higher seeds to Ohio State because they are Ohio State.
Agreed but they've tried 2 different ways and its taking the worst P4 team ever to get an #1 ranked and destroy everyone on their way to the championship. Indiana is such an outlier and yet they are the only ones doing what is expected. Its like the season Nebraska went 1-8 in conference play with the same points allowed as scored, its so odd that it has happened.
I don't love Miami, but I do like the narrative that the ACC deserves to be in the playoffs, and deserves a share of college football money.
I do wish the money was going to the ACC instead of Miami, but this is good for the ACC, and bad for the $EC narrative that they're the only conference that matters.
Also the B1G since Miami beat them too. I'll take Miami wins* if it curtails the P2 nonsense.
*ignore the sound of retching in the background
Jim Phillips better have his chest out whenever he walks into ANY meeting from now on with the NCAA, ESPN, or the CFP and not give ground on a freakin' thing.
He'll probably just extend and increase the Raycom agreement.
Yeah right! Jim Phillips is like the Dwight Schrute of the P4 meeting. Even though Jim will have plenty of reason to be puffed up and the cock of the walk, as soon as Sankey (Michael Scott) tells him to shut up and sit down, he'll do it. I'll maintain that position until I see any evidence that he has a backbone.
So happy Miami won. Indiana looks like a powerhouse but I'm Miami all the way no matter what
I'll admit I was not rooting against Miami last night, but this feels...
Yeah, me too.
Gotta say, just from a pure football perspective, last night's game was a fun watch. Lots of back and forth, great plays on both sides, stupid plays on both sides, and botched calls by the refs both ways. It's what makes CFB fun. I didn't really care who won, because I felt, like Matt said above, it was a win-win situation.
I was thinking about our game with Miami, and went back to check stats this morning. It's pretty amazing how close the stats were in last night's game to our game. It looks like our defense was a little better than Ole Miss, and the offense wasn't very different. We rushed for more yards than OM, but they had more passing yards. Scoring was the biggest difference, as Miss was able to take advantage of their opportunities more than we did. But remember, Miami scored against us with under a minute to play, which was just padding at that point. Looking at the stats, it makes me encouraged about next year. It seems like a long road for us ahead, but maybe it's not as long as it seemed after the LOLUVA game.
As much as I hate it, Miami is doing great things for the ACC and VT.
In the current era, if you evaluate talent and have lots of $$$$, you can buy, I mean, build a winning program!
It also helps if your university owns a hospital that had a $400m windfall from a pandemic, and your university literally doesn't know what to do with that money so they just give it to the football team.
i hate miami with a passion second only to my hatred for loluva, but i agree and i'm rooting for them in this cfp. Only because i hate the propaganda machine that is e$pn and $ec.
so i guess actually my hate/despise/loathing is 3 tiers:
tier 1: loluva
tier 2: e$pn/$ec (not necessarily individual teams but the conference and narrative as a whole)
tier 3: miami, ohio state, notre lame, boise st
... Boise St.? Any specific reason or just still salty from the game in '10?
Still salty plus the worst fans i've ever encountered. more entitled little pricks than loluva and that's saying something
Also they have a blue field.
I still hate Miami with a firey burning passion, but being able to say that the third place ACC team has advanced to the final game and assisted two SEC and one B10 team out the door is great.
I'd feel better about Miami advancing if the revenue was being shared. But they get to keep it all, meaning they can pull that much further ahead than the other teams. (Although I admit that I would be all about grabbing all the money if VT was in that situation.)
Plus, they get a $3 million travel allowance to drive to their home stadium next week.
Better be a fancy ass bus
its miami, I want it tacky as heck, gold plated, spinners, everything
WOW!
That is NOT how to start a semi-final game Oregon
Oregon screwing themselves again, RB knocked the ball out of Moore's hand to cause a fumble. Indiana up 14 completely due to Oregon mistakes
Sigh. Mendoza taint-fest is going to force me to root for Miami.
Who knew having absolutely no running game would be detrimental to Oregon's chances
Live look at the Oregon coaches' booth...
IU have made very few mistakes this game.
Stat alert. IU is +21 on turnovers this season.
Cignetti doesn't strike me as the kind of HC you want to deal with after you commit a turnover....
CIG SAVE SOME FOR SCUM
How bad is Texas tech scoring 0 against oregon
Oregon going for the 2 means they get a little fire and IU are going to need to keep their #1 defensive players on the field a little longer.
Black and Hemby need to get almost every snap for Indiana. Do what our basketball team didnt against Stanford. Run out the clock.
42-15 with Oregon needing to punt from inside their own 15.
I think they can sub in.
Aaaaaand a blocked punt.
Holy ahit. IU creates errors for the other team.
Cignette has no problems telling the refs when they are incorrect.
Anybody else getting '05 Orange Bowl vibes?
Does this game mean Dante Moore comes back next season rather than going pro? Or will Oregon convince themselves thry need to portal over Moore?
The Adidas Bowl for the CFP next week.
Cignetti has turned College Football on its head.
I will be the first to admit, I laughed at him when he was introduced and immediately started talking crap about beating the rest of the B1G. Even last year, I thought they got by on a weak schedule and would come back to middle of the pack in B1G.
Couldn't have been more wrong. I can't think of a more rapid, unexpected, and unprecedented turnaround ever.
To think, we had Cignetti sitting in our backyard and chose to hire Brent "Timeouts are for suckers" Pry instead.
Hindsight. But, iCgnetti has proved he's the real thing.
My fear is that the college football world just traded SEC/NCAA dominance with Saban for Big10/NCAA dominance with Cignetti
Had this exact same thought
We would have run Babcock out of town if he had announced the hiring of a 14-9 Elon head coach as our next one.
He'd been at JMU for 3 years by then and had been extremely successful.
Let's not act like hiring a 53 year-old with zero Head Coaching experience was more logical.
Pry got huge benefit of the doubt due to his VT/Foster ties. Besides, the job of an AD is to find the best candidate not to play to fan favorites.
Any unrest would have been gone really quickly.
More to.the point, Whit has completely whiffed on 2 consecutive Football coaches, let our WBB coach get poached, and bungled Fundrasing for years. He's obviously got Sands confidence (for whatever reason) and isn't getting run out of town anytime soon.
Woodshed
Oregon can't run the ball, and they can't stop the run. That's a bad combo.
Anyone bet on Indiana to break the over by themselves?
Considering the close O/U was 50.5....yikes
We are living as NPCs in some IU freshman's cfb26 dynasty. No other explanation.
In 4 quarters Moore has taken himself from a 1st round draft pick to potentially going undrafted.
Where are the people saying Alabama didn't deserve to be in the playoffs because they got blown out by Indiana? Did Oregon not deserve to be in the playoffs too? I'll wait
I thought it was because they had three losses including one to Florida State
One of those losses in the conference championship game which other playoff teams (Oregon, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas A&M) didn't even qualify for and maybe would've lost as well, but nobody has been making the case that those teams should've been left out.
Then people saying that Alabama getting blown out by IU showed they didn't belong, even though the won their first playoff game to play in that game. One person on this board de-valued Caleb Woodson's Alabama offer by saying "did you see them against Indiana, this isn't Saban's Bama".
Maybe Indiana is just amazing and not an indication of the quality of their opponents. Just a thought.
In summary:
Alabama shouldn't have even been there. They had three losses.
Would have been OK to leave them out.
They had no problem leaving FSU out when they were undefeated and a conference champion.
Also, nobody cares.
Go look at Titter and all the Notre Lame fans are saying it about Bama now
I live in Chicago, I have a mute button on ND fans 24/7
https://youtu.be/uz7N8WPPbvE?si=Xr3_Wo-GaWCDGTmR
Oregon's been trying and trying and trying to get that natty pretty much the entire time I've followed college football.
Indiana blows in like a tornado and boom they're in the title game lickety split.
I'd be extremely irritated if I were an Oregon fan right now.
As a Virginia Tech fan who was in school for the Michael Vick years, *I'm* extremely irritated.
Excited to see what Franklin can build, but irritated to see Indiana on the verge of accomplishing what we haven't.
Yes, this too.
I mean...it's fucking Indiana!
Shows what you can do with passion and unlimited NIL in a year or two.
Can't stress this enough (passion). It is clear that the CigMeister has tapped into the "Danny Coale is My Spirit Animal" of his staff and players. He has harnessed their mental, psychological, and spiritual mindset. When one does that's they have themselves an unstoppable army.
His take on practice times and quality life balance is very intriguing. The guy is a savant.
That practice strategy is moving through a lot of others sports, notably ASU swimming. They won a national title practicing less than ever but their sprinters went hard at practice, which wasn't being done. Some of that goes back to John Wooden who criticized opponents for doing layup lines during warmup while his teams were practicing plays. There are still too many coaches that want to stupid things because it "toughens" up the players instead of doing things that make you better at football (should also cross train to reduce injury but separate topic)
When I coached Boys JV Soccer at my kids HS, I spent the first 3 weeks putting my squad in a mini boot camp, then tailored it down to fit in throughout the season. Most the boys couldn't do a regular push up to save their lives, let alone a modified one.
By our first game, my boys were whipped into a physical shape they didn't know existed prior to. I had them understand that there isn't another JV Soccer team that has conditioned the way we did. That they were "Men Amongst Boys".
I had every player's mind and soul bought in. They played their asses off and could go 100% longer and not have to worry about running out of gas.
At this age and beyond, outside of the weight room, this is the most impactful area of focus IMO.
Oh, and we watched videos every week, which plugged into the sport's IQ side.
conditioning is one of the most important things in sports. Practicing like its a game only helps that but conditioning and weights need to come outside of practice when youre getting paid to pay a sport.
I promoted Advanced PE to all my players, especially the sophomores, as it was a weight room class every other day offered in one's junior and senior years. I also encouraged parents to enroll their kids in an off site after school performance establishment for an initial period so their kids could learn how to properly workout, build good habits, etc., so they could effectively workout on their own as well.
My sister is a swim coach and was coaching at Olympic trials last time ... she can tell which of the young kids she coaches go to the pool outside of practice/lessons cause just going and jumping off the diving board 100 times improves their condition and comfortability with the water. Parents would wonder why their kids arent all star swimmers swimming only 1-2 hours a week. My sister and I were at a pool probably 8 hours a day every day in summer. But every game if shark, every jump off the high dive, every game of water polo was conditioning. That turned into weights and more advanced stuff when we were older.
I'll be honest that I haven't really watched much of Indiana's games this year. The two things I found most interesting last night was when they talked about the quality of life and work/life balance that the assistant coaches and staff talked about and that Cignetti told the announcers that he looks for production in the portal not potential. The way the coordinators and assistants talked about it, Cignetti has the potential to keep his staff intact long-term. And his portal strategy combined with his NIL war chest have the potential for him to keep this success going long-term as well. It will be very interesting to see what he does when he loses his Heisman-winning QB and the JMU guys who were obviously 100% bought-in and followed him to IU start to graduate and move on.
What is this graduating and moving on you speak of? Are we doing that anymore?
I know, right! What was I thinking?!!
Best thing I ever did was come to the realization VT would/will never win a National Championship in Football.
I think it's cool Indiana is about to win it. It almost gives me a little hope, but I also know Indiana (the education) churns out deep pocket, high donor CEO types so it makes sense in the new atmosphere why they're doing so well if they got them all to donate and finance.
I'm sure if they dominate for a decade it'll get old and stale, but hopefully this opens the door for the non normie CFP to contend. I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing 4 new teams in the Semi Finals this year. If VT can supply make the field of 12 some day, I'll be thrilled.
The part about the big donors is notable. I just looked up their equivalent of the Hokie Club (IU Varsity Club) and the last reported donor numbers (total donors, not total donations) was a couple years ago at around 6,500 - that's less than 1/4 of the total Hokie Club donors. And honestly, even with the way the Hokie Club outreach has been mismanaged, I'm surprised our numbers are that low.
Don't have to get many with Mark Cuban funding a big chunk now.
It's wild that Cuban had never given to the program before Cig joined.
He apparently had but not at the levels he reportedly is now. Not sure who finally sold him on it. Whoever it is probably deserves a couple million bonus in their stocking
I don't know if it's accurate or not, but Cowherd has been saying the last week that Cuban wrote a $12 million check for their football team. If that's true and, like you said, combined with the high end earners that they apparently churn out, they will be well-founded for a while.
He made his millions because of Indiana sports so its kind of shocking that he wasn't involved more. (His first company was created because he was pissed he couldn't watch a basketball game)
Your money makes a more direct impact now. I think it makes sense not to throw big money at the program when it was going to ambiguous facility promises, and then break the bank when you can buy a roster.
Agreed, and i could see him only giving to basketball, but it sounds like he was barely giving at all and he LOVES basketball.
It's apples and oranges. The same reason we are seeing all of the articles highlighting how the SEC is no longer a shoo-in to be in the national championship game. The same reason Texas Tech is basically buying their way in.
Unchallenged, unlimited, no rules transfer portal and NIL has totally changed the game.
Yeah if Indiana had pulled this off before transfer portal and NIL I would also wonder WTH. Indiana just decided to play the new game before we did.
Especially when you consider how much Oregon paid for their team this year.
Were still 3rd in Big 10 in NIL behind Michigan and Ohio State
Indiana appears to be inevitable.
I think their last three years were
2-9
11-2 playoff appearance
15-0 currently, championship appearance
At this rate next year they're going to annex Illinois
Maybe they'll annex the Chicago Bears as their farm team.
They've already put out sketch ups of the Bears stadium in Gary
Indiana state legislature has already made overtures at annexing parts of Illinois. As someone who spends a lot of time in Springfield, I can tell you that's massively unpopular with the people who would have to approve that.
Miami right now
I have to agree considering how Miami played us. IU is a much much better team, and I can easily see Miami getting run out of their own house by halftime if they can't protect the ball. Oregon didn't do that at all last night, and IU took advantage of all of those turnovers. Miami has margin for mistakes - if they can avoid turning it over and force a couple of their own I think it could be interesting. But if they come out sloppy this will be over quick with no room to recover.
Oregon has been outscored 56-45 in their last two games.
Indiana has outscored their opponents 107-35 in their last 3.
Ohio State
Alabama
Oregon
Add in their other 2 ranked opponents, they've outscored them 200-65
All of this...
Bye, Pawl!
When is the send-off party? Bon-f*&^ing-voyage, Paul!
this guy has a pretty good take on it...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2tkkCm6Ycto
Block Punt recovered in the end zone with a Surrender Cobra sighting
Now that two Adidas teams are in the championship game, can we open up our apparel deal to the highest bidder?
its going both ways but the lack of pi calls is getting concerning at this point.
Was saying the same thing to my better 3/4's. It's pretty bad.
PI and holding. Miami is pulling on a whole lot of jerseys and getting away with it.
So is Indiana. I hate Miami but they are letting both teams get away with a lot.
Way too much. It's brazen and no call.
My word, the announcers are 100% Indiana.
And this is a problem?
The holding is just ridiculous. It's not cool. It's taking away from the game.
Refs have given Miami the green light to mug the Hoosier receivers on every play. Very fishy...
I turned it on in the third quarter to watch Indiana commit blatant PI, then a hold, then PI again on three straight plays. B12 should be banned from officiating big games, they are horrible.
Gutsy TD run by Mendoza
He's taken a lot of hits all game
That should be a hold on Miami and a blatant late hit by Indiana. The play was long over and an Indiana player dove in.
I don't care how the game ends - the narrative that the Big10 and SEC are so vastly superior conferences needs to die.
idk how they didn't call that late hit
www.ismiamibakyet.com
They made the national championship game and took the most dominant team since 2019 LSU down to the wire. Yeah, Miami is back. Now it's up to us to challenge them.
Still zero ACC championships.
And Beck plays like Beck to end it with a INT. There was a reason UGA moved on.
SUCK IT canes
FUCK UUUUUUUUUUUUUU
1/2 of JMU wins CFP!
If you would have given me 50000:1 odds 3 years ago that Indiana would win a CFP by 2100, I wouldn't haven't taken it.
What Cignetti has done is truly amazing. Unfortunately for other coaches, he has also made the measuring bar so much higher.
Under 48.5 got home just barely
Sad Miami fans make me happy
Also JMU knowing their chance at a Natty just happened at Indiana of all places makes me happy, too
All in all, a pretty good outcome
I stumbled upon a scum twitter space and the absolute comedy
Our new qb went 22/31 against Indiana as a freshman...color me excited
That late hit call was atrocious and I saw it coming a million miles away. Good thing cying ass Napoleon Dynamite threw that int and took it out of the hands of the refs.
Best news of the day is that the SEC has not been in the final game for the past 3 years.
The era of the SEC bagman dominance is over.
The SEC bagman only ends with their SEC ESPN contract.
The right team won
Thin. Skin.
I'd probably have thin skin too if they were talking like this.
Its very sad that Mark lost his father. Those types of relationships are irreplaceable and it can be very traumatic and damaging to lose a parent when you're still young. That does not excuse assault, IMO.
I got in fights with kids when I was younger over my estranged mother, who I had lost touch with after my parents split. So...on a level, I get it. But I was 10-12. When you get to be 18-20 years old, you gotta know when to just let people be assholes and not get yourself into trouble. Needling someone over a lost parent is bad. Doing it intentionally and knowingly is being a complete asshole (FTR, I don't think we know for sure whether Tyrique even knew Fletcher's father had passed - maybe he did, maybe he didn't). Either way, when you're a grown adult you can't be throwing hands at people for saying things that make you feel hard emotions.
Unless there's some long term underlying beef, I don't know that I believe this.
You just win a National Championship in dramatic fashion and instead of celebrate with your team, your first thought is to run over to the losing player and chirp about their dead dad from last year? Call me skeptical.
Who knows? Maybe it was during the game.
We really just don't know.
I know that the story of his father was reported on before the game, and they noted that they eye black tape he wore had letters forming an initialism in his father's memory. I can't remember what the letters or statement was, but it included his father's initials. I would guess the issue was known on the field.
Lot's of speculation, but if someone mocked my dead father it would be hard for me not to retaliate.
Just Miami things
No one's perfected being out of pocket quite like the Miami Hurricanes.
Nuthin but Klass
Miami could have won if they had the discipline to not commit stupid penalties and also to block people on a punt.
Indiana also could have won big if the refs had called the penalties like any other game all year except this one.
How was that not targeting on miami on Indiana first drive when Mendoza was carrying out that fake? Miami player launched of the ground with the crown of his helmet and hit Mendoza in the chin??? Is that not the definition of targeting?
There were a dozen PI calls on both teams where the refs swallowed their whistles. Holding was everywhere all game, some of it pretty egregious. At least two tripping calls. Indiana benefitted as much from the no-calls as Miami did.
It was the worst officiated game throughout that I have seen in a while. Lots of missed things.
I think Ohio State-Miami might have been worse. They didn't throw a flag for three quarters include some pretty obvious false starts. It was comical.
I didn't watch that game. So I believe you. Officiating seems to get worse every year.
Indiana definitely benefitted as well and I'm sure they were getting coached up on the sideline by the 2nd quarter that the refs were going to let anything slide short of tackling the receiver.
When the refs are swallowing their whistles like that, i think the more undisciplined team benefits more as they aren't being punished for their typically wild play.
Indiana had it between the ears where it really counts and its why the came away with the win.
As soon as I saw BIG XII crew in the pregame, I was sure there would be poor officiating.
Thing is, it was so consistently bad that it really didn't benefit either team.
Pass interference and holding were just not penalties last night at all.
But the personal fouls really should have been called appropriately. The hit on Mendoza was, late, dirty, targeting and the kind of thing a decent crew can't miss. But Indiana also really benefited from the missed tripping call which was quite obvious as well.
Roughing the passer has become as subjective as targeting... the hit on Beck looked relatively clean and not late to me. But some Refs reflexively just throw the flag anytime the quarterback gets hit hard-- they've been trained with targeting that it can be reviewed so it doesn't really matter if they're right or not. RTP are not reviewed though. What made it more egregious was that they let the Miami player try and knock out Mendoza with the crown of his helmet in the first half.
Definitely poorly officiated, which will give Miami fans something to complain about for the foreseeable future.
Just when they were finally going to shut up about the PI against Ohio State in 2002....
From what I saw, Mendoza had turned into a blocker and they didn't see that hit as being on the QB per se, but it was a brutal hit and certainly could have been called.
Beg to differ on the tripping call. Watched it several times and the IU defender didn't even see the running back as he was taken to the ground by the blocker and was rolling over to try to regain his feet. Good no call from my take.
Agree with everything but late. Mendoza was carrying out a fake, so was still involved in the play. But it was easily targeting, and the officials should've seen that.
Agree here. If a quarterback can't be hit when he doesn't have the ball, then he shouldn't be able to fake like he has it. Whether or not the defender thought he had it shouldn't be an issue. That's one of the few ways you can disrupt a play fake is to just hit whoever your assignment is. In HS we used to practice against Giles and the single wing by having the scout team play without a ball. Assignment football tackle the man in your gap.
But the crown of the helmet to the facemask was no bueno.
Miami WOULD have won had they leaned on that running game (an early 3 and out after three pass plays would set the game up for what we ended up seeing), specifically that OZ to the right side. That has been money the entire playoff. Trust what got you there. The Miami staff seemed to get worried that the game would get out of hand so they didn't really lean on their RBs the way they needed to.
Miami may have won if either of 2 guys would have decided to block for a punt.
Very true.
What we saw was that Miami, a team that didn't make the ACCCG, was absolutely the #2 team the country. If Duke wouldn't have beaten LOLUVA in the ACCCG we wouldn't have gotten to see that.
Yup. Third place team from the ACC was definitely better than both the SEC teams that they played in the playoffs.
How did Indiana turn their program around so damn fast? I mean it's pretty amazing when you look at how bad they were and how quickly they vaulted up to the undisputed highest level. It seems there's several things at play that lead to their recipe for success:
1. The pay for play and unlimited transfers have spread around talent, not only making it available to individual teams but also, and perhaps more importantly, keeping it from being horded by SEC bagmen.
2. Their players had an average age of 23-24??? That doesn't seem possible and I don't know the real number, but the broadcast stated that last night. Obviously maturity, experience, development, and all the things that make adults more successful than adolescents comes into play there. Their level of play looked like a professional team.
3. They were extremely disciplined. Not a lot of stupid penalties, take care of the football, take what the other team gives you, make proper adjustments, etc. Probably a byproduct of all the above and below.
4. They were very well coached. They knew their assignments and were where they needed to be. They played sound fundamental football in all aspects of the game. They were in shape and played hard.
5. They did all this and overcame that fact that a lot of the better teams they played had more raw talent. It somewhat turns things on their head as to the way the game used to be played.
Curious what other's think. I'm not sure this recipe is easily replicated, however it's obviously working.
Mark Cuban bankrolled them.
You have billionaire who wants to spend to win money bankrolling everything you do, you can turn the absolute worst programs into dominant powerhouses overnight
I don't disagree, but it doesn't appear they just bought the best players across the board. A good number of their starters last night were from JMU. Not saying those players aren't good, but you didn't hear of them poaching talent from the traditional blue bloods. Most of their players came from lower tiered programs.
It just seems their success was so much different than what we're used to seeing. They always seemed undersized and not as quick, but with chip on their shoulder. They played individually and as a team at an extremely high level. On paper, looking at rosters, they seemed like underdogs in the majority of their big games. Dunno, it just seemed different than what we're used to, which is the big dogs buying and hoarding 5 start talent. They kicked those guys asses.
They played as a cohesive unit that had played together for a few years.
Pretty rare in P4 football.
What was Indiana's blue chip ratio?
< 50%
8%
Because the vast bulk of their players were in the last year of eligibility. They were older, larger, faster and stronger than the other teams and they had a nearly NFL ready QB.
Mark Cuban reportedly didnt bankroll them until this year, but they have a lot of rich alums, their business school is really well regarded.
Cuban did an interview that he provided funding each of the last two years. He said in 2024 he gave a "big number". He was reportedly instrumental in bringing Mendoza in as well.
Ah missed that, I saw something different that was probably more hearsay
I hope Franklin is taking notes, as this is the way.
Cig was Saban's Recruiting Coordinator for 5 years. There's youtube clips of him talking about how he evaluates a dude's knees. The money is obviously a requirement, but I think the real secret sauce is Cig's scouting.
Wasn't Miami's coach recruiting coordinator for Saban too?
Yes, which is why they recruit well, well some chicken and egg situation there
Was anybody laughing when they talked about it being Beck's last game? What are the chances he actually makes it in the NFL? He has a reputation of folding under pressure and the spotlight.
his body language on the sideline is probably not something you wanna see from your starting QB