Florida State could be case study for CFP committee moving forward
Saw this on Yahoo Sports this morning.
The combined College Football Playoff margins of victory by Ohio State over Oregon and Oregon over Florida State make clear which team did not belong in the sports first Final Four. And that team is the Seminoles. They were routed by a team that then was routed in its next game.
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But heres the rub: there was no way the playoff selection committee could leave Florida State out of the bracket. No way an undefeated, defending national champion on a 29-game winning streak is demoted to the Cotton Bowl or Peach Bowl or something else. Because if the Seminoles went into one of those games and won to finish 14-0, without getting a shot at defending its title, the outcry would have been enormous and understandable.
It would have thrown the idea of an undisputed national champion into serious doubt.
Which leads to the following conundrum for the committee moving forward: Does going undefeated in a power-five league guarantee a place in the playoff, no matter how it is achieved?.
If this kind of line of thinking gains any kind of traction, it is BAD news for ACC members. Forde is absolutely campaigning that Florida State's entire season and record be thrown out because the schedule was weak. He wants all their accomplishments ignored by the committee because they played in a weak conference. Remember, their out of conference slate included Oklahoma State and Notre Dame, so he is very much saying that the weakness of the ACC is the lone reason Florida State should have been left out of this year's playoffs, even while going undefeated.
He's also making the argument that if you aren't blowing everyone on your schedule out on a weekly basis, you have no business contending for a National Championship, even if you win all your games. So Florida State, playing in their weak ACC barely eeking out wins all season long proved they were a weak team, despite going undefeated, and was not deserving of a playoff spot. In Forde's mind, their season damns anyone with a similar resume going forward. If you're a fan of a school like Virginia Tech, that historically wins a lot of games without blowing teams out, this line of thinking should worry you.
In my personal opinion, this is why the committee should be abolished and why football needs to go to very clear cut rules about who gets in. I'm done with the subjectivity of this level of the sport. I'm done with the constant hand-wringing about who was more deserving and whether or not team x got screwed because team y was allowed in the field. The committee works in basketball, where there are nearly 50 teams that didn't win their conference that need a spot in the field and 68 teams to seed. We do not need a committee for 4, 6, or 8 teams. We need hard, fast rules that leave little room to argue.
What are your thoughts?
Comments
FSU also played Florida OOC
Forde is full of sh!t. This was pure click bait. No wonder I stopped reading him.
EDIT: Also, I think the committee has already set the precedent that conference championships matter and bad OOC schedules matter too. Thus far, for at least this season, where I think the playoff participants were pretty cut and dried (exception of TCU perhaps being deserving of the playoff but not the Big 12 championship), so I see no reason to change at this point. We'll surely have years where the selections are much more debatable, but I'm content to wait for those scenarios to play out prior to trying to make any decisions.
I doubt anyone saw the National Championship game going the way it did. I thought Oregon was going to win that game by at least 14 if not more. Vegas thought Oregon was going to win. Everyone thought OSU was going to lose to Alabama pretty easily too. So because the events did pan out like everyone thought they would the committee got it wrong is what he is saying. Because we can't look at the schedule and and say these teams are going to have this record. I mean why not just do that. Have a computer simulate all games and then a simulated National Championship and then we don't have to worry about kids getting hurt on the field or getting concussions. Football can be played on paper and the "National Champion" can be awarded to the school president or something.
This is why we play the game. Did anyone see VT beating OSU in the shoe?? I didn't. I think most of us hoped for a good showing by the team but ultimately thought we would lose the game. Except maybe Desmond who called the upset. But now if TCU or Baylor played Oregon and Oregon beat them and the outcome of the National Championship was the same what's the excuse then?? Maybe this is a reason to expand the playoff to 8 teams instead of just 4. Then FSU could have lost in the first round and that team that beat them could have lost to Oregon and then Oregon could have still lost to OSU the way they did. Would that be the wrong way to go about it???
What a douche.
Both of OSU's playoff games were classic cases of the hot team dominating. Does anyone really believe that OSU blows out Bama and Oregon on a consistent basis? I could see an argument for 6 wins against each if they played each 10 games, but the margin of victory is in no way an absolute measure of how "good" OSU is vs the rest. At the same time, Oregon's margin of victory, on its own, is in no way an accurate measure of how good Oregon was vs FSU.
Don't get me wrong. The winning team was clearly the better one that night, but buying into Forde's opinion is equivalent to saying VT is absolutely better than OSU (although, we were clearly the better team that night).
Totally agree with you. I tried to say this same thing below, but you summed it up better.
Exactly. If you played all 3 games of the playoffs 100 times, you would get all 8 possible outcomes and 300 differing scores. If you substituted one of the teams with anybody in the top 10 (and perhaps more), you'd probably get the same.
A 4 team or 8 team or 16 team -- or 256 team - playoff can't identify the "best" team any better than the old BCS system. In fact, one could argue that the more teams in the playoff -- and thus more variability -- the less likely the "best" team will be identified.
Well put. Someone wrote a while back (maybe I saw it on Twitter?) something along the lines of "playoffs don't determine the best team, they determine a champion." That's all we can and should expect from the playoffs. Maybe the champion is the best. Maybe someone else's definition of "best" is dependent upon different criteria. All we know is anOSU won the national championship. The rest is fodder for offseason bloggers.
Just to add on... Were NCSU or Villanova the "best team" in NCAA Basketball, the last year that they won the NCAA Tourney? Both were slightly better than .500 teams heading into their conference tournaments.
Which is exactly why I'm never in favor of expanded playoffs in any sport. The outcome is the same -- a champion gets named -- but the games are often less intriguing for me when one or more less than truly outstanding team simply gets hot and makes a run. Baseball and (to a somewhat lesser degree) college football used to have the unique opportunity and intrigue of matching teams in the championship that otherwise haven't played each other or similar schedules.
In the end, I was perfectly happy with the narrative of (hopefully undefeated) #1 & #2 playing each other for all the marbles. Five years from now, I probably won't even be able to remember all 4 playoff teams -- and certainly won't remember that TCU and Baylor both thought they deserved a shot.
There's what, 66 P5 teams? Another 63 or so Division 1 FBS teams for about 130 teams. (I say about because there are always teams moving up and teams dropping football)
Even if you disregard the non P5 teams, we're talking about 4 of 66 teams (6%) making the playoffs. If you count Conference Championship games as a preliminary round, then there are 8-10 teams (15%) involved in the playoffs. . And since the football season is only 12 games, unless you start letting multiple teams from the same conference into a 4-team championship playoff, you're going to get a healthy mix of teams matching up in the playoffs that otherwise haven't played each other or played similar schedules.. Same applies for an 8 team playoff... you're still talking a small proportion of the particpating teams earning a right to compete for the championship. The regular season is still important.
This article is comical considering everyone within a 15 mile radius of ESPN was kissing FSU's a$$ the entire season. Backtracking now is pointless. It would be expected if TCU went undefeated and got clobbered in the playoff, then this article would be written 1000 times over at Bristol headquarters.
I don't think it's bad for the ACC per se. The big problem with FSU this year wasn't that they went undefeated in a "weak" conference, it's that they struggled to put away just about every single team they played this year. I really liked how Colin Cowherd put it a few weeks back. Something along the lines of, "if you go out with a girl and have 11 incredible dates and then one that's kinda a clunker, you can probably look past that one and say there's likely something legit there. If you go out and you have 12 dates that are pretty meh, you're not bombing or anything, but they're just not amazing, you probably want to call it quits with that person." Same concept - it's not that they weren't blowing every team out, it's that they pretty consistently just didn't look like a dominant football team that would compete for the national title. Games against teams like NC State, Syracuse, UVA, Miami, BC, and Florida were all teams they should have had the talent to put away pretty easily (and did/almost surely would have last year), but were played pretty closely until the 4th quarter or even the final possession.
So no, I don't think this is particularly worrying, because I don't think it's something that's going to happen all that often. Either a team will be dominant in a weak conference or will drop at least one or two games if they're not up to the task. FSU did something equally impressive and unimpressive that almost never happens - beat 13 inferior teams in a row in games they just as easily could have lost.
I'm in the "winning is winning" camp
See Ohio State 2002-03.
You shouldn't have to have style points if you're undefeated and going up against one or two loss teams for the playoff spots.
Based on what I saw, if Oregon and Fl State played 10 times, I still think Fl State wins half those games. They just did everything you cant do against a good team.
I think the point that needs to be addressed from the perspective of this being a Hokie blog, is that if what Forde is suggesting ends up being what the committee is looking for, then a team like VT might get shut out of a 4 team playoff before they ever even have the chance to participate in it. And VT certainly isn't the only one this would apply to. Thinking back on the last decade, name one ACC team outside of Florida St. last season when they just destroyed people, that would fit the criteria that Forde is suggesting. I can't think of one.
This is why it is so important that VT has upgraded their OOC schedule. VT cannot count on the ACC schedule, especially in the Coastal, being strong enough to justify inclusion. However, if VT has a win or two against P5 name schools in their OOC schedule it becomes a much easier argument. You can't predict how those teams are going to be on a year to year basis but the bigger names schools are going to carry more clout and, on average, give your strength of schedule a bigger boost.
Anyone who spells "Ford" with an "e" doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Someone agrees
Forde is one of the most insufferable college football writers in the business. He likes to write these controversial opinion pieces just to get the clicks.
But what does that say about * that got housed at home by one of the worst teams from that "horrible conference" this year? It is all subjective bullshit, FSU was definitely flawed but winning 13 games in a season is not a fluke, whether it is by 2 or 20. The nolies deserved to get in, unfortunately they did not properly prepare and embarrassed themselves on national tv. Wasn't the first time and won't be the last time something like this happens...
I think what every talking head is missing is the fact that THEY have absolutely no way of knowing who is the best team until the game is played. Furthermore, while I do think FSU was the worst playoff team, I'm not sure that they get blown out if they play Oregon another game. Sometimes the turnovers and the game just don't go your way, and it turns into a blowout. If we're judging FSU by how they got blown out against Oregon, then we should judge OSU just as harshly for getting beat by VT. And remember, ESPN and the rest of the world, you all thought Alabama was the best team! For a while, you thought Miss. State was the #1 team, and they got beat by GT, who got beat by that terrible, weak, FSU. The point is none of these talking heads, the media nor the playoff committee, knew who the best team was. If they did, OSU would have been ranked #1 all season and there would have been no questioning their playoff bid. The only answer in my mind is an 8 team playoff, with the champions of the Power 5 getting the first 5 spots. Then we won't have these stupid articles. And, like Alum07 suggests, I'm sure we can find a better ranking system than the personal opinion of people like Condalisa Rice! Maybe college football should consult with Vegas, because I guarantee you they are running all kinds of sophisticated algorithms to determine the gambling lines.
Yeah, I'm a fan of Condoleezza Rice. I think she's brilliant, and was one of the most qualified SecStates we've had in the last 30 years. She's not one who is likely to be swept away in a preference cascade, as she has a very analytical mind and looks at things objectively.
All that said, I just don't know why she's on the committee. Love this Onion bit that pretty much nails how I imagined that first meeting going.
She's also a huge college football fan and knows a lot about the game. She spent time at Stanford overseeing certain football operations. Add this to the traits you mention and I think she's an adequate choice for the committee.
I don't question her qualifications, but I do question whether or not she can be unbiased towards Stanford or even the Pac12. Same thing with the other members with ties to other schools. If it came down to Stanford being in or out, which way do you think she would vote?
She has to sit out on any votes involving Stanford. Pac12, on the other hand... but every conference has people on the committee.
Ditto. For anyone interested in learning more about Condoleezza Rice, I highly recommend her 2011 memoir, "Extraordinary, Ordinary People". In it, she discusses her long-time passion for college football, describing herself as a student of the game. Aside from what most people know about her academic and political career, she's an accomplished concert pianist, former Olympic hopeful, and witness to the Birmingham 16th Street Church bombing. My dream dinner party guest list consists of her, Bud Foster, and Perry Tuttle. Add James Gayle, and I've died and gone to heaven.
I'm not even going to give him the luxury of my click. To everyone who is saying FSU shouldn't have been there, they did. They proved it by winning every game they played this year(No one else can say that), winning their conference, and winning the title last year. Sure they got blown out, but a blowout isn't always a sign a team is really bad they just weren't as good as Oregon which is why they play. If you're going to say that they didn't then well we might as well just pick the four teams that are said, abbreviations and nick names included, the most in articles and on ESPN during the season.
Alabama
Winner of the SEC, if Alabama then the runner up
Ohio State
Michigan
Notre Dame
USCw
Someone from Texas
There all the pundits are happy. Actually lets also give Saban at least 30 seconds between plays for defensive subs, there now they're happy.
Forde has always been, and remains to this day, a giant bag of douche. He's one of the worst in a gaggle of self-aggrandizing blowhards.
His entire premise is based on the transitive property. I stopped reading right there.
And in an interesting twist, Mark Schlabach has TCU at #1 in his way to early 2015 top 25...REALLY? These guys are just idiots. And Lee Corso said before the game...whoever wins the turnover margin will win this game, that's what this game will come down to. OSU was 0-4 in turnovers, and still dominated Oregon. When will they realize that all of their opinions mean nothing?
IMO, I think they know their opinions mean nothing. But ESPN pays them to fill air time with opinions. It's no better than 24 hour cable news. That's why I turn the TV on at kickoff, off at 00:00 4th quarter and then turn on Bill and Mike's postgame on I Heart Radio.
There is nothing at all wrong with having TCU there, I thought by the end of this season they were easily top 5, talent and execution wise. I didn't think they had the resume to get into the playoff, but I thought they would beat at least two of the teams that did (FSU & Oregon, to be specific). At the moment I'd probably have to put OSU at offseason number 1, but TCU would definitely be in the top 3.
Also, OSU was 1-4 in turnovers. Late pick. Sorry for nitpicking.
I don't disagree about having TCU in the top 3-5, but OSU should be the clear #1. The point is that all of these rankings are OPINIONS, and ranking TCU ahead of OSU doesn't make sense until they play each other and determine otherwise. Again, that's OPINION also, but it makes more sense with what OSU has accomplished and how many players they are returning. If we use Schlabach's method, we should have given TCU the NC trophy even though they didn't make the playoff.
Their opinions matter nothing with what happens on the field but they are certainly informed opinions. If you had told anyone beforehand that Oregon would win the TO battle 4-0 they all would have said Oregon rolls. Sometimes the games don't play out the way we all think they will. That's why there are upsets and also why they play the game.
People like Corso, Herbie, Fowler, Palmer, etc... are on the air and writers like Schlabach and Forde write on college football because we follow it for entertainment purposes.
I don't see any articles about how "the best division in football" (SEC West) went 2-5 in the bowls with all of the top 5 teams losing. THE SEC must be TERRIBLE if their best teams from their best division are THAT BAD!!! /s
http://saturdayblitz.com/2015/01/02/sec-west-embarrassed-bowl-games/
The SEC West got what it has been giving out in the past decade bowl games. LSU losing to ND, bama to da ohio state, ole miss (I hate Ole Miss) getting curb stomped by TCU. SEC usually does the curb stomping, this year the SEC West got curb stomped. And to add the ACC went 4-0 against the SEC in rivalry week. FSU over Fla, Clemson finally beats SCar, GT finally beats UGA, and Louisville (new ACC) over Kentucky
Hey Pat Forde,
The combined margin of quality of cfb playoff articles written by other pundits over your article about FSU being a case study for exclusion make it clear which sports journalist I should completely ignore.
This actually will be an area of concern for the ACC going forward. TCU and Baylor both showed that they could play at a high level and Florida State will not. While each team should be judged individually, that simply isn't going to happen. They will be judged on what teams before them have done (the mythos of the SEC, for example). What this means is that the likely pecking order for P5 conferences will be SEC -> P12 ->B10 -> B12 -> ACC.
Granted, the B12 is in a precarious position by not having a conference championship game. Further compounding this issue is that in spite of playing nine conference games, the B12 OOC schedule among their top teams is terrible:
TCU plays Minnesota, Stephen F. Austin, and SMU (literally the worst team in the country last season)
Baylor plays SMU, Lamar, and Rice
Oklahoma plays Akron, Tennessee, and Tulsa.
Preseason momentum will carry at least TCU and Baylor to a high ranking. This will be bad for the ACC, as our teams will have to be able to justify being moved ahead of these teams in order to make the playoffs.
Here is a composite list of all the way too early top 25s for next year:
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/01/ohio_state_is_no_1_in_composi...
Taking OOC and team play into account, Clemson and Georgia Tech have the ACC's best shot. FSU will be in the mix by virtue of their preseason ranking, but I doubt they run the table unscathed again and their schedule isn't strong enough to pull them back up.
Virginia Tech could be in the mix if we beat Ohio State again, otherwise we're out. Our in conference schedule is simply too weak. We play Duke, NC State, UNC, Pitt, BC, Georgia Tech, Miami, and UVA.
So unless it is FSU, Clemson, GT, or VT who is undefeated, the ACC would very likely be skipped over in the playoff selection.
Great summary.
Part of me wonders whether or not the playoff committee should be a brand new group of people every year. I can't help but see a scenario where a team like Baylor or TCU, assuming they have the same record as the ACC champ for example, doesn't get the nod just by virtue of the "we feel bad we left em out last year" vote.
College football has to escape the "what have you done before this season" line of thinking to really take the next step to the ultimate spectator game in my opinion. One of the best things about the NFL is that your record or level of play last season or last decade means literally nothing when it comes to making the playoffs, having a chance to win it all.
B that logic the SEC West teams should be left out as well, or the entire SEC while we're at it. Going off of head to head, the weakling ACC went 4-0 against the SEC the last week oft he regular season. UGA climbed back into the playoff picture with a its drubbing of Auburn where that O could only muster 7 points against UGA. The UGA lays an egg to GT from the "weakest" division in college football (who FSU then beats). THEN a'int ready for primetime gets torched by TCU and MS State from the unstoppable SEC West loses to GT from the weak ACC Coastal.
FSU played OK State and ND out of conference winning both (yes they were lucky to beat ND), go back and look at the OOC slate for the SEC West teams. WVU (Bama) Wisky (LSU) and K State (Auburn) were the best games they played and teams like aTm and Ole Miss (they did play Boise) didn't play anyone from a P5 conference. The ACC did fairly well OOC (to include us beating OSU). I'm not sure why people like Forde do not look into what they're saying before they write columns. Why would TCU or Baylor deserve to be in over FSU? how much better is the Big12 than the ACC? K state is ok, we know that OK State couldn't beat FSU, WVU is ok. I would put the ACC against the Big 12 and think they are fairly comparable if not a slight edge to the ACC.
You bring up great points, but the thing is the people voting will go on perception. They dig into OOC scheduling, but if they believe that the SEC is the best conference then they will weight the SEC wins higher than they should. TCU and Baylor would get the benefit based on their performances at the end of this season
We just don't have enough OOC games to really get an idea of how good each conference is, so the rankings will end up being largely based on speculation of conference strength. With how Michigan State and Ohio State played in the bowls, the public perception of the Big Ten being the weakest conference has been supplanted by the ACC being weak.
While I believe the ACC isn't that bad (we just have a lot of parity), the general consensus is the opposite, and that's hard to fight.
It's articles like these that made me root for Oregon against OSU in the National Championship game. Because you could literally see the media narrative that was forming amongst the sports pundits that if OSU beats Oregon by at least two scores, then FSU and the ACC were going to be the biggest losers of that game.
I know it is perception and the reality of the situation is different from the perception, but unfortunately we live in a world dominated by perception. And the perception out there is that the ACC is the weakest of the P5 Conferences. How every fan of an ACC team should view this article is that it is a preview of more things to come. Be prepared for the ACC Champ being left out of the next playoff even if said champ goes 13-0 and only wins by margins similar to FSU this year. I still don't know what happens to the ACC Champ that goes 13-0 and wins every game by at least 14 points.
I think it's unlikely any ACC team goes 13-0. The conference has too many teams that might not be great but are definitely dangerous. The ACC is practically a minefield of trap games
In this line of thinking, wouldn't OSU have missed out on the playoffs because everyone was so down on the B1G?
Unfortunately not, because, imho, OSU, Michigan, PSU and even MSU have football legacies that can shield them to a certain extant from media biases/perception.
What an absurd premise. Because Florida State got blown out they're suddenly a mediocre team? There's no control for maybe just a bad game? A series of mistakes that are partly due to chance? Even the possibility that some teams match up poorly against others? A team getting blown out in a game doesn't mean they didn't belong there, it just means they played a poor game. I hate to comment on click-bait, but this is a terrible article.
Besides, if we're judging team quality off of post-season play, doesn't Clemson and Georgia Tech stomping their opponents testify to Florida State's strength of schedule?
Forde probably couldn't have predicted the final 4 the day before they were announced, but he's making predictions about what's gonna happen next year?
Pundits applying the transitive property on other than a general basis expose their
junkidiocity to public scrutiny.It looked to me that the 3rd Q by FSU was a fine example of what was described in the movie "The Replacements" as quicksand. One thing goes wrong,then another and you start to feel trapped then, no matter how hard you try, you are in over your head.
No way that team should have been in over their head but, things got away from them. The difference is that Ohio did not let it define them in the NCG, whereas FSU could not recover, which was unusual because they over came deficits all year.
By Forde's reasoning, the ACC was dominant this year because we beat Ohio State and much of the ACC beat us.
He's a tool, put him back in the shed.
Forde is usually a fun read but his analysis is not the greatest. I like the Forde-yard dash segment
Yeah, Forde just equals serious doucheturd alert. He must have outstanding lawyers or something to still have a job there.
8 team playoff would fix this. All P5 champions and 3 at large bids. More people get a chance to prove that they belong, any wrong inclusions get fixed on the field
I would go with 6 teams, all 5 and 1 at large. Top 2 teams get a bye 1st round of games played at highest ranked teams stadium. Need to bring back computer formulas though, they're better than some secret committee who selects teams based on some unknown criteria. The conspiracy theorist in me agrees, no way an ACC team makes the tourney next year. I feel certain that a 1 loss ACC team is SOL unless everyone else has 2 losses. While it was nice to see the SEC West shit a brick in the bowls, it helped the perception of the Big12 and FSU getting hammered hurt the ACC (nevermind GT kicked MS State's ass after kicking UGA's ass)
I like 6 teams as well. More than that and I think we reach a point where too many games are being played for health and academic reasons. I've also always felt that you should have to win your conference to be able to contend for the title and this adheres to that, plus provides a little wiggle room. On the other hand though, winning your conference shouldn't necessarily be an automatic bid.
Absolutely it should.
So you think a team with 4 losses that wins their conference should get a shot in the playoffs?
If you win your conference, yes.
I have no time for the "who is more deserving" arguments. If you can't win your conference, you shouldn't be eligible for the Natty title. Conference titles games should be the de facto Round 1 of the playoff.
heck yes. Automatically bringing in conference champions means applying actual logic to part of the selection. That's why I like 8. Force the hand of the committee on 5 picks (P5 champions) and let them have leeway with the remaining 3.
And first round games are played at home for the higher ranked seed, btw.
I agree with this.
I'll take it a half step further. Those P5 auto-bids shouldn't necessarily get the top 5 seeds
I would be okay with the committee having free reign on seeding as long as they have to have the P5 champs + 3 at large bids.
absolutely. I could care less about how the seeding shakes out. If you can't beat the best team in the playoffs, you don't deserve to win. It shouldn't matter if you have to play them first round or meet them in the championship game.
Agreed.
How many half empty conference championship games in Charlotte or Santa Clara are taking place of the winner of that game is guaranteed a playoff spot?
the three at large spots handle that issue. Let's say an 12-0 team is upset by an 9-3 squad in the CCG. I would think the 12-1 team still has a good shot as an at large. Hell, I would even be fine with them being seeded higher than the team that upset them. No need to guarantee a conference champion a seed between 1-5, just a guaranteed spot in the last 8.
"We ain't come to play SCHOOL!"
64 team playoff. Football until March! Then start spring practice.
Really not a fan of the conference champs getting an autobid. You gotta prove you are the best no matter what, and sometimes things workout where that isn't the conference champ, a la 2011.
While I agree with your premise, I have a difficult time with how it gets done. OSU was a hair away from being eliminated from this year's play off, due to a perceived "bad" OOC loss, a weak game vs Navy and playing in a perceived conference that was perceived to be weak (anything but the P12 South and SEC West was considered "weak" by the "experts"). If the ACC champ is 10-2, with 2 ACC losses and ranked #10, how would you assess whether they "earned" a spot or not. There are few OOC games between top teams in the P5. With few exceptions, the top teams look for mid-tier P5 opponents for OOC, at best.
I personally would love to see a set of "conference challenges" a la what's done in basketball. It would probably be better if it weren't purely on conference vs another but some sort of mix where teams that are projected to finish at "similar levels" within their respective conferences play each other (e.g., preseason #5 ACC vs #5 SEC, #5 P12 vs #5 B1G and #5 B12 vs #6 SEC). That way all 14 teams in the ACC play at least one team in other P5 conferences that are expected to finish at a similar level. While it's not perfect, it would provide a much better read on relative conference strength. I would also advocate the same for G5 vs P5, so a G5 rep can be identified.
Yeah, figuring it out would be difficult. I honestly like the four team playoff though.
This reaction is akin to FCPS cancelling school today for 1/2 an inch of snow that was all gone by noon after last week when they had schools open but the county didn't clear the roads which caused a bunch of accidents and a worldwide trending hashtag.
I think the playoff corrected the problem this year. We would have had FSU vs Alabama in the old system!
I've been pushing this forever:
OR make Phil Steele the selection committee. The. Whole. Committee.
Yeah, just let Phil Steele do it. He could even get the selections over in August.
Yes please.
VT beat Ohio State by 2 TDs and Miami beat VT by 24 so Miami undoubtedly should have gotten in over Ohio State (they are 6 scores better after all)
Maybe one day people will realize how stupid it is to apply the transitive property to sports.
You're 100% right but it's so much fun. Wake Forest is the national champion this year! Outta my way!
But Duke beat Wake, and VT beat Duke. Who's champion now? My head hurts.
I think with the #goacc wheel of transitive defeats, the entire coastal division won the mnc this year
I'm ok with that.
Forde , is the typical so " called" college football expert that like many of his peers, view their sole purpose in life is to shill for the SEC and denigrate the ACC. Not many sensible people will pay attention to anything he says or writes. Playoff needs to be expanded to 6 teams ( 5 conf champions + 1 at large ).
I think the fluke was Oregon beating FSU. I think FSU wins 3 out of 5 times against Oregon. I think it was like 25-20 when FSU's tight end got mugged in the end zone and no flag was thrown. FSU missed another red zone opportunity early. I think if they got the momentum it would have been a different outcome. Then it all went to pot with the turnovers and they could not recover.
I been thinking (I know, right?). If we go to 8, take the 8 off the top, forget conference champs. (Limit 2 per conference so it isn't all-SEC.)
The 2005 Dr. Pepper ACC Championship game happened. You start auto-bidding teams that a week before were 7-4, fortunate to even be in the top 25, and are we any better off than the BCS AQ era? Which 11-1, or 10-2 teams do you leave out? Which top-ten stays home? You say it'll be decided on the field; didn't the 4 or 5 other losses already decide it for this particular "AQ" team?
I think you take the 5 highest rated conference champions, regardless of the conference that they play in, and have the rest be at large bids. So if an undefeated Boise State wins the MWC and is ranked ahead of one of the P5 champions, then they get an autobid instead of the one of the P5 teams, then the last three spots would be filled by at large bids possibly but not necessarily including the P5 champion that was left out.
I can get on board with this. Gives the non-P5 a fair shot, and the P5 still have to win all their games to make sure they get in....the regular season keeps more of its importance. The Baylors, MSUs and Clemson/VT/GTs of the world (runners up) still have a chance as well.
the problem is "who" is rating them? A bunch of SEC lovers? ESPN voters? Who. I have a problem with all of the ranking, especially preseason rankings. It's absolutely ridiculous to rank any teams next year because nobody even knows who will be on those teams or who will be playing every position on those teams. The only fair thing is to have conferences with same # teams send their conference champ to the playoffs. The main problem we have is 5 conferences and not every conference has same number teams....hopefully one day in the future we'll have four 16-team conferences and then it'll be pretty simple...
I would probably lean towards go something similar to the old BCS system that combined human and computer polls or just a computer poll with a transparent formula. I would also include a 2 teams per conference limit, especially if human polls were part of the ranking system.
A bad team in the playoff once in a while won't end the world. But, allowing conference champs an auto bid keeps the entire landscape competitive all year.
Have the 5 power conference Champions in then 3 open slots for an 8 team playoff.
Play the first round as home games before Christmas then the rest of the playoffs remain the same.
I guess I'm the only one that doesn't think it's an absurd premise. His use of the transitive property to support his premise was silly, but I can see where he's coming from.
If I had made a purely subjective selection of the four best teams this year, FSU would not have made my cut. I think TCU and Baylor might've both been better. That isn't an indictment on the conference, it's just my subjective opinion based on numerous eye-ball tests. I also don't think the fact that they won the national championship last year, or their win streak dating back to last year should have much, if any, bearing on their ranking. The body of work considered has to be constrained to the current season.
Having said that, I don't think the criteria should be subjective. It's going to be controversial either way, but I would much prefer to have a transparent and objective ranking system that everyone agrees to ahead of time. I fully support the 8-team playoff (power 5 conference champs and 3 at large bids) model.
Again though, if you consider a shift towards a subjective system (which the playoff committee absolutely was), the premise isn't absurd at all.
I know there's parity in the NFL, but I think their system works okay. People can be mad at it, but it seems this is discussing something similar to that. Winners of the division get in, and then there are the wild cards. It doesn't seem too far fetched to me that the conference winners get in, and then you have the wild cards. Not sure how to work it, and while it doesn't ALWAYS mean the SUBJECTIVE, and even in some cases OBJECTIVE best team wins, it allows for the Cinderella factor sometimes to occur in college football, whether it pisses people off or not.
In basketball, when the Cinderella wins, people are excited. In the NFL, a 9-7 Giants can win the Superbowl because they are clutch when it counts. So, why shouldn't something like that be able to happen in college football? You can be the best team all year and blow it in the NC game. Doesn't mean you suck, just means you had a bad game. You can suck and barely squeak by during the year, but be clutch during the playoffs/tournament and beat everybody.
Bottom line...as long as there is a committee or voters deciding a champion or who makes a 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever number playoff, then it will be subjective, unfair, and controversial. The only fair way is to have conferences with conference champions making it to the playoff, seeded by random number generator (or draw numbers out of a hat), with games at neutral fields...I don't think we're there yet
oh yeah...I forgot to add that Pat Forde is an idiot.
No matter what, it's gonna be controversial. Push it to 8 teams, and #s 9-12 are gonna be screaming. Push it to 16, #s 17-22 are gonna be up in arms. I like keeping it at 4. I'd rather see a team with a decent shot get left out rather than have another round of playoffs including 2-3 loss teams. I love that FBS football is essentially a season-long double-elimination tournament. You can't just drop a few games and hope you make the playoffs anyways. That's unique and a pretty exciting component of the sport.
The only way it won't be controversial is if you make hard, fast rules about getting in, like winning your conference. This is why I really like my proposition, of dissolving the Big 12, and making the remaining 4 conferences of 2 divisions of 8 teams each (each division split into pods that rotate every 2 years to allow every 4 year student to play at a minimum 3/4 of the conference opponents home and away during their time with the team). Play everyone in your own division, and the 2 teams with the best division records face each other in Round 1 of the playoffs, hosted by the top finishers in each division. Round 2 of the playoffs are the Conference Championship Games, played at the existing venues we currently use now. Round 3 is the Final 4, played just as we have it now with 2 elite bowl games hosting, with seeds determined by a ranking similar to what we had with the BCS. Round 4 is the National Championship.
This eliminates any subjectivity. Teams advance by winning, and winning alone. Human bias is not a factor at all. If you can't finish top 2 in your own division, you don't deserve a spot in the playoffs. Even better, it only expands the playoff system by 1 week, being the Divisional Championship round, and for the top finishers of the divisions, does not significantly impact fan travel. Personally, I think its a win-win-win. Even better, it will promote BIG OOC scheduling, because teams will not be penalized for losing these matchups, and more teams will want to challenge themselves to get experience prior to their divisional slate and playoffs.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this. The one thing that aggravates me most with the FBS is the terrible OOC scheduling a lot of schools do. And it's mostly because if they challenge a good team and lose, they dig themselves a hole that can keep them out of the title game or now the playoffs. Adding Automatic bids for conference champions eliminates this and we'll probably see more competitive games OOC since even if Oregon loses to FSU or Michigan OOC they can still win the division and have a shot.
We then also don't have to wait until bowl season to see marquee non-conference games, except for a few rivalry games and ones at the beginning of the season. Plus it would encourage more home and homes and none of these one and dones at neutral sites which hurts the fan experience.