Well if this isn't the biggest bulletin board material of the week. For the majority of the season I thought the committee did a decent job rankings folks but Tech at 23 behind teams like Utah and LSU are a joke. And Tennessee being ranked ahead of us (head to head no longer applies when they are 8-4) after losing to a garbage USCe team and Vandy is inexcusable.
Other observations:
-Louisville falling two spots after getting steamrolling by Houston and losing to an average Kentucky team??
-Florida not moving at all after getting soundly beaten by FSU.
I'm looking through SOS and other metrics now but share your thoughts TKP.
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Comments
It's clear the committee has somewhat of an agenda regarding the top ten. I miss the computers.
I miss the computers
Bet you never thought you'd hear yourself saying that.
I would love to see the BCS computer rankings right now and compare them to the CFP rankings, I bet they are quite different.
USA Today still compiles the computer rankings in the link below. VT is 30 immediately behind Pitt. We dropped after this week.
Link!
If we could take those rankings and average a couple of human polls in there, I think we'd have a nice middle ground...which is what the BCS was. They had actually gotten a lot of the kinks worked out, other than the LSU/Alabama BS of 2011, which I blame ESPN for.
And, such a system would make it slightly easier to predict. The committee seems to change its mind on what they value from week to week.
We all wanted playoffs, but we didn't say they had to completely change the system to do it.
What terrible BS that the best team in the country played the second best team in the country and won.
Throw in BCS 3 & 4, and we have ourselves a playoff where LSU and Bama have to prove it out of conference.
I agree, this would have been the perfect year for a playoff other than 2004 (3 undefeated teams), but my point is that the BCS got it right, and if there was a 4 team playoff, they would have got the 4 best teams in.
Your hindsight is lacking on this one. LSU blew out Oregon (who's previous game was the national championship against Auburn) and blew out West Virginia on the road. Alabama went to Happy Valley and whipped Penn State as well.
Thanks. I was thinking more about the uproar of having 2 SEC teams that just played each other. Maybe I should have said "opportunity to silence the naysayers" out of conference.
Yea LSU beat the PAC12/Rose bowl champ as well as the BigEast/Orange Bowl champ. They literally couldn't have done more OOC.
OKST is the one that didn't do shit OOC.
"Buuut college basketball uses a committee"
:-)
They also give automatic bids to conference champions
And they seed 68 teams, not 4.
And they have 31 AQ conference champions.we're talking 5.
I thought the top 10 was well put together. But then the committee seemed to mail it in in regards to 11-25. They make no sense.
Huh? Who would you change? There's a pretty clear line between 2-loss and 3-loss teams. You'd be nitpicking to move the top-10 around much.
No problem with the top 4. But Michigan has lost 2 of their last 3 and their one win was less than impressive. Penn State and Wisconsin have both been more impressive lately.
Louisville has been a garbage can lately but are 13th (not that anything outside of the top 8 matters, but still).
It seems that there is a pretty strong infatuation with the SEC as well. Auburn has lost 4 games this year and the quality of teams that they beat isn't anything to be proud of. Georgia beat them just three weeks ago but is completely absent from the top 25 (rightfully so perhaps). I'm not sure of Florida's top 15 ranking either. Tennessee shouldn't be ranked. Straight up. LSU is a team that's tough to figure out, but given that they're 7-4 and going through a coaching change, 21 seems high to me.
Pitt beating Clemson is much more impressive than Houston beating Louisville at this point in the year. Houston dropped 4 spots after their loss to Memphis.
Just seems like after the top 4, they said, "Screw it," and got on with their day.
Friendly reminder that we lost to Syracuse and GT. I'm happy with 23, keep us hungry.
I am hopeful for he hungry part, but GT turned out to be a decent team and Cuse was decent with Dungey at QB. Losing to USCe would be similar to us losing to loluva.
Syracuse I give you, but GT quietly finished out their season 8-4 with a win over Georgia. Absolutely absurd that we dropped from 14 to out of the poll after a 10 point loss to them.
And Mich didn't move with a loss to a far worse team.
Iowa sitting at 8-4, beat the brakes off of then 16 ranked Nebraska this past weekend
But when Iowa beat Mich. they weren't ranked had not beat Neb and Mich should have fallen at least one spot.
But Michigan had OSU coming up so, ratings.
UGA went 7-5 with losses to Vandy and Tennessee and they beat mighty Nicholls State by 2 points. Not exactly world beaters by any stretch.
Maybe they watched the game. That was much worse than a 10 point differential suggests.
While I agree we are below a couple teams we shouldn't be, at this point arguing over a couple spots is irrelevant. Being ranked is the most important but we were never going to be ranked high enough to matter, i.e. higher than fsu and UL to secure the orange bowl after a loss. We're in a win or go home position in terms of bowl quality IMO.
via GIPHY
At this point in the season, the cfb rankings are only really important for the top 7-8ish, or those with playoff hopes alive. Matters for G5 as well in terms of who gets the NY6 bowls. And a little for bowl placement. But there really isn't a difference between being 23 or 25 or 18.
The Auburn and Florida rankings make no sense though. And one of them is going to the Sugar Bowl.
Auburn loses to Bama in Tuscaloosa, drops a spot. OK, fine. Might be a bit lenient on them for not having a healthy QB and RB, but will have both for the bowl game.
Florida loses to FSU in Tallahassee by a similar score, and doesn't drop at all? Not even a spot?
So now Auburn fans are wondering: if Florida somehow keeps to within, say, 10-15 points of Bama at a neutral site (Bama is a 24-pt favorite), will Florida jump Auburn? It's not infeasible.
Committee really did mail it in on 11-25.
Yeah, it matter a bit for bowl placement. But the SEC is rather bad this season. A 4 lose team is gonna get the Sugar Bowl tie in. I think the committee mail it in for sure.
I bet we go up in ranking if win Saturday.
Also, provide a link in your post to the rankings. KthanxBye
Unless, the whole "VT beat Clemson, so Clemson wasn't as good as everybody thought they were" mentality kicks in.
If Clemson loses to anyone ranked lower than them, then Clemson wasn't as good as they thought they were.
Exactly. VT would have to beat Alabama in a dome to move up in the rankings. It couldn't happen outside because everyone would blame it on the weather.
If VT upsets Clemson Saturday, "Clemsoning" will become a thing again.
This is just blatantly wrong. You must have salt in your eyes or something. If VT beats Clemson this weekend, Clemson will drop and VT will rise. Clemson will still be ranked above VT. That's how it will and should go down if that happens.
What I want to know, if both Washington and Clemson lose their title games, would the Big 10 have 3 teams in the playoff or would #8 Colorado (theoretical Pac12 winner) jump one of them?
#2 Ohio State
#5 Michigan,
& Big Ten Champion (#6 Wisc. vs. #7 Penn St.)
Everyone has been making a big deal about a conference having 2 teams in the CFP but it's not inconceivable that the Big 10 could have 3.
There would be riots across the south if any team other than the SEC got two teams into the playoffs. The rest of us would riot if anyone got two in.
I blame Louisville from pulling a Clemson, twice.
And fuck Pat Narduzzi.
You said it bro!
I think it's highly unlikely. Colorado at 11-2 with a conference title would get enough of a bump for beating Washington to keep Michigan at #5. Oklahoma at 10-2 with a conference title would also be more likely to take #4 before Michigan, the #3 team in their own conference.
My bias against teams without conference titles is probably showing a bit, but the CFP committe has already made it clear that when teams with similar resume's e.g. an 11-2 Colorado vs a 10-2 Michigan.. the conference champ gets the edge.
Although, we can't say that OSU getting in over Baylor/TCU was just simply a conference championship. OSU steamrolled Wisconsin...59-0. So there are two components to the precedent set that year. A conference championship is important, but so is how you win. We don't have a precedent for how a close championship victory affects the committee's decision.
In 2014, Ohio State got to the playoff because VT > WVU.
Last spot came down to OSU, TCU, and Baylor. TCU was knocked out by losing to Baylor.
Ohio State lost to VT. Baylor lost to WVU. Therefore, Ohio State was determined to have lost to the better team.
That was part of it, but it would be naive to think them smashing Wisconsin 59-0 in the B1GCG had no impact.
"the CFP committe has already made it clear that when teams with similar resume's e.g. an 11-2 Colorado vs a 10-2 Michigan.. the conference champ gets the edge."
I highly doubt they would go with Colorado over Michigan in this scenario since Michigan beat Colorado 45-28.
But they may factor in that Colorado was without their starting QB for most of the second half and it was in the Big House! Score was 31-28 when their QB went out.
I just don't understand how Ohio state can still be ranked so high given the fact they can't win their conference. And let's say Florida beats Alabama(praying this happens) they would be ranked pretty high and get in. Not saying those ain't two great teams but I really believe if you are such a great team you need to win your conference championship or outright in cases that don't have a conference game.
Just imagine if a team won its conference in any other sport and the governing league just said "nah, we're gonna put this other team in the championship game/playoff instead that finished below you." Amazing that this seems to be accepted so easily with college football.
The main difference is that OSU has fewer losses now than the Big Ten championship contenders have now.
Come to think of it, do any other sports place conference or division record over overall?
In college? All of them do.
All the other sports have more than four postseason berths up for grabs too...
Not to debate the point (because I generally agree with your position), BUT this can and has happened in the NFL because of wild card teams. They don't win their division, but they still make the playoffs and sometimes surpass the division champ.
Edit - but in this case the wild card team doesn't make the playoffs instead of the division champ. So, I do see your point.
For comparisons sake, imagine if a Mid-Major or lower NCAAM team won their conference tournament with an overall .500 record, but the selection committee took who it wanted from that conference instead. That would be outrageous and total BS. That's essentially what the CFP committee is promoting right now.
I hope that the CFP rules change that participants must be a conference champion. I don't give a F-- who the pundits or committee thinks are the best teams. REWARD THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS ON THE FIELD!
Yes, OSU is a better team than Penn St and Wisc. But that doesn't mean OSU is deserving to play in the CFB.
I think it's ridiculous that the committee puts out top 25 rankings each week for half the season. Whether you use computers or people, ranking the top 25 football teams is always going to be debatable and highly subjective. The main purpose of the polls is just to drive tv ratings and fan interest in the games. Winning your conference is inarguable. The playoff should expand to 8 and they should simply seed the 5 P5 champions and choose 3 wild cards on Sunday after championship weekend and be done with it.
Yea, I'm all for devaluing human committee selection power. The move to a 8-team playoff makes the most sense. Let the CFP committee keep their weekly ranking bit, ratings, yadda yadda yadda. But, ensure the 5 P5 champions are in. Ensure that the highest ranked G5 (must be a conference champion) is in. Select 2 wild cards. Committee is in control of ranking the teams 1-8.
It would ensure the regular season matters. It would ensure that conference championships matter (Seriously, what are Wisconsin and PSU playing for?). It would introduce Cinderella like themes (although I'm sure the G5 team would always be an 8 and thus shellacked by Alabama). It would make teams that lose one conference game still have a chance (e.g. OSU). Eh, it probably makes too much sense. Thus, not likely to happen.
The same thing VT is playing for on Sat night. I hope we haven't gotten to a place where winning your conference championship doesn't matter if you don't go on to play in the 4 team playoff.
when a team from your conference that can't even win their own division is deemed more worthy to be in the Playoffs to be crowned Champion of All of Football and you're not, even though you won the conference title.. well ya, winning your conference championship is still going to matter, but it matters a LOT less.
You have to think it through beyond the immediate situation. The only difference between Ohio State and a team that is in position to win their conference is who they lost to. Does it make sense that Clemson and Washington would be in the hunt simply because they didn't lose to a division rival? If one teams goes 11-1 while losing to a cupcake and winning their conference, are they really more qualified than a team that goes 11-1 while losing to a respectable 10 win team who happened to have the tie breaker?
It's fun to make sweeping declarations, but our current system isn't there because everyone involved is an idiot, it's there because it covers more edge cases than the alternative.
I think it should. You win your conference and your in. If that other 1 loss team is so deserving they will get an at large bid. Then they can prove it in the playoffs if either team can win. Will some years a team that nobody thinks is deserving get in? Sure but that's where Cinderella stories come in. What if that team ends up making it to the final? It's not out of the question.
If it's kept the way it is teams like UCF and WMU can just not worry about the national championship because they will never be in the playoffs because of their schedule, which is out of the players and coaches control. Schedules are made years in advance so if you schedule a strong team now for 5 years from now who knows if they are going to be good that year or what their situation may be. If they are bad it's not the other teams fault. Plus conference play. Teams have no control over their conference strength. WMU has to either move to a P5 of when expansion occurs again and they get selected to move.
Other than that those teams can go undefeated and it's not going to matter. All they can play for is a conference championship.
Rutgers may never be in the playoffs but they have the ability to if they won the conference. u will never be in the playoffs even after going undefeated.
The Big Ten has 2 Top 7 teams playing in their Conference Title game. The Big Ten will get a team into the playoff. It will not be their Conference Champion.
Yeah, Penn St and Wisky are getting royally fucked by the committee this year. Winning your conference should matter. It should matter a hell of a lot, because its the one thing you can control. The committee is making that accomplishment completely irrelevant with their antics this year.
Why should it matter when the divisions are set up arbitrarily so that two 2 loss teams would play for a championship. Nobody in their right mind thinks Wisky and Penn State aren't the 3rd and 4th best teams in their conference. And they didn't "control" their destiny, Iowa beating Michigan is the only reason Penn State is playing for the B1G, and Wisky, who lost to both tOSU and Michigan, is the recipient of one division being a total joke and the other being stacked.
Conferences could be called arbitrary as well.
Penn State beating Ohio State has just as much to do with them playing in the title game. The order of the wins/losses doesn't matter in the end, just the records.
Conferences are arbitrary as well, but it's easy to argue that each additional level of arbitrary separation is worse than the last. Conferences act as organization to some degree with 128 FBS teams, but divisions are for the most part meaninglessly dividing a now small sample even further, often loosely by geography.
Also, over-focusing on divisions takes away from OOC games and the impact of winning big games out of conference, one of the more exciting parts of regular season college football.
A conference championship is also a big game, perhaps more so than any regular season game. If Ohio st. Jumps a victorious Penn st for the playoff, it's like assuming Ohio state played and won the conference championship game by avoiding a potential loss by not playing.
Also 30% of the season is OOC. Granting only conference champions makes OOC irrelevant. UM and OSU should be rewarded for smacking around two top 10 OOC teams.
Yeah, sorry, I've heard that argument a lot, and I still don't give a shit for it
If you can't win your division, there's no fucking way on this planet you should be granted an automatic spot in a national playoff over the team that won your conference. You play everyone in your division, and winning that is the ONE thing that is legitimately in your control over the course of the year. Ohio State and Michigan couldn't even manage that. But whoop de doo, who cares, because the Playoff committee just devalued the entire regular season to the point where winning the games in front of you, and accomplishing the regular season division crown is meaningless, and in turn, the conference title is completely meaningless as well. Oh, your division has a couple other good teams in it, don't fucking care, beat them or shut the fuck up. Penn St beat Ohio State which won them the division, and as such, they should get preferential treatment over both Ohio State and Michigan for that division crown.
So what do you want?? You think college football should be more about being "fair" to arbitrary divisions instead of putting the best teams in the playoff?? Do you even want to watch good football games? This is so aggressive I can't even begin to imagine why you would care so much about defending something so arbitrary. Sports championships are about finding the best teams, why the hell would a team with more losses be more deserving.
Also you're devaluing the regular season to put Penn State in front of tOSU. THEY HAVE TWO LOSSES, OHIO STATE HAS ONE. Ohio State whipped Oklahoma's ass on the road and 8-4 Pitt beat PSU OOC.. By letting a worse team with more losses have priority over a one loss team it is YOU who is devaluing the regular season in favor of the arbitrarily setup division rankings.
Don't give a flying fuck. PSU beat tOSU, and won the division. THAT'S what matters. Sorry, Ohio State, better luck next year.
You clearly just hate Ohio State, Michigan, blue bloods or something I have no idea where you are going with this. If you want to devalue the regular season and pretend like having more losses (something that has always mattered in college football) doesn't matter then I'm really not sure what your angle is. They won a game in fluky fashion, a win is a win, but Michigan also beat them by 39, and tOSU is a better football team.
The only thing I can see from this is that:
1) You love conference divisions a lot, for no clearly discernible reason.
2) You don't actually want the best teams in the playoff, you want what is "fair" based on those divisions, even if it means a less deserving team with a weaker OOC schedule and more losses gets in.
I do not understand how you feel so strongly this way, at all.
Ohio State, Michigan, etc all have one thing they can control over the course of the season. Their conference and divisional record and their standings in said conference and division. The one thing they could control, they allowed to slip away. Its absurd they are rewarded for allowing that to get away because they played a couple teams with a pulse back in August or September and won the game.
And more worringly, I'm looking toward the future when VT is in a similar spot. We win the Coastal, maybe have 1 or 2 losses on the year, and are sitting at #5 or #6 ready to play someone like a Lamar Jackson-less Louisville or an NC St, or a lesser 'name' program who happened to come out on top of the Atlantic because Clemson and Florida St let the division slip away. Oh, but Clemson or FSU is sitting at #2 and essentially locked into the playoff because they don't have another game under which to fall and it has become clear that, even though we beat them in the regular season, our loss to who knows who earlier in the year is going to keep us out even if we win the conference, mainly because the Virginia Tech name isn't as pretty with as national a fanbase as Clemson or Florida State.
And another reason why this pisses me off is because its the exact same argument that kept us out of the National Title game after the 2007 season. Our loss to LSU kept us permanently out of the title game despite a better resume since that game because of the head to head matchup. LSU has 2 losses to a #17 Kentucky midway through the year and an unranked Arkansas right before the SEC title game, and it didn't matter that our only 2 losses on the year were to teams that were #2 at the time, we were locked out because of the head to head. The computers had us #1 in the country, but the human voters gamed the polls enough to force us down to #3 and out. We were done. And now that same policy that fucked us back then is being flipped on its head to help Ohio State out now. That's why this pisses me off.
We also got jumped by LSU because we both had two losses and they beat the ever living shit out of us... Not a one to one comparison. PSU got a fluky blocked fg for a td when tOSU was about to expand their lead and they are the team with a weaker schedule and more losses.
Interestingly, blocked kicks returned for TDs are part of our own team's reputation.
OOC games, but they definitely matter less than conference wins and CHAMPIONSHIPS. Jesus, how can you value an OOC game over the right to win your conference.
OOC have a place in CFP selection, but should absolutely never outweigh the factor of winning your conference. IMO, OOC should help rank the teams once the champions are selected. And, in a better scenario that is 8 team playoffs, OOC definitely would matter for the WC spots.
How does not winning your conference make a team more deserving than the conference champion? You play to win the game. Conferences have rules to get into the championship. Conference champions won the games within the rules every team abides by. Conference champions are WAY more deserving than any other team in that conference.
I've made my thoughts very clear on other responses within this thread. 11-1 tOSU is an obviously better team by the eye test, they played a better schedule and have fewer losses. They are not competing for their championship because of weird, arbitrarily dividing divisions within their conference while two-loss teams will face off instead. They aren't getting this right, and when I watch playoff games to determine the national champion, I want to watch the four best teams play based on resume and wins and losses. Every game mattering so much in college football is one of the things that make it great, a conference championship can be a tiebreaker between two teams with identical record sure, but not between an 11-1 tOSU team that has played a tougher schedule and a 10-2 team. Those resumes aren't the same. I am at complete peace over the way I feel about this. This over emphasis on conference championship games is a very new concept and people have already adopted it like it is some kind of long standing right of passage, and that just isn't the case.
The better team does not equal more deserving.
Divisions and Conferences are not arbitrary. They are contractual agreements between the schools and conferences. If they want to earn the right to be Champion, then the teams to contractually agree on how to change that right. Thus, COMPLETELY not arbitrary. All teams had a say in how to set up the divisions and the rules to win the conference. Contracts were set up and signed.
1960. Rose bowl became the greatest game between two of the best conference champions. I simply cannot agree with you, based on the history of college football, that this a new concept.
Okay, they are technically not arbitrary thank you, but they are loosely based off geography, thus an unnecessary extra level of division that is not based on equalizing the halves of the conference. Of course there were contracts signed also in making the divisions of a multi-million dollar athletic conference. What difference does that make that the two best teams aren't playing for the conference title game? That is a failure on the part of the divisions.
And in this case the better team does equal more deserving because they have a better record with a harder schedule. Is something about that not getting through to you? Is two losses better than one now? Is losing to Pitt better than beating Oklahoma on the road? Is losing to Michigan by 39 better than beating Michigan?
Read what you quoted of mine above your little irrelevant point about the Rose Bowl in 1960. There weren't conference championship GAMES back then. Back then tOSU and Penn State would be co-champions and they would have picked tOSU over Penn State probably because it's tOSU and because the would have fewer losses overall and be ranked higher.
Okay, because I'm kind of sick of hearing this "best teams" and "arbitrary divisions" rhetoric...so I'm asking the other side:
How do you determine the "best" teams?
-They can't all play each other.
-They can't even all manage similar strengths of schedule.
-In most cases, you have more than 4 teams within fewer than 2 losses, so there needs to be something there to narrow that down.
So in a field of 65 or 128 (depending on if you want to include the Group of 5), how do you narrow it down to 4 teams in the playoff?
The 65 power 5 teams all play tougher schedules that is your start. The OOC games help determine how conference stack up to each other, plus the eye test (this is inescapable to some degree, however flawed it may be). From there we look at how you perform in the schedule given, and we can adjust our expectations off of how difficult your schedule is and the record you obtained as a result.
In this case, we look at Ohio State's record, 11-1, and that they played a tougher schedule, with a huge OOC win against top 10 Oklahoma on the road, a win against top 5 Michigan, a top 10 win against Wisconsin on the road, and a dominant thrashing of many other teams including Nebraska.
Penn State is 10-2 with a 39 point loss to Michigan and loss to 8-4 Pitt. They did beat top 5 tOSU at home, which should count for a lot, and that's why they are a top 10 team. But at the end of the day, they not only have a worse record, and a less impressive schedule, but they also by the eye test, don't look like an elite team, certainly not enough to justify them being among the top 4 teams at season's end over a one loss team that would be playing for the CG if there weren't divisions or if they were in the other division.
Respect to Penn State, but losses in college football matter, they've always mattered, more than any other sport, and when they lost to Pitt and got their ass whipped by Penn State, they pretty much played their way out of the right to compete in the playoff, and I am just fine with their exclusion, or their inclusion alongside tOSU if chaos happens.
But aren't those OOC games even more arbitrary than the divisions within conferences?
OOC games are very arbitrary and scheduling has to be done far in advance. I have never suggested we overtly punish teams for not playing tough OOC games, but I think it's unfair to not applaud teams that win big time OOC games. Either way, in this instance, not only did Ohio State have a more impressive OOC P5 opponent, they beat them. PSU had a less impressive OOC opponent and lost, giving them two losses along with a 39 point loss to Michigan.
But OOC games aren't inherently keeping teams with different records in our out. These divisions could be keeping an 11-1 team out of the playoff for a 10-2 team "because we set up the divisions that way, that's why" not because people look around and see that they are a better team
Sorry to be jumping on late but you seem to keep leaving out the fact that PSU beat OSU. Who cares if it was off a blocked FG. We beat Duke by three and scored off a blocked FG, does that game not count?
Plus with an 8 team playoff tOSU would get in with one of the at-large bids. That's what they would be there for. Deserving teams who had a bad game and just missed out. If they are deserving them they should be able to win their way to the championship.
I think you would prefer that conferences because you keep calling them arbitrary and that winning you Conf doesn't really matter.
I respect your opinion. It's fine and valid. My opinion is just different. I just prefer objectivity over subjectivity.
I much prefer a set a rules that from the beginning of the year, so that a team knows what it takes to make it into the playoff. I think every other sport has this. I don't know of one sport in which the champion of a conference, in accordance to the rules of that conference, gets selected over by a non-champion team of that conference for the postseason tournament. (There might be, I just don't know.) I simply prefer that a champion, which was agreed upon before a single game begins, gets to go to the playoff. I like the NFL playoff setup, the NCAAM tournament bid requirements, etc. I think college football would be better with a similar setup.
I apologize for missing your point. I thought your point was that the emphasis on a conference champion was a new revelation. If that was not your point, I'm not sure what it was. My point still stands, the emphasis on conference champions goes back over 50 years. It doesn't matter how the conference champion is determined, as the conferences have rules to determine the champion that have evolved over the years. Whether it was by regular season conference wins or winner of a conference championship game, there has always been a reward for winning the conference.
I have no idea what tie breakers the Big Ten had in 1960. I'm guessing it was set up by rules before the season began, not by a selection committee as you propose. If you have knowledge in that regard, I would greatly like to learn about that.
Not sure what they were in 1960, I wasn't alive, but since I've been following CFB closely, there have been many shared championships in the Big Ten, same record, you're both champs. Rose Bowl would pick who they wanted, unless one was playing for the national championship. Wasn't suggesting a committee would select it ala the playoff.
Unfortunately, there will always be some subjectivity involved, although you want to create a system that gives you an objective selection, it doesn't mean it will get objectively the best teams. Divisions, are subjectively created, there is no mathematical, objective way to ensure the equality of divisions in a conference for a CG each season. You might get your teams, but they won't be the objectively best four teams in the country, just because you used a system with rules (subjectively created) to get there.
Big-Ten rules in the BCS era detail otherwise:
"Rose Bowl. Unless ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the final BCS poll, the conference champion shall participate in the Rose Bowl. The championship shall be determined on the percentage basis of conference games (tie games counts win and loss). If there is a tie for the championship, the Rose Bowl representative will be determined as follows:"
And there were 6 tie-breaker determinations, not one being "as selected by the Rose Bowl."
Link
I have no idea how the B1G selected prior to BCS era. Perhaps you have examples of when the Rose Bowl selected one of the two co-champions of the Big-10.
The actual rose bowl rules are irrelevant I shouldn't have assumed the Rose Bowl got their pick, so yes, in an irrelevant discussion of how the Rose Bowl is selected you are correct. I didn't bother looking up tiebreakers becaus it doesn't matter at all to what we are discussing. My original point is during the BCS era this happened a few times and they were just called co-champions, thus Ohio State would not be suffering for "not winning the conference." Which is only happening because the divisions are preventing a more deserving B1G team (Ohio State) from playing for their conference because geography?
It happened in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010. Some of them were three way ties
100% Agree there are co-champions. OSU and PSU are co-champions of the B1G East Division in 2016. OSU, as virtue of the rules and the games played on the field, lost a tiebreaker.
Oh, but they would be. OSU would be suffering because of not winning the tiebreaker. PSU would be rewarded for winning the tiebreaker.
No, they wouldn't, because this entire rhetoric of overvaluing conference championships and specifically, championship games, has only come around in the last few years as the CFP committee started talking about how much they value them. Now people act as if they are more important than having a better record than another team, in a sport that has ALWAYS placed the highest stakes on not losing games. So in this scenario, both teams would be co-champions with no divisions, OR Ohio State the only other team with one big ten loss, would get a rematch with Penn State if we had a CG. Instead, because their divisions, based loosely on geography, are keeping them from playing for the CG over a team that they beat, and also has more conference losses.
............ Penn St beat Ohio State dude ......... thats not overvaluing conference championship games.
They also have a worse record with weaker schedule. I wouldn't be making any argument if they were both 11-1 or both 10-2. They aren't. One of these teams is 11-1 with better wins and one loss. The other is 10-2 with an embarrassing blowout and a loss to 8-4 Pitt.
Let's say Penn state gets in and beats an undefeated Alabama team in the national championship, do you award the 2 loss team the trophy or the 1 loss team that just got beat? Don't laugh at the hypothetical, just think about the scenario.
I wanted to note. Your opinion on whether OSU should be in the playoff is completely valid and also popular with the CFP pundits. You should agree, however, that OSU in the playoff is a subjective, "eye-test" with post-hoc analysis on wins and losses. OSU in the playoff is not based on pre-determined objective rules.
In all fairness, OSU should make the playoff this year, because there were no established rules in the CFP committee selection and it's the committee's prerogative to select the teams they want in the playoff. In my opinion, however, I think this is a bad way to select teams. I just prefer, unbiased, predetermined set of rules. In my preferred set of rules, it's the conference champions and their rules (including tiebreakers).
I am only commenting to see how narrow this comment will be. don't mind me.
It can get really, really skinny if you want it to
That's what she said.
Mind blown
is this the end of the line?
Let's see
This would be a really incredibly poor time to write out a long convoluted reply that unnecessarily takes up space for the hell of it. So I won't do that. Instead, I'll comment to say that I really hope we beat the pants off Clemson this weekend so that our Revenge Tour 2016 can go out in style. Though, I am hearing that Michigan is looking to be the Orange Bowl opponent for the ACC.......
Thank You!
OSU lost the tiebreaker. In any freaking scenario anyone can draw-up, OSU did not earn a post-season selection based on losing the tiebreaker to PSU.
If Michigan didn't lose to Iowa, then there would be a 3 way tie, then OSU would get in based on the tie-breakers.
2 losses are not better than 1. But, assuming Penn state wins, they would have an extra win in a championship that Ohio state couldn't even make it to. So, I would consider that equal to another loss for Ohio State therefore making them equal with a tie breaker going to Penn state. I don't give Ohio state a pass for not being able to accomplish the milestone of getting into its own conference championship. I wouldn't have a problem with both making it as long as Ohio state isn't jumping a 1 loss conference champ to get there.
A win for one team does not equal a loss for another in any way shape or form. They aren't going to be jumping a one-loss conference champ, they are the one loss team, jumping a conference champ with two losses.
The other one loss team I was referring to would be from another conference with Big Ten getting two teams in. I look at it as a negative that Ohio state does not have to play in a high profile game to win the conference. My rationale is that had they played in it, they may or may not lose, so not being able to play in it means I assume the worst. I put a lot of stock in the milestone of a conference championship even though I agree it's not the sole consideration when there are only 4 slots to fill. It's a crappy situation but I would give the nod to Penn state since they were the team that knocked Ohio state out of contention for the conference. It's ok to agree to disagree on this one.
Didn't Ohio State play and win more high profile games throughout the year than did Penn State? Just devil's advocate.
But were they actually aligned arbitrarily? Didn't the school presidents and chancellors vote on those divisions? I would imagine the ADs at those member institutions had a say in the alignment as well!
Arbitrary isn't the perfect word, but the ACC's are pretty wtf level random, and the B1G divisions are loosely based on geography, which is meaningless to what happens on the football field and led to grossly uneven divisions.
If Alabama loses to Florida, should they not make the playoffs?
If I'm the best car salesman, but I get beat by another for monthly sales, should I still get the monthly bonus and the other salesman get nothing?
You gotta earn it. Right here, right now.
That's a terrible analogy.
Its more like, if one person is a better car salesman, crushes the other mans sales numbers all month, should the worse salesman get the bonus because he beat the first salesman to sell one specific car?
Well, thank you for your compliment.
But, my analogy is about earning in accordance to the rules established. And thus, to use your analogy, if the rules of the bonus was associated to that one specific car, then ABSOLUTELY the worse car salesman gets the bonus.
Regarding the CFP, it is true that there are no rules to selection. And thus, a CFP committee can choose whoever the hell they want. Hell, they could put UVA in CFP, there are no rules.
I want rules. I want the CFP to be setup to remove the power from a random set CFP committee members. The rules that make the most sense, that leave the right to play in the CFP to the players on the field, is to award the conference champions. Each conference has already setup a way to be determine the champion, an award that is earned. The CFP selection committee has no hard rules to abide by. Thus, teams, which are winning their conference by the rules given to them, are unrewarded for accomplishing that feat.
If you considered the range of possible outcomes, instead of this one instance, you would see innumerable problems with your line of thinking.
Note: Pitt beat PSU in Pittsburgh, not State College
Other note: I think if Wisconsin wins the BTCG, one could make the argument that OSU should be a preferred playoff pick because of the head to head. If PSU wins it, I think PSU could make a strong argument for being included over OSU.
Fair, I'll revise the happy valley part. Point stands.
Saying you want to put the best teams in the playoff means very subjective criteria. You can debate this all day. You can compare wins and losses, you can compare quality losses, give preference to blue blood programs/fanbases, get excited over margin of victory, etc. You cannot debate winning your division and/or winning your conference championship. It's inarguable. So what if OSU is the better team? They couldn't beat Penn St when it mattered, and winning their division is again the one thing you can control in this process. That's why conference champions should get automatic bids to the playoff and there should be 3 wildcard spots. I'm fine with debating which non-champion is the best team/has the best resume for a wildcard spot. Essentially, everyone will know their path to the playoff, and championship weekend will become the de facto first week of the playoffs. Makes things more exciting and equitable, and you still have a shot at a wildcard spot if you fail to win your conference/division but you had some impressive wins back in September. Everyone comes away happy.
So the results of Pitt and Oklahoma are meaningless. Why play OOC then?
Ratings, pride, and money. Divisional records should be the only thing that matter for standings. Division champions meet in the Conference Championship Game in the play-in round of the playoffs. Ideally, you'd dissolve the Big 12, redistribute those members to other conferences, and then have the 4 main conference champions play in the CFP.
THAT'S how you make the college football season a legitimate season-long playoff, maximizing the value of the conference slate, which I would much prefer over maximizing the value of OOC games. If you remove the end of season implications on OOC games, and make them about ratings and payout, you'll likely see more big name matchups going forward than you do now. Its the same reason you have all these early season basketball games against big name opponents, because they know a loss isn't going to kill them at the end of the year, and they'd much rather get the experience playing against quality competition without it killing their year than pasting another FCS opponent to game the system.
Ahh so OOC is now essentially exhibition games.. Frank is that you?
If you're playing two of these teams like UNC, maybe. But playing FCS teams helps keep those programs afloat. Any opinion on FCS games that doesn't take into account the financial gain and help these games do for FCS programs is uninformed and should not be taken seriously.
OOC games have always been a huge part of college football, the entire bowl season, long standing OOC games that acted as the postseason for college football for like a hundred years. Also, playing OOC games gives an opportunity to gauge how conferences compare to each other and to tell which programs are going to step up and win games against other top conference teams. This allows more informed opinions. Hyper-focusing on divisions, which could literally be changed in any given year, gets away from several aspects of college football that make it so great. Losses matter in college football, more than any other sport and it's not close. Every loss could be a season killer, even just one. A one loss team with a better schedule should absolutely be valued over a two loss team with a worse schedule.
frankly, and i really hope im right here...if wisconsin were to win the big whatever the hell the number is... i think theyd jump michigan due to the conference championship and extra win over a top 10 team. if they win itll work itself out, the thing i have a problem with is the committee hyping up SOS and putting washington at 4. wisconsins 2 losses are to 2 top 5 teams. sure as hell isnt their fault, maybe future teams should just not schedule those tough opponents and that way if you lose the only highly ranked game of the season youre still in. its kind of ridiculous how weak the pac 12 is this year
I have a hard time believing that they would jump Wisconsin over Michigan since they would both be 10-2 and Michigan beat Wisconsin.
They wouldn't both be 10-2. Wisconsin would be 11-2 with 4 top 25 wins and the loss to UM was one score on the road. They should jump UM at that point.
Good catch. I think it is likely that Wisconsin would jump Michigan in that scenario.
A spot in the Rose Bowl.
True, a Rose Bowl berth is what they are literally playing for. But, what does that mean in the era of playoffs? What does it mean to be the conference champion but cannot compete to be called the best team in the country? And why, because ESPN loves OSU more?
We're talking about an eventual conference champion with the same win total as OSU, more than Michigan. Why are they less deserving than OSU? Why is the fate of their CFP aspirations out of their control?
If being champion doesn't mean you get to compete against the other champions, what are you competing for? Why should a championship game be a competition for the consolation prize?
And, yes, this argument would extend to VT -- If they win on Saturday, they should be one of five teams available for the CFP. But, they won't be. As a VT fan, I'm somewhat indifferent about that because winner of Oklahoma vs. OSU is probably more deserving anyways. But, if I were a fan of the winner of Wisc. vs PSU, I'd be livid.
Not because ESPN loves OSU more. Wisonsin has no shot because they lost to both Michigan and OSU. If Penn State had not lost to Pittsburgh or had not go molly-whopped by Michigan then they would have their shot.
If you want to play for the national title, you can't have more than one-loss barring some major, major chaos. You also can't lost by 5 scores to anyone and claim you are the best in the country IMO.
Michigan is still in the hunt with two losses and lost to unranked Iowa so that logic doesn't work.
Michigan is only in the hunt if there is absolute chaos, so it does work.
Because there has been a lot of chaos this season + the committee kinda sucks this season IMO. I'd hope that the committee would put in a B1G champion over Michigan if Clemson, Alabama, or Washington lost though.
So, essentially, again. What are Wiconsin and PSU playing for? So, what does a conference champion mean? A champion earned the right to be called champion for their play on the field and the rules of the conference.
You play to win the game. You play to earn the right for the postseason. You earn that right by winning your conference. The best teams don't always earn that right.
The rose bowl
Which is synonymous with the 2nd best team in the B1G this year, NOT champion.
lol yup.... the Big Ten Championship Game is being held to crown the second best team in the conference...
Do you invalidate all the ACC championships we won because we weren't in the championship? I sure as hell don't.
If we won the ACC only to see Miami play for the National Championship, then yes, it would completely invalidate our conference championships
If they were 11-1 in 2010 when we dropped games to Boise and JMU they would probably deserve it. We lose far too many OOC games to complain about respect
ok but that's not the question that was proposed
if VT was 10-2, beat Miami on the field of play, won the ACC, only to see Miami play for the National Championship while we didn't, we'd be rightfully infuriated about how royally the system fucked us
That's literally the question you proposed. If we were 11-2 ACC champions with a win over Miami but they got in because they had a much better resume and we didn't then it would be our own damn fault for losing to Boise and JMU.
Right, because we lose to a FCS opponent every year.... At this point, you're just trolling the thread
What the hell are you talking about. I'm giving a literal scenario in which Miami would justifiably get in over us as champions. Who said anything about every year. You are putting words in my mouth and not addressing the argument.
Alright, I'll play along.
Literally, in your words, the only time a conference champion should not go to the playoff over a team they beat is if they lost to a FCS team. Penn St didn't lose to a FCS team this year, so I guess in that scenario they're royally fucked by the committee... Good to know, thanks!
And furthermore.... By sending Miami to the National Playoff/Title game over ACC Champion Virginia Tech, it shows that one bad loss is more important to your season than who you beat, to the point where it completely invalidates anything you are able to accomplish after that point, even if that means you went undefeated in conference play, including beating Miami, that team that is going to the National Playoff/Title Game. Personally, I find that to be complete bullshit, and I take serious issue with it.
I think you are misreading the argument right now... The example being used is 2010 when VT lost to JMU and Boise. Theoretically, Miami in 2010 goes 11-1. They still lose to VT and VT, because we went undefeated in conference play, goes to the Championship and wins the ACC. Miami should still be chosen over us because VT lost twice with one loss being to a bad JMU team.
Relating that back to 2016: Ohio State has more quality wins (OU, UM, UW) and only won close loss. Penn State has more losses, including a blowout loss, but does hold the H2H. Wisconsin's best win is over Nebraska who isn't even ranked anymore.
Neither of those teams should make it in over OSU who has 3 top 10 wins right now. Being left out of the playoffs doesn't invalidate Penn State's or Wisconsin's accomplishments this season, because they will be validated with a conference championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl. Is GT's season invalidated because they are destined for a mid-tier bowl? Is every VT season except 1999-2000 invalidated because we didn't make it to the Championship?
That's missing the point.
If Team A wins the conference title and Team B from that same conference makes it to the playoff or National Championship game over Team A, it completely invalidates the conference title. It shows that in the grand scheme of things, winning your conference no longer matters when it comes to winning a National Championship.
Now, I get it, we already had a situation where Alabama and LSU played for a National Championship in the BCS years, but that still had the caveat that the Conference Champion still got into the title game, and still had a chance for the National Title. This year, that won't be the case for Penn St or Wisconsin as they watch another team from their conference play for it all.
Now, in basketball, the conference title has been devalued, but that has more to do with the fact that some 68 teams get into the tournament. But winning your conference does still come with a guarantee that you get into the playoff. In football, this year you're about to see that eliminated.
If you ask me, this is a very bad thing for the sport.
Oh ok. I get your point now. I think this is where I'll have to just agree to disagree with you because to me, conference championships inherently validating and the playoffs are simply about getting the 4 best football teams on the field. I don't think there's a serious argument that VT is the best team in the country, but theoretically we could win it this year under the system that you desire.
Oh absolutely... that said, if we beat Clemson this weekend, I don't think you can make a case that Clemson is the best team in the country, either. Should we win this weekend, in an ideal world, we'd make the playoff with the right to be slaughtered by Bama in the opening game.
I like the proposals below. This year makes it obvious we need an 8 team playoff. All 5 conference champions get auto-bids to the playoff. After that, let the committee choose the 3 others who should be in, with a caveat that the best Group of 5 team is guaranteed a spot as well. That essentially turns the conference championship weekend into Round 1 of the playoff, and while 8 teams make it into the actual playoff, it essentially becomes a 13 team playoff when you factor in the teams that lose the Power 5 championship games. And you're only adding one additional weekend to the actual CFP.
That 8 team playoff is about perfect. All of the NY6 bowls could host. 4 host the quarterfinals and then they rotate through for which 2 host the semifinals just like how they rotate for who hosts the playoff game now. The Championship game still has bids for the venue each year. On top of that, this is a 3 week schedule that fits into the majority of universities' winter breaks. I have a feeling that once the 4-team playoff contract is up, it'll swiftly move to an 8-team playoff because of the opportunity for more money.
Yessir.
what?
I'm not sure I understand. Was there an ACC team that was rewarded more than VT the years VT won the ACC?
Even Clemson got a better reward than VT in 2011, and deservedly so.
Too bad they gave up ten touchdowns that day. :)
Talk about salt in the wound. The Cousins lit them up.
2011-2012 Postseason = WORST POSTSEASON EVER
Actually, that year has the best set of BCS bowls, except for maybe the final BCS year. Other than the National Championship being dumb, and the official results don't make the ACC happy. Individual, most of the games were quite entertaining.
The Sugar and Fiesta Bowls went into overtime, and the Rose Bowl came down to the last play of the game to force OT. Really, Clemson dropped the ball in the Orange Bowl...
You could ask that question about the entire state of the postseason in FBS CFB. What does any game matter if it isn't for the national title? Who cares if you play in a NY6 bowl as opposed to a Taxslayer bowl because either way you aren't going to win it all.
The goal is to get the best 4 teams into the playoffs, not the best 4 conference champions.
IMO this is one of the things that makes CFB great. Every game matters because if you lose 1 your chances of winning it all decrease dramatically. Lose 2 and you are essentially out of the running. That's why the regular season in CFB is so much better than the regular season in any other sport; especially pro sports.
I couldn't agree more with your playoff stance and stance on losses. Best four teams, based off records, which losses mattering the most in college football has always been what makes it so great and unique.
I don't think your last point on every game mattering is necessarily true. It is for some teams, and it isn't for others. Did the Penn St. loss matter for OSU? Not when OSU loses to a then unranked team and only falls a few spots. Alabama could lose to Florida this weekend and they would still be in the playoff, likely still number 1. Michigan has lost twice now and still has a very real shot at the playoff at 5, whereas Oklahoma has two losses and can clinch the Big 12 this weekend with a win over top 10 Oklahoma St but has no real shot. Clemson loses to Pitt and is still in the field of four. Meanwhile, we lose by 10 to GT and fall completely out of the poll from 14.
Just because an effect can't be observed doesn't mean it didn't happen, it just might have been drowned out by other effects because literally every single week of cfb is a clusterfuck. OSU losing had a huge effect in that it took them from playoff locks to being at the mercy of a committee. Same with Clemson and Washington. We dropped because once you have three losses (without any marquee wins) you are no longer a contender.
Edit: my bad. My self-fact checking sucks today
See...the NFL. I agree with playing yourself into the playoffs.
No one's competing to be called the "best team in the country". They're competing to be called the "champion".
That's why I'm sick of this "best team" argument. There is literally no way to fully determine the best team. With 128 FBS teams, or even just 65 Power 5 teams, and only 12 regular season games per team, there's no way to truly determine the best team. Plus, "best team" is largely subjective.
That's why people like a system like the NFL playoffs. There is a very clear path for getting in, and there's no hand wringing about quality wins or quality losses, or timing of losses, or resumes.
There is no version of college football where subjective measures aren't introduced. There are two many teams and too few games.
you're absolutely right. It's to be champion, which isn't always the best team. Thanks. That language is more of what I'm going for.
One of the great things about college sports is that it's not all about who wins the whole thing. You play for regional pride/bragging rights. You play for conference championships. You play for historic bowl games. You play to increase momentum for your program going forward which matters more in college football than any other sport. The attitude that it's national title or bust is toxic to what makes College Football so great.
There's also a not-insignificant difference in revenue that Rose (or Orange/Fiesta/etc) Bowl teams make in comparison to other bowls. I want to say it's an over $10M difference
Wouldn't you still have 3 B1G teams in the playoff and we'd still be mad?
(or celebrating our win over Clemson, who cares who got the wildcard, those were the rules, "we want Bama!")
PSU is playing for a spot in the playoffs. If they win the B1G and anOSU goes to the playoffs instead we all know the committee was just blowing hot air when they talked about championships matter. An 11-2 conference champion with a win over the 11-1 should go in over a 11-1 team without the championship.
Yes, I realize that anOSU wins the rematch 8 of 10 times and is the better team.
Maybe they get shellacked and maybe not. Alabama has to be mentally tough enough to put them down. That is an a special aspect to the game. You can be stronger and faster and still lose if you don't have the heart to take it!
More of the reason I'm all for it. I would love to see an unmotivated Alabama get knocked out by Western Michigan or Navy. I sure as hell would be cheering for WMU or Navy.
100% this.
I know it's college football and theoretically anything can happen, but after watching both teams I'm thinking all my money is going on Alabama even at -24. Florida's offense is poo and Alabama's defense consists of all NFL talent. This has the potential for 38-0 bro
Then why preemptively drop them? The championship games haven't been played yet. If the committee just ranked teams based on ability to make championship game, teams would be booted from the ranking unfairly. OSU right now, is the second best team in the country. I challenge anyone to argue with me over that fact. They have beaten #5 Michigan, they have beaten #6 Wisconsin, they have beaten #9 Oklahoma. That's right...three current top 10 teams. And they finished the season with one of the biggest wins of the year. Take away the fact that championship games are gonna be played, and just think about the idea of #2 beating #3 to finish the season and the #2 team dropping at least 3 spots following that win...yeah ridiculous when you think about it.
Championship games are important, they are, but college football isn't black and white. When one solution gets applied to one scenario, you can't just blanket that to every single scenario. Conference champ isn't 100% of the time going to be better than a team in that conference that didn't win the conference. This is one of those times and the job of the committee is to pick the 4 best teams and OSU has shown that they are indisputably a top 4 team.
This is where the 8 team playoff and at large bids come in. In this years scenario OSU who is a great team gets an at large bid and prove they deserve it by getting to the national championship.
This year is why the 4 team playoff isn't enough.
This is an effort to protect the big regular season OOC games. If winning your conferences trumps all then everyone will load up on cream puffs and focus on the conference schedule. OSU smoked a good Oklahoma team on the road, beat Wisconsin on the road, and beat Michigan with one Q4 meltdown on the road. Their 11-1 resume is deserving of the playoff.
Edit: should have kept reading - this has already been covered. I'll see myself out.
Don't see yourself out just yet, we need more rational people like you. People who can look at Ohio State's very impressive 11-1 record against a tough schedule and see that they are every bit deserving of a playoff spot, the playoff designed to pit the best four teams against each other.
STILL ALIVE IN THE PLAYOFF HUNT! YEAH BABY YEAH!!
/s
You somehow expected logic and fairness, kemosabe? :) The whole system is flawed...@ least an 8-team playoff is needed. I'd gladly give up one less regular season game to get that (if too long a season is the "excuse" offered)
I think it's a matter of time and working out the money. Right now for the basketball tournament the NCAA gets all that money vs the bowls in football, so once they figure that out, and I'm sure they will because that will be 4 more meaningful games to make them money
We need an 8 team playoff, no more than two from any given conference, seeding needs to see that those two meet before the final.
I want an 8-team playoff too but disagree with no more that two per conference. For example, the ACC this year, theoretically could of had an undefeated VT playing and undefeated Clemson, with a one loss Louisville. So if we lost to Clemson in that scenario, you would have two one loss teams that lost to the same team, which happens to be undefeated.
I get wanting to put rules in, but then it's like the NCAA tournament where you have a team with a garbage regular season record win the conference tournament and they are in.
Except as long as conference champions are decided like they are, you can't have a team with a garbage regular season record get the the championship game (unless the whole division is garbage...or they drop their OOC games but show up for conference play...or both).
Anyway, it's not exactly the same as basketball where a winless BC team could make a deal with Saban and win the ACC tourney to secure a bid.
That would make VT 12-1 with win over UT and the title game appearance, vs UL 11-1, but then SOS perception could still favor the Atlantic.
What about a rule against teams that already played (in conference) during the regular season? Which could be overridden by winning your championship game. That would make a de facto greater than 8 team playoff, where everyone still has a chance and the regular season is great again without constantly expanding and weakening the post season.
Haven't thought this through fully yet
I think it's ridiculous how slanted towards the big 10 the rankings have been. Oh well, more bulletin board material for the team this week, 23 is no respect.
"We can't expand the Playoff, it will make the regular season meaningless!!!!"
With the committee approach, the regular season already is meaningless. Getting into the Playoff is now a popularity contest. Doesn't matter if you can't even make the conference title game, if they feel you are deserving, you get in. Good forbid they make winning your conference, the one thing you can control, a prerequisite for having a national title chance... If I were a Wisky or Penn State fan I'd be pissed at how this year has played out against them.
I want us to upset Clemson and Colorado to upset Washington to see the unbelievable backlash the committee is going to get if they put 3 Big 10 teams in. I imagine that would lead to an outcry of conference commissioners and ADs insisting on a rule that conference championships are a prerequisite for the playoff.
Do you want the B1G to become the SEC? Because that's how you become the SEC.
Yup. Conf champs from P5 and let the all powerful committee select the remaining 3. This would allow a team like Western Michigan a shot at a title which seems fair.
I like it.
Conference champs (5)
Highest-ranked G5 champion, only if ranked (0 or 1)
At-large teams (2 or 3)
It is a simple formula. I think everybody would agree to it. That is why the entire country was dumbfounded when the introduced the 4 team playoff and locked it in for what 10 years?
I was more dumbfounded that amid all the clamor about human bias and mysterious computers, they went with a mysterious committee of biased humans using computers.
Wisky should have beaten Ohio State and Michigan. Penn State shouldn't have lost by 39....
The media wants their season narrative to run as predicted so badly that they are willfully ignoring losses and choosing their favorites over legitimate championship teams?
Y'know what? This is just so perfectly 2016.
If we want to talk about a poll actually being rigged in 2016...
(I'll see myself out)
The important thing is, we're not #17.
Western Michigan is screwed.
They'll pull a Northern Illinois and choke in the MAC championship game.
And Navy slides into the NY6 as P5 #1. Go Navy!
via GIPHY
I mostly agree with the rankings.
Because Louisville lost to 2 current unranked teams. But when Mich can lose to an unranked and not drop nothing makes sense.
I think the issue is that there's just not many good teams this year. Who are you going to put above Mich? PSU, Wiscy, Colorado, all of whom lost H2H to Mich? USC who started 1-3? OkU who has no quality wins? OkSt who's best win is Pitt, but has losses to a now 6-6 Baylor and Central Michigan (you can debate if that's a loss, I know)? Honestly, I think Western Michigan has a better argument than any of the aforementioned schools, but even then, there's so much to question since they haven't played anyone.
Taking MOV and Lamar Jackson out of the picture, FSU has the better resume IMO. The problem is, the committee has favored head-to-head in past rankings, why not this week? I think they wanted to rank FSU high but couldn't put UL that high after two recent losses (Houston blowout and loss to UK) and wins over Charlotte and Marshall. (then why not rank both teams lower?)
I agree with your thoughts about FSU and Louisville, why didnt they rank both lower? FSU and USC (and even stanford) were the recipients of the dont lose late tactic of the committee but regardless of head to head Louisville should have dropped more than a couple spots.
FSU losses = UNC, UL, Clemson
FSU quality wins = UF
UL Losses = Clemson, UH, UK
UL quality wins = FSU
I just don't think there's any difference in the resumes, at least not enough to overcome a H2H loss.
I was including pre-season. And counting FSU's losses as higher quality.
USCw has three losses, though.
I agree, but they're on a 8 game win streak with wins over Colorado and Washington. And it's not like there are many great teams this year.
While I agree that 23 is lower than I expected, the reality is all that matters is how we perform Sat night under the lights. Whether we are 23 or 15 is fairly irrelevant. If we pull off the upset vs Clemson, we'll earn a much higher ranking.
Another thing I have to keep reminding myself -- if in August you had told me we'd end the regular season ranked 18/19/23 (depending on the poll), would I have taken that? Abso-frickin-lutely!
Beat the Tiggers!!
Also, it's a farce that Louisville is one spot behind FSU if the committee really looks at head to head in those situations.
Because Louisville lost to Houston and Kentucky both of whom are unranked.
Look, the fact is that VT doesn't have a great resume. We have two horrible losses and some would argue we have zero quality wins.
The resumes for UF and CU-boulder are also lacking.
UF had one bad loss (Ark) for but have not beaten anyone -- well, I'm sure the SEC homers would argue LSU is a quality win.
CU with no bad losses, but no great wins. They did beat Utah and WSU. So, I'll give them one quality win (two good wins, but not spectacular). Are these wins more impressive than the beatdowns of Pitt and UNC?
We have one bad loss. Losses to 8-4 Georgia Tech and 8-4 Tennessee aren't bad losses.
GT on a three game W streak (including @VT) and blew out Vandy. Tenn got blown out by Vandy. Where's GT in the ranking?
Heard this on radio, think it has merit. Just sayin'.
I get the logic, but Tennessee didn't really get blown out by Vandy. Lost by 11, and took a lead into the 4th.
But yes, there's an argument for GT to be ranked. But that's true of a lot of 3 to 4 loss teams.
Of course Tennessee is ahead of us, they beat us on the field. What about FSU being ahead of Louisville? Well, um, FSU finished out their season stronger than Louisville who lost to a crappy rival. No, I said Louisville, why did you think I was talking about Tennessee?
They beat us head to head in week 2 and are coming off recent losses to South Carolina and Vanderbilt. Tennessee is playing some bad football right now and the Hokies are playing well.
So FSU over UL logic should apply to VT over Tenn.
that was the joke. Sometimes I think trying to be clever is a thankless pursuit.
I read and got your joke when it was fresh, but made my comment 13 hours later after I'd forgotten about it. You're good.
Guys, I'm just praying that Florida smashes Bama, Tech obliterates Clemson, and Colorado beats Washington.
Bama could get beat by 30 points by Florida, they're still going
I have issues with that. To be the man you gotta win your conference!
"No, you don't. "
- Ohio state
So in the year where UCLA? Was in the PAC 12 championship game because of sanctions to other teams with 6 wins if they had pulled the upset they should have been in?
*if we had 8 teams with auto bids, yes, four team committee format, no, congrats on making the Rose Bowl.
If Bama loses, I would still have them in the top4. If someone can dissuade me from thinking they are a top4 team in college football then I'd take them out. But I'm sure there is a logical argument to do that.
COASTAL CHAOS!!!!
BCS was better than the committee. In addition to this, while the committee has been absurd at best with its top 10 it goes all throughout the top 25. Half the teams are ranked because quality losses, but bad losses didn't hurt the top teams at all. A team like USF is 10-2 one loss to division champ temple and the other to FSU, beat Navy big, and somehow isn't ranked behind several 4 loss teams. I think Utah has moved up after losses, twice, and this shit show was supposed to be better than the BCS, lol. I guess the craziness is fitting for a sport that has long been entertaining for how chaotic and inconsistent it is from year to year.
This is what I believe needs to happen:
1. Big 12 needs to go away and make 4 super conferences.
2. Win your conference
3. Winners of each conference play each other in the 4 team playoff regardless of W-L record.
This would in essence make conference championships the 1st round of the playoff. Settle it all on the field not on some "comittie's" opinion or ESPN's bias'd bullshit loaded telecasts.
And on top of that it would force ND to join a conference.
Best part is, we can use this system to have several champions at different levels. Lower level championship can be held for teams outside of ACC/B1G/Pac12/SEC. Thats even MORE college football for us to watch and debate!
Okay so what teams would join the ACC that leave the B12? I would assume WVU, just out of proximity. But all the other teams are too far to be labeled under the 'Atlantic Coast'.
Because Notre Dame is on the Atlantic Coast, or Texas A&M is in the southeast.
Or adding Penn State, Nebraska, Michigan, and Rutgers still somehow counts as "Ten".
so is Notre Dame, but that won't stop us.
What happens if you have a Boise or a Houston, who schedules 2 top-tier teams, and goes 13-0? What about when every other team has at least one loss, with all but one or two having multiple losses?
You can't make a system that specifically excludes certain teams from success. That's how anti-trust lawsuits are made.
If they make another division of football, they can.
I think that a lot of people that are banging the "Conference Championship" drum are missing the point. In the small sample size that we have, the committee has shown that it values conference championships as a tie-breaker, not as a must-have criteria for making it into the play-off. For them, head-to-head first, conference championships second, but only when comparing two teams with identical records, not in the scenario we have now where anOSU is 11-1 and PSU is 10-2. Their resumes are not the same, period.
The express purpose of the committee is to get the four best teams into the play-off, nothing more, nothing less. For me, that is Bama, anOSU, Clemson (for now), and Washington (for now). If Clemson or UDub lose, then start comparing the two-loss teams. This favors Michigan because head-to-head matters more than conference championships when comparing teams with the same record. They destroyed PSU, handily beat Colorado (after they lost their QB), and beat Wisconsin. The only other two loss team(s) would be Clemson and/or UDub which just lost.
Scenarios:
1. Clemson loses to VT, UW wins: Clemson is out since VT is not that highly regarded by the committee. UW moves up to #3 and Michigan is #4.
2. Washington loses to Colorado, Clemson wins: Clemson stays at #3. Even with the PAC-12 championship on their resume they would probably take Michigan over Colorado because of the head-to head. They could have some leeway in this scenario if they take into account that the Buffs were beating Michigan until they lost their starting QB and ended up losing. I doubt that they do this since as the season long narrative (true or not) has been how the PAC-12 is down this year.
3. Clemson and UDub lose: Then you put in Michigan and start comparing Colorado and the B1G champion.
For the record, I hate that they added more "human element" and got rid of the computers. The computers were initially unbiased, but every year the formulas had to be tweaked so that pollsters and media members could have their preconceived biases confirmed instead of challenged by the computers. Too much ignoring of hard data and going with "guts" and "eye-test" nonsense.
To your initial point, say PSU wins the Big10.
I think an argument could be made that an 11-2 record stacks up reasonably so to an 11-1 record, especially when you take into account that the 11-2 record would have a conference championship AND a head to head victory over the 11-1
I do not see what is so hard about making it an 8 team playoff, 5 conference champions and 3 at-large. Even if the most choas-y chaos happened this weekend you're left with:
-Florida
-VT
-Wisc
-Colorado
-OKSt
-Bama
-OSU
-Clemson
You still get the consensus top 3 to prove themselves. And you also have the 5 teams who proved themselves across the season to get there and then in the final test, pass.
All conferences are represented. No one gets left out who slipped up and lost a tiebreaker to a "lesser" team.
Bama would still win, not like any of this matters anyways.
Let's see
2 SEC - Florida and Bama
2 ACC - VT and Clemson
2 B1G - Wisc and anOSU
1 PAC - Colorado
1 B12 - Okst
Only thing you missed would be having a high ranking G5. And the sad part is Clemson would be kicked to the curb over anOSU and Bama in that chaos.
I hadn't really thought about the G5 being an auto qualifier. I guess it would be too hard for them to be in the top 6 (essentially what it would take to steal an at-large) but I think it would have to have a qualifier, like if the top ranked G5 team is below 20, no dice. I like the idea of the underdog having a shot every year though.
Would it be that sad that Clemson got kicked to the curb in this scenario? They have played all decent competition other than GT within one score, lost to a 4 loss team at home, should have easily lost to NC State at home as well and their "quality wins" have not fared well down the stretch outside of FSU beating Florida, who was down 7 defensive starters. Troy got beat by like 38 by Ark St, Louisville finished the season blown out by UH and losing to Kentucky at home, Auburn never looked like they deserved their ranking outside of the Arkansas game, and they have limped to the finish with woeful performances.
I would not shed a single tear.
The only stipulation I would have in this scenario is that the conference winner must be ranked in the top 15 or they don't get the auto-bid.
Honestly these rankings are pretty reasonable, a few questionable calls doesn't invalidate the whole thing, and I don't think we could reasonably be much higher.
We have one awful loss, and two decent losses with only 1 ranked win. Tennessee beat us head to head so I'm not going to argue too much there. LSU is one of the best teams in the country by advanced stats, I have no problem with them staying in the top 25. Utah, maybe, we're about equal I'd say. Navy and Stanford you could argue, but they've both been impressive. Florida should have dropped way more, but I'd have a hard time putting us ahead.
Once you get beyond the need to hate whatever ranking system we have out of principle, it's really not that bad.
Except for the part where we're 9-3 and they're 8-4. But that's all I got there.
Really, we just needed a number next to our name so we wouldn't be the only one left out this weekend. As long as it wasn't 17, I was happy.
I agree we need to be on the list. Wherever!
Guys...guys...
listen...
you have to win the important games. Those include conference games. If a team deserves to be one of the 4 best teams in the country it should win the games necessary to get to and win it's conference. It doesn't matter if that conference has two of the best teams (as we know, rankings can be inflated by perception)
win the games you have to in order to get to your conference title game and you deserve a shot at the playoff. If OSU and Michigan have to sit out while Penn State represents their conference that's on them for not winning the games they had to.
It's really pretty simple. The 4 conference champions with the highest win percentages should play in the playoff. There should never be 2 teams from one league in a 4 game playoff. Ever.
That's fine if that's what you think the system should be, but it's explicitly not what the system is. Playoff committee selects the 4 best or most deserving (still haven't sorted that one out) with some acknowledgement of external factors (such as conference championships).
I think a big problem here everyone is arguing about two different things: (1) What the system should be and (2) How the system actually does/should work. If you wanna overhaul the system that's fine, but it's irrelevant when discussing the current rankings.
You have 2 teams that didn't play good enough to win their own conference in position to play in the playoff. OSU and Mich. How the hell you gonna be National champion if you weren't even in contention to win your own conference? It's bullshit.
Because.... both of them beat Wisconsin, who is playing in the championship, and Michigan beat PSU by 39 sooooooo, the sane people who watch college football can see that these divisions have not put the best teams in the conference championship game. Keep in mind, these divisions are loosely based on geography, which has nothing to do with football.
Wait...this is sounding vaguely familiar. Have we had this conversation before? Oh, I know, let's re-hash it all over again. That won't be the slightest bit not fun.
I have seen too many years of this merry go round crap. There is no answer to this imperfect system. Its for the most part, subjective bullshit. So sick of it. When you get to my age you will puke too!
I read a book a few years back, I think it was called "Death to the BCS". That guy was proposing a 16 team playoff, which I thought was a bit crazy at first. He wanted to include all conference champions, P5 and G5 (or AQ and non-AQ as they were back then).
And you know what, why not? More than likely the Sun Belt champ would always be the 16th seed. So if they can go and knock off Alabama (possibly in Tuscaloosa as he proposed the first round being at home), then more power to them. If not, well, at least Alabama just had to go through another game like everyone else.
Tomorrow's December.... so I've combined my Holiday Spirit with my Football Pride....
So Chris, lemme see if I have you right here.
If a team wins its division and gets to its conference championship, but loses to two "better" teams that didn't make it, and gets passed over in the playoffs for those teams, that's the way it should be? This essentially renders conference games arguments to be used against the "not-best" team should they win their division. Is that it?
I'm sorry, but I don't like that. At all. They should expand the playoff to 8 teams and include at-large bids for these "best teams." Anything short of that is ludicrous.
Is it ludicrous that a 11-1 team would get into the playoff with much better wins, a stronger schedule, and fewer losses than a 10-2 team with a 39 point loss (this alone should keep you out of the playoff) and another loss to an 8-4 team? I'm looking at resumes and looking at the fact that a geographic division structure is keeping the two more deserving teams from playing in the B1G CG. tOSU beat Wisconsin and has fewer conference losses and has to watch from home because that division is much, much weaker.
You mean the structure that allowed OSU to not own the head to head? I understand your point about resumes and all of that, but this is a pretty clear cut situation. OSU had a chance to prove they were the better team in their division.... and didn't, they lost to the better team. If they "deserved" a playoff berth, whatever the hell that means, they would have beat PennST.
EDIT: Do you think the title game a few years ago should have been LSU and Bama?
LSU and Alabama were absolutely the two best teams, they crushed OOC opponents and EVERYONE they played that year. the 9-6 game was not representative of the ass whooping they put on everyone else. Those teams were in a league of their own. I think that would have been a good year for the playoff to start with solid Stanford and Iowa State teams, but they put the two best teams in the NCG and I am perfectly okay with that.
LSU Schedule
Alabama Schedule
They deserve a playoff birth because they have a better record with a better schedule. They beat better teams, don't have embarrassing losses, and played a tougher schedule. If you don't want to put the best teams in the playoff, that's fine. But this whole obsession with conference divisions is silly. Does anyone honestly think Penn State is a top 4 team? They got beat by 39 by Michigan. They lost to Pitt. They beat tOSU sure, but they have more losses, and they really didn't control their destiny, tOSU would have won the three-way tie if Michigan hadn't lost to Iowa.
it is a little ridiculous to think that a team watching someone else play praying the right team loses can be considered a candidate for the best team. I know, I'm a hokie fan and have spent the better part of the last decade doing just that.
Ok, so that explains it. You simply just don't care about head-to-head. That's fine, you look to a more macro resume than at individual teams and put no meaning in conferences or titles.
Personally I think the LSU-Bama game was the most egregious of the BCS era. Bama had no right to be there based on head-head having already lost to LSU and not even winning their division nor their conference.
Cool and Oklahoma State lost to Iowa State. You are crazy as hell if you think Iowa State would beat either LSU or Alabama.
And head to head does matter, if they have same number of losses. Penn State has two losses. Ohio State has one.
Are we gonna rank Pitt ahead of Clemson because they beat Clemson head to head? Why isn't Georgia Tech ranked ahead of us??? they beat us head to head and have only one more loss than we do.
What about Pitt beating Penn State head to head, why are the 25 when Penn State is top 10??
Since we are now excluding total resume when calculating head to head.
Oooh boy, I'll take it step further. What about Michigan? they beat PSU head to head by 39, why aren't they playing for the conference Championship game?
But Michigan has two conference losses and Penn State only has one, you will likely respond.
And you would have just counter argued in conference, exactly what I am arguing in the big picture in choosing Top 4 teams.
What? I thought the argument was that Conference Championship should be prereq #1 for the playoff, which pretty much is the definition of total resume being the first priority.
Ok, besides the complete condescending attitude of this reply, I think you're mischaracterizing what I mean head-to-head. Obviously teams with CLEAR disparity head-to-head means less, but when determining the minute difference between #4 and #5, division/conference titles and head-to-head should mean more than some ridiculously subjective "better" resume.
Why is it different? They have more losses, it's hurting other teams, why shouldn't a 39 point loss to Michigan and a loss to barely ranked Pitt not hurt Penn State, who hasn't looked dominant in any game against a decent team.
Head to head should, and would be the deciding factor if they were both 11-1.
Let's also look at this scenario that would backfire this logic, let's say Wisconsin beats Penn State, removing them from this argument entirely.
Do you put 11-2 Wisconin, conference champion, in over 11-1 Ohio State, who they lost to head to head?
okay ludicrous might have been a bit strong but I just don't think we'll see eye to eye on this man. We're placing importance on different things. So let's just agree to disagree. Either way let's beat Clemson
Definite agree on beating Clemson, it would be the ultimate catharsis.
I have no problem with allowing in teams that passed the eye test who didn't win their conference. HOWEVER the only way I would ever agree for this being implemented is if you had auto-bids for at the very least the winner of the conference of the team that passes said eye test. In reality, until we get to a situation where all conference champs in the Power 5 are included, we shouldn't be looking at 'Wild Card' situations. Conference championships have to mean something, and by allowing in Ohio St over Penn St, the Big Ten Championship is rendered worthless with an empty trophy.
Let's face it, we currently have a game of musical chairs for a playoff.
A more eloquent and less trolly way to say what I think.
It shouldn't be the be all end all decider though. What if we beat Clemson, does that mean we are more deserving than all the teams in front of us? Should we go to the playoff with three losses? That's why it shouldn't be so obsessed with winning the conference. It's not a meaningless trophy, there are 128 teams in CFB, and winning your conference is a big accomplishment. But to make it more important than winning all your games devalues the regular season. If we leave out an 11-1 team for a 9-3 conference champ, we are losing the aspect of college football that losses are devastating and that every game is maximum high stakes, i.e. devaluing the regular season, something that you have been staunchly against in this thread.
If they weren't able to win their conference, I would argue that yes, we are. Ranked Conference Champion with a win over the #3 in the final week of the year? Why the hell not?
Why the hell not? Conference Championship should mean something. If Clemson wants to be in over a 3 loss VT, then they better beat us this weekend. Likewise, if Ohio State wanted in, they shouldn't have gagged it against Penn St eliminating themselves from the conference title race. You don't rig the system after the fact because you don't like how it played out.
This isn't rigging the system, this is the system literally playing out exactly the way they said it would. The goal is to pick the 4 best teams, not the 4 best conference champions. You're arguing that "if you can't win your conference you shouldn't play for the title" which is literally a made-up declaration that was never a requirement.
EXACTLY
Just a friendly heads up, and I figured I would point it out, because this is one of a few of these comments I'm seeing on this thread from you....
I didn't downvote you, but this is petty and ironic given that you've been dropping F bombs all over this thread and you have commented in a very aggressive fashion many, many times as well.
Additionally, I've written out a great deal of content and backed up my arguments many times over the course of this thread. Any additional "noise" I've created with smaller comments is heavily outweighed by the many lengthy responses I've written.
Show me where cursing and aggressive commenting is against the Guidelines. I could possibly see an argument that cursing is NSFW (maybe?), but even then its a bit of a stretch.
It may not be against the guidelines, but your comment was petty. I've carefully detailed my thoughts throughout this thread, I don't think a few comments stating my agreement is such terrible noise.
I was singling out the specific types of comments that don't add anything to the thread that a turkey leg doesn't already accomplish.
Agree that, outside of those specific comments, your posts have been great on here. Hence the friendly heads up.
Fair enough, I certainly could have done without those comments, and this thread does have a lot of stuff going on so they make traversing the thread more difficult.
Ironic since you said I was trolling the thread having a perfectly rational conversation...
LOL!
Riiiight, the committee that 2 years ago stressed the importance of winning a conference championship to put Ohio State into the playoff over either TCU or Baylor and kept saying how important the conference title was even earlier this year is now completely playing down the importance of the conference championship to slot Ohio State, who didn't earn the right to even play for their conference title, over the likes of Penn St and Wisconsin, one of which will win the conference.
If that's not adjusting the system after the fact because you didn't like how it played out, then I don't know what is.
Stressing the conference championship has worked well once, and worked terribly another time. tOSU's inclusion in 2014 nailed it. They were clearly the best team in the country and played like it.
In 2015, they botched it horribly by overvaluing the conference champion and let Michigan State in, who got mollywhopped in the least competitive postseason game I think I've ever seen. They had a really bad loss that should have foreshadowed this. Very similar to how PSU played two elite teams and one of them beat them by 39... Also lost to an 8-4 Pitt team. Ohio State, who also has fewer losses, gives us a chance to avoid this situation again.
Gotta pump the brakes on this one.
Rankings prior to championship week:
1 Clemson (12-0)
2 Alabama (11-1)
3 Oklahoma (11-1)
4 Iowa (12-0)
5 Michigan State (11-1)
6 Ohio State (11-1)
7 Stanford (10-2)
From 7 downward, everyone had 2 losses, except for UNC and Houston.
The Big Ten championship game was Michigan State vs. Iowa. Upon completion of that game, both teams were 12-1, with Michigan state winning the head-to-head, in addition to the Big Ten championship.
Also, during championship week, Clemson beat UNC, and Stanford won the Pac-12. The final standings went like this:
1 Clemson (13-0)
2 Alabama (12-1)
3 Michigan State (12-1)
4 Oklahoma (11-1) *idle*
5 Iowa (12-1)
6 Stanford (11-2)
7 Ohio State (11-1) *idle*
From 8 down, everyone except Houston had at least 2 losses.
So, the question is, who would you have put in other than Michigan State? They had the head-to-head wins over both of the other 1 loss Big Ten teams. And their only loss was a 1 point loss to Nebraska. They literally checked all of the boxes for everyone here: Conference title, resume, eye test.
They most certainly did not pass the eye test.
not many teams pass the eye test against Bama...
Not on New Year's Eve, but they had the record and resume to justify including in the semis.
So, who would you have put in their place?
I'm actually really curious who he thinks was more deserving.
If you think we deserve a shot at a championship with regular season we've had, the regular season has lost all meaning.
ALSO EXACTLY
Conference Championships do mean something. They mean you won your conference. That's a big deal. The playoff isn't beholden to that and never has been. Their EXPLICIT mission is to get the 4 best teams. Sometimes that won't be a conference champion. Conference standings are all about how you play in your conference and your division. The national race is about how you play in EVERY game. It's not that confusing.
How can you be the best team in the nation if you can't even be the champion of your own conference (or in Ohio State's case, your own division)?
If only there was a predetermined formula, that ranks teams based on wins and losses with known advertised tiebreakers that would be able to represent how a team fared compared to its peers over the course of the season....
Apparently it is
Again completely ignoring OOC. There's no standings for OOC. That's what a full resume is. You can't ignore 30% of the season
You're right... its better to just ignore the 70% and especially those head to head matchups
No one is ignoring that.
Both are 8-1.
OSU has wins over # 5 and # 6 in the country plus a crushing win over a top 30 Nebraska. Their loss was a FG on the road.
PSU has wins over #2 and a top 30 Iowa. Their loss was a fucking ass beating.
PSU has the head to head at home.
In BIG10 play they are about even with PSU maybe having the slight edge for head to head, but OSU having better wins and less pathetic loss.
THEN add in OOC where OSU beat the hell out of a top 10 team and PSU lost and their resumes are clearly separated.
Both are 8-1 and Penn St beat Ohio St.
That's all I need to see. In Big Ten play this year, Penn St was better than Ohio St on the field of play, and as such deserves the right to represent the conference, should they win this weekend, in the national playoff. Ohio St had their chance, and blew it against PSU. Better luck next year.
Again ignoring OOC
The only bad thing about considering OOC is that almost ALL OOC games are planned years in advance and W/L records ebb and flow. A team that schedules a team that is good in 2016 might not be good in 2020. Teams schedule FCS teams, mostly in state, while others do not. There are so many factors to put into consideration but the one factor that will NEVER change is your conference games.
coughNotreDamecough
That's true. And Penn State even had a good OOC opponent. They just lost.
Does Florida go over Bama if they beat them in the SEC championship game?
I think the problem in this argument is that you have decided on a base criteria that others haven't agreed to. In your opinion, you should have to win the conference to make the playoffs. That's a perfectly valid opinion. However, that is not the system we have. The explicit goal in the system is to find the best teams. We can at least agree that that is the goal, correct? So you brought up two points that try to make your criteria match the actual criteria, basically prove that conference champions really are the best teams.
Because conference races only look at 25-33% of your schedule and place a huge amount of value on specific games. Right now, you are excluding OSU because they lost to Penn State, but not excluding Clemson for losing to Pitt or Washington for losing to USC. The only difference between these teams is the division of the team they lost to. Yet one is eliminated from talk of the "best" team (despite a spectacular resume) while the other two still count despite a relatively lacking resume. The committee (and bcs, and polls, and every system cfb has ever had) look at the entire resume, not just a portion of it.
There isn't. I think you are talking about conference rankings here, which, again, only looks at 25-33% of a team's schedule. You can't throw out non-conference games. A team needs to be judged over their entire resume, not just the conference part. If you can't agree on at least that then you're just being argumentative.
The only confusing part is a base assumption you're expecting others to go along with, despite not being the actual system we have.
You're killing it my friend, bravo.
All this arguing is making me thirsty. I think everyone involved needs a beer.
Now that I can agree with.
Hell I've just been reading this and I want a beer.
This is not 100% true. The playoff committee has every right to select OSU and Michigan over PSU/Wisc./Wash./whomever, because there are only a small, unweighted set of criteria agreed to:
"When circumstances at the margins indicate that teams are comparable, then the following criteria must
be considered:
Championships won
Strength of schedule
Head-to-head competition (if it occurred)
Comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory)"
Link
My biggest complaint is the fact that this whole "choosing the best 4 teams" is way too subjective and utilizes too much post-hoc analysis. I would much prefer a forward-thinking set of criteria that a team has to meet to make it to the playoffs (i.e. set of criteria that every team knows at the beginning of the season how to get in the playoff if met). If the CFP wanted at least some objective criteria, P5 conference champions makes the most sense.
Just look at how the NFL does it...a horrible team can win a horrible division and get a playoff berth...I think forcing teams to win their divisions to even have a hope at the playoff will enhance regular season play. That makes every single game extremely important, pre-season rankings (rankings in general) be dammed!
Once you do that, it renders rankings meaningless, which takes the determination of a national champion out of the hands of the AP and Coach voters, who barely pay enough attention up front to put out an even remotely well thought out ballot.
Ding Ding Ding
It would be like giving Fuente ACC coach of the year and Dabo national coach of the year. Most people would say that is odd. Why is it ok to do the same thing with allowing teams who don't win their conference to jump over teams that do?
No apparently if Alabama loses they don't deserve to be in because this game either validates or nullifies their entire season....
These aren't "wild-card" situations. They are all teams being judged. The conference championship is a way for teams to boost their resume, not an automatic qualifier. Nowhere, anywhere, does it say you have to be a conference champion.
Nowhere, anywhere does it say anything about what "better" means. I know that OSU will not be the champion of the Big Ten. Only subjectively can you say they are "better" than the champion. There's no rulebook, but objective beats subjective every damn time.
Classic engineer's dilemma. Objective measurements are only worthwhile if they are proven to accurately represent what you are trying to measure. The goal here is to measure overall quality, and wins in losses in only your conference do a poor job of that. The closest thing we have to an objective measure of quality are advanced stats, which uniformly have OSU and Michigan in the top 4, while PSU and Wisky hover around 10.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa
lol yeah I'm done here
by your logic Pitt would be coastal champion because they played a better schedule and have better wins. thats laughable and quite honestly, ridiculous.
What? No, absolutely not. Conferences have set guidelines for who wins what, and that's great in the context of the conference. The committee (and any rankings system, including the AP poll we've had sionce 1936) doesn't have to abide by those, they look at the overall picture. I'm literally describing a system that's been in existence for 80 years.
Now by my logic you could make an argument that Pitt should be ranked higher than us in a poll, and that wouldn't be absurd (not that I'd agree, but it's at least debateable). They have one more loss but two top 10 wins, while we won the head-to-head (barely) and only 3 losses, but lack a win over a top-notch opponent. The playoff poll even substantiates this by putting Pitt at 25 and us at 23
This is, overwhelmingly, the source of the many arguments on this thread. I agree with you on this, but the people we've been debating hold a very different view of the conferences and believe that they are more important than looking at the big picture. Either way, it doesn't seem like either side is budging, as this is now going on two days.
Yeah. Majority of ongoing arguments come down to a disagreement on some base assumption that neither side will budge on, I think everyone's made their case though. The only guarantee in college football is that someone's gonna be mad.
Your last sentence is more or less what I was getting at
Compare OSU and Penn State like opponents and see who performed better! That might change some ideas. Is OSU really playing that great at the moment? Other than waxing Nebraska and a REALLY piss poor Maryland they haven't scored more than 30 points in over a month and it took an OT game to do that. Is the B1G really that strong on defense?
I believe it was 24-21 Penn State.
I think the big difference is that Chris is arguing in terms of keeping th four team playoff. Either way a champion is getting left out even if all other four were champions.
Others are arguing that the playoff needs to be increased to 8 teams so all conference champions make it and you get 2 at large bids for something like OSU this year.
You know what I just realized? Washington and Colorado are in the PAC12 championship game. The seniors on those teams started at their respective schools 4-5 years ago. You know what happened in 2011 and 2012? Marijuana was legalized for recreational use in both states.
The first classes that went through those schools where the students could smoke are going to the championship game.
Boston College 2021!
yeah, and TOP matters
TOP feels a lot longer when you're on the devil's lettuce, too.
Just like the Seattle vs. Denver Super Bowl....
I must have slept through that one. Though I have a recollection of a dream that only one team showed up that day.
I have a question for everyone saying that PSU should get in over an OSU because they would be the conference champ (if they win on Saturday) and own the head-to-head.
What if Michigan beat anOSU last Saturday?
Because of the three-way tie in the B1G East division, anOSU would be playing Wisconsin in the B1G Championship, not PSU. If anOSU then won the conference championship, according to the logic posted by many in this thread (they won their conference and conference championships are so important to the selection committee) then no one should have a problem with them being included in the playoff (probably as the 4-seed since they would be the highest ranked 2-loss team). They won the conference, they should be in, right?
So how does this make sense? They beat Michigan. They won the game. But somehow an 11-1 anOSU is less deserving than a 10-2 anOSU, because the 10-2 version has a chance to play a team that they already beat for a conference championship. What?
The committee has shown that conference championships are to be taken into account in a tie-breaking scenario when comparing two teams with the same record. 11-1 is not the same as 10-2 or 11-2. So why are people using tie-breakers to break something that isn't a tie?
I feel like I am taking crazy pills. Chris and mogwai, keep fighting the good fight.
That's not the argument. First, it would be conference champion 11-2 anOSU. Secondly, if Michigan had won, they'd be in the championship game and rightfully deserving of the playoff spot should they have beat Wisc.
If Michigan would've won, they would've been in the championship game. Michigan would've been 8-1 with head-to-head over PSU also 8-1. OSU would've been 7-2. Not a 3-way tie as you explain.
Edit: AC beat me to it.
PSU got lucky. They won games when they had to. OSU didn't. It's that simple. Every game matters. You should have to win every game you play to get to the playoff. If other teams stumble and it helps you out, that's on them. Don't hate. Conference champions should be in the playoff. Winning your conference should be a prereq. Whether you do that with 10 wins or 12 shouldn't matter.
Rankings are subjective. Pre-season rankings are arbitrary. Both have a very strong influence on where teams end up at the end of the year. Because teams are overrated (Tenn, Ole Miss, aTm, LSU) to begin the year and teams who beat them get inflated as a result. Winning your conference legitimizes your seat at the table more than a fictitious ranking. If you're good enough to beat the teams you need to and they're bad enough to lose when you need them to you should have a shot to go up against the best teams in other leagues.
It doesn't say same record, it says comparable. What I consider comparable and what someone else considers comparable could be VERY different!!!
Man is this discussion tiresome.
The current playoff scenario devalues the conference championship. Either modify the playoff scenario or get rid of the conference championships altogether.
Regarding an alternative, I like what Chazz Michael Michaelzz said:
If Chazz came up with this by himself he should change his picture to this:
well, I don't think I get credit for inventing the CFP. That is definitely the honor of the Dr. Pepper guy.
And, my idea is not original for sure. Definitely bits and pieces of that from other sources.
guys I'm sorry but i think its kind of tough to criticize the committee for their opinions with conference championships when the games haven't even happened yet. Lets put away our pitchforcks until next tuesday and then we can vent and complain all we want. They nailed the first 2 years and frankly this is an odd year anyway, I'm curious to see how it all plays out but it could handle itself.
Ultimately its really difficult to say who the best 4 teams are because theres what 132 teams in the FBS now, and they're freaking college kids. A team will play vastly different from one week to the next, look no further than the hokies. Are we that much better than UNC? I love to think so but I like to think that if we play that game 10 times 9 of them will probably be really close games, likewise I dont think we're a worse team than syracuse. It happens. So yes there will be some judgement calls but for now I'm totally happy with the top 10 and here is why
1. Bama....tough to argue that even if the SEC is down, i mean damn they've looked good.
2. Ohio State: NOTE CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS HAVE NOT BEEN INTEGRATED INTO SYSTEM YET. OSU has 3 top 10 wins, and 1 top 10 loss a better resume than anyone else hands down, sure they have a close game against sparty but again they're college kids and everyone has an off week here and there
3. Clemson: Again tough to argue this, 13-1 with 3 top 25 wins on the schedule against Auburn, Louisville, and FSU
4. Washington: 1 loss team albeit weak SOS. If they beat colorado I think they deserve it
5. Michigan: no more chances to beef up their resume H2H win over wisconsin and Penn State, close loss to OSU ugggggly loss to iowa currently keeping them out. 3 good wins over wisconsin penn state and colorado. Loss to iowa is definitely keeping them out.
6. Wisconsin: Beat Penn state and they'll have a top 10 win coupled with a pretty brutal schedule midway through season. Two SUPER close losses to top 5 teams, one of which was at their opponents stadium. Although the win over LSU is not as pretty as michigans win over colorado (QB or not) and Michigan has H2H, i think they could jump with a championship win
7. Penn State: win over OSU vaulted them up here, looked pretty good down the stretch. big loss to michigan, and early loss to pitt have been overshadowed by 8 straight wins. One of the better 2 win teams in the country
8. Colorado: 10-2 season sure the pac 12 was kind of down this year but they hung right with Michigan this year until their QB went down and michigan is pretty darn good. Only other loss was to a resurgent USC team with a lot of talent that started a little slow. not to many 2 loss teams left on the list anyway and pac 12 > big 12 this year imo
9. Oklahoma: 2 early season losses to two pretty darn good teams in ohio state and houston, havent beaten anybody of note. We have no idea how good this team is and as such they're on the outside looking in and need a lot of help. Not winning your marquee games will do that. If you dont like it win a big game in conference and if those dont exist win a big game out of conference
10. Okie State: once more havent beaten ANYBODY of note, have a fair gripe about CMU game but it never should have been that close in the first place if they're a playoff team. Likewise that Baylor loss is UUUUUUUUUUUUUUGLY and is only looking worse as the season progresses
Ultimately I dont have to many gripes. Now if wisconsin or penn state win and stay below michigan, i might have a gripe. However I dont see to many issues right now, next week is when the hand wringing can begin when conference championships are included in rankings
To an extent I agree with your point. But...the issue is that the groundwork has already been laid this week.
Ohio State is #2, Michigan is #5. The two teams playing for the Big Ten championship are #6 and #7. If OSU and Michigan were both sitting outside of the top 4, then maybe the pitchforks could stay down.
Quick turnaround this week. We can start complaining as the early NFL games kick off on Sunday.
Why would Ohio State be ranked behind two loss teams? Michigan beat both of those teams as well, Penn State by 39.
Makes perfect sense.
Yes, we know. You've pointed that out so many times here that it might as well be your signature.
And my point wasn't specifically that OSU was ahead of the other teams. It was that there are two teams ranked ahead of the Big Ten champ teams and one of them is ranked high into the tournament, thereby making it more difficult to drop them out without a lot of pitchforks coming out.
Meanwhile, I know there's still a few of us waiting to see who you would have put in last year's playoff other than Michigan State.
Any team that didn't lose to a 4 win team during the season and didn't look like ass as they lucked their way to 11-1.
And I'll keep reminding everyone until you realize that silly division structures allowed for this nonsense to happen. PSU lost by 39 to Michigan, that does not scream "best team in the division" to anyone. Wisconsin lost to BOTH tOSU and Michigan, but because they aren't in their division will compete for the B1G championship while tOSU with fewer conference losses and a head to head win sits at home, and Michigan with equal conference losses and a head to head win also sits at home.
But PSU beat Iowa 41-14 on November 5th and Iowa lost to Wisconsin on October 22nd.
yes because picking 4 teams out of 128 based on how they were ranked early in the year and their record against 12 of the other 127 teams is a pretty good way to make sure the best teams get a shot at the championship.
You have to have conferences and divisions in order to have a system that actually objectively crowns a champion. Think of it as a necessary evil.
If tOSU KNEW that they HAD to win EVERY conference game if they WANTed to have a shot at the playoff they would have played better against PSU. End. Of. Story. The best teams will get there if you set the precedent that conference champions get a spot at the table. The conferences and the divisions are just an extension of the playoff. Instead of putting UM, OSU and PSU into the playoffs together, you tell them that they have to beat each other in order to earn a seat at the table. Then they'll treat each of those games as a playoff game of sorts. Because they have to win it to get there. If you went back to the week before the PSU game and told the OSU team that they had to beat PSU if they wanted a shot at the playoff they wouldn't have sleep walked through that game.
It's not a necessary evil though, there are no AQ and we shouldn't (and couldn't, because there are five P5 conferences) treat them that way. The rules of the conferences allow us to objectively crown a champion based on pre-determined criteria, but you can't expand those (varying) criteria onto the national championship picture that contains 128 (or 65 if we're being honest) teams. That's where resumes have to come into play and I think tOSU and Michigan being ranked higher makes sense based on the head to head matchups between the four teams and that tOSU is the only team with only one loss out of the bunch and has a resume with more top wins than the other three as well. The committee has said that they place "importance," which without any elaboration is window dressing to their subjective analysis, on conference championships and that it can be a tiebreaker between teams like tOSU and Michigan State last year. The difference is that both of those teams were 11-1. That tiebreaker becomes increasingly irrelevant when one team is 11-1 and the other is 10-2, with worse losses and fewer big wins. It may not make people who hate Ohio State happy (there are a lot of them in every fanbase), and in the same vein that you say "Ohio State knew they had to win every game" so did Penn State, and they failed to do that twice. They lost to Pitt and big to Michigan. Those two losses alone are probably good enough to keep them out of the top 4 in my opinion.
I don't think your opinion is stupid by any means, it's okay to value conference championships, but in the same way the National government doesn't have to subject itself to the laws of the states, the playoff committee (or BCS, etec) shouldn't have to play by the rules of the conferences, which are a sub-competition going on during the bigger picture of a football season.
Keep trying man. If people want to be blindly loyal to inherently unbalanced and arbitrarily created divisions to crown the "best two" teams in conference instead of using critical thinking that's all there is to say.
as opposed to inherently unbalanced and arbitrarily created rankings to crown the "best two" teams in the country?
practice what you preach man...at least there is a semblance of objectivity to making conference championships mean something in the playoff hunt
otherwise it's a damn popularity contest. The blue-blood elites are always going to get a spot at the table and the championships will be boring because the field of teams with a shot will be basically the same year in and year out. The championships will be way more fun for the fans in general if they're not always featuring the same 6 or 7 teams every single year.
Of course. That's why it requires critical thinking. As I just said.
it isn't critical thinking. It's making partially informed guesses based on predetermined arbitrary variables. I don't even understand the point of playing the football season at all. If you're going to "critical think" your way through the playoffs you might as well just "critical think" your way through the entire season. Every game should be decided on paper instead of on the field and we should just eliminate the games altogether. It'll be better for player safety anyway.
Well, if EA Sports hadn't dropped the NCAA game....
You're the one that wants to ignore results on the field by giving Penn State a pass for their extra loss and ignore that OSU has a top 10 OOC win on top. A resume comparison is more than head to head. So no we were not better than OSU in '14.
in my (8 team) scenario OSU would get in as an at large bid. It's going to be rare that a team like OSU doesn't win their own division but part of what makes college football exciting is that it can happen. I don't want to ignore the results on the field at all. In fact, I think the results on the field are much more important than these silly, arbitrary rankings. The rankings (determined by talking heads looking at recruiting and reputation) inflate the value of the wins that OSU has. Their resume is inflated by arbitrary rankings, not on field results. Penn State won games they had to. They got lucky with other teams losing games for them. That happens. Oh well. You can't fault Penn State for winning their division but that's precisely what you're proposing.
It's going to be very rare for any team to finish a season un-beaten. Most teams will lose at least a game along the way. That's why you need to look at the body of work. If you eliminate the rankings the only objective way to look at a team's body of work is to see if they won enough games against teams in their conference to earn a chance to play in a title game. PSU did. OSU didn't. Even if they have a slightly better record. They had to play the same teams and PSU's extra loss was OOC. Without rankings you could argue that the ACC is better than the Big 12 so PSU's loss might be better than OSU's win OOC. But to truly compare apples to apples you have to look at what PSU and OSU did in their race against the same teams. PSU beat OSU and that was enough to get them to the division championship game. Too bad for OSU. Better luck next year.
I think two losses, one of which to 8-4 Pitt and one of which is by 39 Michigan, disqualifies them from the NC race moreso than one loss to a top 10 team does. So when you say, "Too bad for OSU. Better luck next year," that's how I feel about PSU. PSU lost too many games, sorry, you don't deserve to be ranked above a one loss team.
Also, I think you are really stretching with that Pitt loss is better than an Oklahoma win hypothetical. To suggest that Pitt is better than Oklahoma, while possible, is a reach, and to suggest that losing to Pitt is somehow better than beating Oklahoma is completely out of the realm of understanding. Additionally, Ohio State has better wins. They have three top 10 wins, which, if we remove "the subjective, media influenced rankings" they have three wins over 10-2 teams. PSU has one win over 10+ win team, the next closest is a W over 9-3 Temple, who is a (solid) G5 team.
clearly we're set in our ways and this argument isn't convincing the other side of anything. I think we agree that you can't put everyone in the playoff. The mechanism for which we do put teams in is where we disagree. I think it's possible that multiple teams from one conference can be better than the rest of the teams in the country. But the conferences provide structure for us to separate teams to create the bracket of a playoff system. We're just not using it. We're trying to guess which teams are actually the best based on too small of a sample size to say for sure. Reputation, historical bias, media driven arbitrary rankings, etc. have a profound impact on a team's perceived strength.
To me, the whole point of the playoff is to crown a champion. The way I see it the champion isn't necessarily the best team (though it often will be) but rather the team that wins the games it has to in order to get to the playoff and win it. I think the conferences provide us with a natural structure to weed out teams that can't/don't win the games they need to in order to make a championship run. Sometimes the best teams in the country will play each other outside of the playoff. Those teams should have to win those games if they want to advance.
If you set the precedent that two teams can make the playoff without even playing for their own conference championship that opens the door for teams to sneak into the picture based on over-inflated resumes and higher-than-warranted rankings since they won games against inferior opponents. Those teams will always be good, but I doubt that they'll always be great.
Look no further than the 2007 championship match-up. Undefeated and #1 ranked OSU had an over-inflated resume due to the entire B1G conference being overrated by the media. They had "quality" wins over similarly over-inflated teams and they got absolutely blasted by 1 loss Florida.
If you go off of perception, resume, rankings, Florida had no business even beating OSU. But they hammered them to the tune of 41-14. Because the rankings never get it right. That's why it's important to take advantage of the natural structure the conferences allow to provide conference champions an opportunity to go up against each other in a playoff.
clearly we disagree. I'm ready to agree to disagree and terminate this debate if you are.
Honestly, I've been trying to leave this thread for three days, but I have so many comments on here, one of a few people keeps responding, or I just stumble upon something in the "recent comments" tab that draws me back in. I am well past thinking anyone is going to change their mind, but at this point, it's moreso just trying to make people a little more understanding when tOSU is inevitably placed in the playoff.
none of it's going to matter anyway..Bama's winning the whole damn thing
No. The words you're looking for are strength of schedule (Ohio state number 1, PSU number 14) and record (11-1 vs 10-2). That's objective. There is no opinion there. Computers can determine strength of schedule and math tells me 11>10.
Ah, but what is greater between 11-1 and 11-2 with the 11-2 team owning head to head. That has been my argument. If Wisconsin wins, I'd go Ohio state. If Penn State wins I take Penn State because of head to head.
So which team? Because the only other 1 loss teams that weren't already in the playoffs were the ones that lost to said team that "looked like ass".
Sounds like your problem is with how the BIG fourTEeN selects the two teams who will play in the conference championship game. That's on them though. That group of fourteen teams has established a method to determine which one of them is the best in the conference. Ohio State, Michigan, they're very influential. Maybe an 11-1 Ohio State getting passed over for the playoff in favor of an 11-2 PSU B1G Champion would inspire some rule changes about overall record counting toward conference championship game participation, or perhaps a computer ranking or AP poll rank or something, that would let the "better" Ohio State get to play for the B1G title instead of PSU.
Ultimately having an AQ for the conference champion has the effect of letting results on the field among common opponents count for the most. E.G. Win your division = prove on the field that you're best team in that small group = advance. Win your conference = advance. Win your semi = advance. Win title game = NCAA Champion
Sure you might have a situation like the BIGEAST (hah) where some of the best teams are all in the same division. It's still self selecting. The best (of the best) will be the ones who win the division. If they don't win the conference championship it's a sign the division members where actually maybe a little overrated.
In either case, earning your berth on the field by beating common opponents is the way to go.
Under the system now, a Conference Championship can be completely irrelevant. But when a team plays less than 10% of potential foes during the course of a season, there is too much subjectivity and 'winning on paper'. Variable criteria that change year to year and team to team. To avoid that kind of uncertainty and give the teams a clear picture of what they have to do to advance to play for a national title, you have to make head to head results on the field count as much as possible. Because that paper/computer analysis doesn't really take into consideration things like matchups and the near-infinite jigsaw of strengths and weaknesses each team possesses.
For on-field results to be sole arbiter of who wins, you have to start drilling down this group of 120+ to smaller groups (hmm.. conferences? divisions?) , where teams can play a common pool of opponents to determine the best team in that small group, then a system for those winning teams to face off and prove themselves against each other (conference championship games, playoff games).
Equating this to the World Cup, they don't do a 6 game mini-season in a group of 64 and create a bunch of formula based rankings or opinion polls to decide who plays in the WC semifinals. They have small-group round-robin 'seasons' then the teams who earn it on the field in that round advance to the playoff structure where they continue to earn their spot in the next round by winning the game on the field.
Does a system where Conference Championships are the gateway to the NCAAF Playoffs devalue out-of-conference play? Absolutely. But I would rather OOC be devalued than conference championships like the current system.
But don't fret. A Conference Title system would still result in compelling OOC games for other reasons beyond boosting SoS. Fan Service games (home & home series against good opponents to draw attendance), Strongest steel from Hottest fire games (playing tough warm-ups to get ready for conference opponents) type games will serve to produce just as many compelling OOC games as we see now. Toss the carrot of a couple wild-card spots in the playoff and schools like OSU will still seek tough OOC competition to ensure they look good if they lose out on their conference title.
The great thing about the flexibility in the current 4-team selection process is that the committee can pick participants just about any way they choose to value success and perceive "best". That means they can choose to value a B1G Championship more than some OOC wins, and that's what many of the folks arguing with you are advocating.
Some others are simply advocating for a better system that reduces subjectivity be implemented to replace the current system, e.g. adding another round to the NCAAF playoff so there's room to accommodate conference champions and the wild cards.
p.s. who would you have picked over MSU to make the playoff last year?
you're smart. I like you.
but you cant hold it against them until theyve made a point to ignore it. ohio state and michigan are both totally deserving of their rankings. due to an interesting fluky scenario penn state and wisconsin are in the big 10 championship, just like tech is in over fsu and louisville. just the way it broke this year. should wisconsin or penn state win and washington loses i firmly believe wisconsin or penn state jump michigan, as we saw with baylor tcu a few years back. its all hypothetical until then so save your anger for next week
I just assumed it was a competition to see who could make the skinniest comment.
TIL that you can still easily find the DV button even when Alum07 posts a reply that's one character wide...
Wow this thread really went south. All I know is, I'm happy to see us ranked again, I'm disappointed that we aren't ranked higher, and most importantly I want to kick some Clemson ass tomorrow night.
Go Hokies!