Stu.... consider this a retraction. I forgot PennSt lost to Pittsburgh early on. With two losses and not one the only way they get in is if they are ahead of another two loss champion. They will not jump a one loss Clemson, Washington or even a one loss Ohio State. So if that scenario happens I have to agree Ohio State is in.... but I was sold on their chances the last time when they won it all.... and not so much this time around.
Conference championships became much less important than getting into the tourney in NCAA basketball years ago. Football is going the same way.
Sid - I appreciate it. I read no disrespect into any of your posts and appreciate your input to the conversation. It would be quite boring if everyone had the same opinion! kp - LMAO That is perfect.
I think as long as we hold onto anything resembling that old daytime TV drama show known as the BCS, we will have deep flaws in the system. There's no need for a 4 team model, other than greed under the guise of being afraid to swim. Wait till they dip that toe in the water and then kick their ass in the pool. An 8 team playoff goes a long way to solving this. We have, I believe, 10 conferences plus independents, for 8 spots. Call it autobids for the 5 highest ranked conference champions and then 3 wild card spots. Putting Ohio State in over a (if they win out) 1 loss Washington or a 2 loss team that beat them and won their conference is just one helluva sticky mess. Arguing Ohio State over Old Dominion is a lot less sticky. Not due to the name brand, but because of what they've done this year. I think most reasonable people agree that the 8 team format is the destination. Every day spent not using that format is a waste of time.
When ever the CFP guys are interviewed, they are solid and 100% against the 8 team playoff. There are contracts in place and no support for it from anybody who has any power to change things. When the contract runs out it can be revisited, but if you are thinking that it'll change before the contracts run out, it's not happening.
So consider this.... by opening up the field to 4 more teams you begin to get those that may be playing hot at season's end.... may just be fortunate in the injury dept. etc. and their season long body of work would not have garnered them an invite to the CFB playoffs. The one thing that makes CFB unique over all sports is that every regular season game has a great amount of importance with regard to the national scene and title result. Why don't we just invite any team with 4 or less losses and see who has the hot hand at the end..... maybe not the best team... but certainly the hot hand.
In 1985 the NCAA basketball tourney field expanded to 64 teams. Since then 8 of the 11 losingest champions in NCAA BB history were crowned champion and two of the other 3 came along after some moderate expansion of the field in 1981 and '83. 11: Kansas (1988) 10: North Carolina State (1983), Villanova (1985) 9: Indiana (1981), Arizona (1997), Connecticut (2011) 7: Marquette (1977), Louisville (1986), Michigan (1989), Duke (1991), Michigan State (2000) What's the point of playing more CFB playoff games when you run the risk of diluting the pedigree of the eventual champion? CFB is a rough sport... witness the 8 starters gone from Florida's starting lineup in Atlanta. The more games that are played the more chance you have attrition and a diluted champion. I like the regular season to carry a heavy weight in every single game. It makes watching CFB that much more fun.
Gators will be down 8 starters in the SECCG? Is this season long attrition or are we talking 8 starters who started the last 2 games? If they are recent losses then 22 points is not enough vs Alabama.
I would say the majority have gone down in the last few games. Many were missing for the LSU game. The line is up to 24 and still doesn't seem like enough to me. Our defense plays well for as long as it can then gets gassed when the offense continually sputters or turns the ball over.... which it will do all game vs. Bama. Seriously.... 41-3 is not out of the question. I hate that we may lay such an egg and not entertain the masses with a more competitive game but reality is reality.
One of the things I never liked about the BCS system was that for the top bowls the conference champions were automatic picks no matter what the record. While most seasons the conference champion was usually the best team in the conference but not always. It does make sense of course that if you have a conference you need a conference champion, but once they split into divisions and had a champ game between the two divisions then you sometimes didn't have the 2 best teams in the game.
T, at what point do you draw the line, though, as to which was the better team after one team beats the other? One of the things I absolutely hated about the BCS, and to a lesser degree, the 4-team CFP, is that some teams just have a bigger margin of error before it becomes evident that they aren't as great a team as everyone thought they were. For instance, I was having discussions with people that thought Ole Miss was still a top ten team after their third loss, at 3-3 (that week they dropped from #12 to #23)! It wasn't until their fourth loss at 3-4 that they were finally booted from the rankings, with huge wins over Wofford, UGA, and Memphis. It was "obvious" that they had all-world talent but just hand't put it together yet. Compared to the Cougs, who had to win six games in a row after their early losses to EWU and BSU to squeak into the top 25 at 6-2. And after eight wins in a row, they had climbed all the way to #22 at 8-2. In their 8 game win streak, they beat (bad) Idaho, (bad) Oregon, Stanford, UCLA, ASU, OrSU, (bad) UA and Cal. It was "obvious" that the Cougs had no talent and those six wins in a row were lucky. There is obviously never going to be a perfectly equitable way to needle out the subjectively four best teams (period) at the same time as reward on-the-field results. I would ask, though, if a team gets hot at the end of the year and wins their conference championship, why is that less worthy than a team that was hot at the beginning of the year but fell off? It used to be if you lost late it was anathema to your championship chances. This was both because the games got bigger at the end as teams jockeyed for position and that teams are supposed to improve as the year goes on, not regress. So, late losses had more impact than early losses. It seems that a lot of discussion is around changing that view.
MCG, I hear what you are saying, but truthfully Alabama is not unbeatable. Our offense sputters at times. Our freshman qb is a very good runner but he is not a great passer and he is prone to turnovers. Our defense is very good. Fournette and Pettway were held to well under 100 yds so I don't think Florida will be able to run the ball but if they can capitalize on turnovers with TD's they have a good shot, especially with their defense being so good.
Well basically what you are asking for is a NFL type of playoff. A team does have to win their division to get into it and then they throw in the wild cards. So pretty much all good teams can have a shot, and if they get hot at the end they can go all the way. It's happened a number of times where a wild card has won the Super Bowl. During the NFC's dominance of the Super Bowl a lot of people felt like the 2 best teams usually played in the NFC Championship game and that to be fair the playoffs should be seeded without respect to conference alignment so that the best teams even if they are all in one conference get rewarded for being the best in the regular season. Of course it never happened that way. But the NCAA Final Four is sort of the ideal. It's broad enough and they seed it without regard to conference championship or post season conference tournament winners and off we go. Regular season doesn't mean as much but still means something with regard to getting a better seed and having in theory at least an easier route to the Final Four. So if we go with the 16 team playoff then that eliminates to some degree the whole PSU beat OSU and won the B1G championship, both get in and some other teams do as well...at that point a hot team at the end could have lost games early gotten hot and finished strong, like USC and still be in the playoffs not having won it's division or conference. I'd be for that. But in the current mode I say upsets happen and if you look at the body of work nobody could say PSU is the better team.
KP, Bama does do some of those bad things you mention but they more than make up for it with extraordinary play in all phases of the game. Uf's present Qbs cannot see downfield. We have receivers like Callaway getting open but Appleby gets so short sighted he either takes a sack or throws short over the middle and he does this religiously. To compound the problem he is zero threat to run so a team like Bama will just line up and fire off after him.... forcing those errors. So... with no offense I expect the defense to come out... play hard and hit hard until a couple more go down to injury and exhaustion and dejection with the offense set in whereupon Saban will show no mercy and beat the hell out of us. It's going to be fun for you..... brutally ugly for me.
And that's sometimes where I vacillate, and why I acknowledged that there is really no perfect balance between recognizing the team that appears to be the best based on subjective analysis, and rewarding the team that has "earned it" by winning the games that mattered. On one hand, I hate to leave out OSU because it absolutely does appear that they are a very good team, and were admittedly one of the four best teams in the country most weekends this year, and quite possibly if they made the CFP. (It took OT to beat a very good Wisc team, they lost to PSU by 3, were not impressive against NW or MSU.) On the other, I hate to leave out the winner of PSU/Wisc because they did what was necessary to win a very good, tough conference. On that day, when it mattered, PSU beat OSU, and that was the one game that mattered in the end. (PSU was not impressive against Pitt, Temple,UM, or a good Minn team, but they were pretty darn good the last seven games of the year.) Another hypothetical is that if OSU made it through the B10E unscathed by beating PSU then lost to Wisc in the B10CG, should OSU still go into the CFP over Wisc? It's a horrible decision to have to make, leaving out either Wisc or OSU in that case, and there's no good, equitable answer. Which is why I always end up with the conclusion that this system is SUPPOSED to create controversy and is NOT intended to determine one undisputed champion. I don't want 16 teams. At that point, I think it's a bridge too far. I want 8. At that point, all five P5 champions get in. You then have the three at-large to reward the OSU, or Alabama if they lose their CCG, and possibly a highly-ranked G5 team like WMU who, at this point, has absolutely no path to the CFP. 16 teams would do exactly as you say, open up too many slots that the regular season really starts meaning a lot less than it does today.
kp - I agree with you that Alabama, as good as they are, is beatable. Unfortunately (for everyone except Bama) is that the margin of error for their opponents is so slim that 1) the opposite team has to be a good team, 2) that team needs to play an almost perfect game, AND 3) Bama needs to make a lot of mistakes. Now, we've seen all three of those happen this year individually. Most recently, we saw Bama do #3 against Auburn. We saw #1 happen in the first half against A&M and most of the game against LSU. We saw #2 against LSU. The closest was probably against an over-achieving Ole Miss team. But, without all three taking place for 60 minutes, there's almost no chance. And, as soon as one of those three pillars gets put back in place, you see that team just destroy their opponent, as in the second half against A&M and Auburn. That is the mark of a very good team. Very good teams aren't unbeatable, but they make it so hard that it doesn't seem likely.
That's a spot on analysis of Bama WSU. Their good moments are good enough to beat the hell out of you and more than overcome their bad moments. Great teams can sometimes be surprised and struggle. This is the SEC Championship..... ain't no surprise happening here. Bama will be ready.
They once said the same thing about the old bowl model and especially the BCS. When you're arguing over spots 6 through 8, you're still talking about conference champions and teams who had an overall body of work worthy of post-season play. It's a bit of a pain in the butt to do it now because there are still games left to be played, but if you look at this year's season. For argument's sake, I'll just assume the results of this weekend's games just to give us some finality. You'd have 5 automatic bids: 1. Alabama 2. Clemson 3. Washington 4. Wisconsin 5. Oklahoma That leaves 3 spots for everyone else to scrap for. You'd have your Ohio State teams who would still easily be qualified for the playoffs. You'd also have (finally) an argument to be made for teams from the Mountain West, AAC, CUSA, Sun Belt, MAC and the Independents. You'd still have some interesting arguments going on for spots 7 and 8, but it's a lot more clear still when you're talking about taking an 11 win South Florida or 11 win Boise State. The lineup is still formidable and you are placing an emphasis on two things: 1. Conference championships 2. Playing competitive schedules in order to have a quality body of work. (we'll call this the Buckeye Standard). You'd eliminate the discrimination that has long plagued this division and you'd have a more true champion with very little effort. There's logistics of moving these operations, but after the first round, we're right back to where we are with 4 as it is except these 4 truly earned their spot on the field of play. Hell, I wouldn't even care if the first round is on campus events. Those ADs love on campus events.
Kesley, I, like Corey and others want 8 teams also. I actually want WMU, and Boise St. to have a chance. I think it would ultimately end the argument about their strength of schedule issues.