deanx0 said:
Yeah, I misspoke here - I meant to say that FSU had a pretty crappy resume (even with that good non-conference schedule) for an undefeated team, not a crappy schedule.
8 Teams is too much. A defense of the 4 team playoff
- Thread starter TomRicardo
- Start date
Yeah, I misspoke here - I meant to say that FSU had a pretty crappy resume (even with that good non-conference schedule) for an undefeated team, not a crappy schedule.
BigSoxFan said:
End of the season if you had to vote for National Champion pre bowl both TCU and Baylor would not receive one vote. Three teams received votes as number 1 in the AP: FSU, Alabama, and Oregon. TCU received one vote in the Coaches' poll from Oklahoma St's coach which was ... special.
People are conflating playoff recognition with national title recognition. In the end of the season only three teams received multiple votes as number 1 team for the regular season.
Edit - As I believe it the playoff system as currently built is to avoid situations like 2008, 2010, and 2011 were multiple teams after National Championship game could still have a claim on the Championship. This year would have been one of those years since no matter which two teams you choose, the third could have complained they should have had a title chance. It is not to give everyone a chance (the wussification of America everyone deserves a trophy!). TCU is not a national champion. They did not have the regular season to say so. Could not careless they missed their chance. I am also not staying up at night wondering how could a Ohio State TCU game would have been. I most likely wouldn't have watched it. Quarterfinals are less interesting than conference championship games in my mind.
TomRicardo said:
This is where your argument falls to the ground. Every single game matters until you lose one - and then they hardly matter at all. Having eight teams seems like the sweet spot for generating the most truly meaningful games between excellent teams without watering everything down.
ConigliarosPotential said:
Yes because when you lose one teams just fold under and call it a season. Did you see how Oregon and Alabama just gave up!
I am against giving teams like Ohio St, Alabama, and Notre Dame mulligans. Opps didn't show up last week. No worry you will voted into the top 8! Everyone gets a trophy! Hooray!
Edit - Am I the only person who watches college football in order to see teams play spoiler? You do realize if you go to an 8 team playoff the whole concept of a spoiler gets seriously diluted. The difference between 4 teams and 8 teams is that there have been many seasons where some team got ranked 3rd after a perfect season and got screwed out of chance. There has never been a seventh or eighth rank team after the regular season that should be national champion after the bowl games. Not once.
Not one of the winners of the six major conferences (I'm including the MW) had more than one conference loss, and OSU and FSU had none. Where are your 6-, 5-, or even 4-loss teams coming from? Would a playoff this season of Alabama, Boise, FSU, OSU, BU, and Oregon, with TCU and one of Michigan St./Miss. St./whomever receiving at-large bids through some sort of process been so awful? The winners of those conferences plus THU lost a combined 6 conference games and 7 overall prior to the bowls. Your scenario doesn't come close to reflecting the actual state of the situation, and there still justifiably exists controversy regarding the fairness of the criteria used to select the playoff teams (just ask TCU).WayBackVazquez said:
As we know, the FBS is a collection of a few elite schools and numerous "shitty" schools, the latter of which are performing against a stacked deck. The resources of the schools are not equal. The best schools get the best talent, and that's a system that won't change. Take non-players out of the equation. Let the players decide on the field in a head-to-head competition. I don't believe I'd feel as strongly about this as I do were it not the model for almost every other competitive team sport. I'm not inventing anything new here, like a convoluted algorithm that includes rankings and opinions of what computers and people THINK would have happened. That would be awful for fair competition.
The current system is entertaining, but it doesn't go far enough to ensure those included were selected using a fair, preordained process. Make it large enough, eliminate non-participant human error (opinion).
Tim Rocardi is spot on in this thread. We are literally seeing the slippery slope argument come alive. The point of moving to a playoff was to eliminate any doubts about the best team in college football in a given year, not to have an end of season tournament (MBB). In year one people are bitching about teams 5 & 6 and clamoring to go to an 8 team playoff. If that happened, people would bitch about 9 & 10.
4 teams is all you need to determine the best team in college football. Could there be a year where a two-loss pre-season darling or one-loss fluff schedule team could win an end of season football tournament? Sure. But that's not the point of the thing, as I understand (and enjoy) it.
4 teams is all you need to determine the best team in college football. Could there be a year where a two-loss pre-season darling or one-loss fluff schedule team could win an end of season football tournament? Sure. But that's not the point of the thing, as I understand (and enjoy) it.
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BigSoxFan said:
Well, let's be fair, lots of his comments make absolutely no sense:
TomRicardo said:
TCU and Baylor had legitimate gripes about being left out of the opportunity to contend for that championship. TCU then absolutely destroyed Ole Miss in their bowl, 42-3. You still think they wouldn't have beaten, say, FSU?
TomRicardo said:
TCU demolished Ole Miss, and Baylor would have beaten Michigan St soundly but for a last-minute comeback; they ended up losing by one point. #11 Kansas State lost a similarly close bowl game to UCLA. The Big 12 was top-heavy, and had no other ranked teams besides those three, but at various points in the year, Oklahoma was #4 (before TCU beat them), OK ST was #15 (likewise), WVU was ranked late into the season, etc. This statement is either dumb, biased, or both.
TomRicardo said:
I don't see any way that a 6- or 8-team playoff would make the regular season not matter. There are 128 FBS teams; currently 4 (3%) of them make the playoffs. Doubling that would not materially change that ratio. Whereas, the NBA or NHL playoffs have over half the teams make the playoffs, which lends a farcical air to regular season contests - "just get in, and stay healthy" is all teams care about. Individual losses matter less to them if the bigger trend is a winning one - they'll still put their best foot forward for the title. CFB can't and won't ever be like that, because there are too many teams, and too few games between them, to have teams' relative position sorted out by the regular season.
If you're any kind of college football fan, you're going to watch a (hypothetical) game between conference powerhouses like Alabama-Mich St. Every win and loss still matters, because there's still very few playoff spots available, and any given loss can easily knock an otherwise good team out of contention.
If Mariota gets hurt in a playoff game, that's shit luck for the Ducks, but their opponent would in that case probably be a serious contender for the national title. The same is true in a QF as it is in a SF. I don't see how this is an argument in any way. "Sometimes shit happens! Therefore, smaller playoff." You left out collecting underpants.
TomRicardo said:
The bolded is precisely the argument for expansion. This year, there were 6 teams who could make a credible case that they deserved a shot at the national title. Ergo, we ought to include more than 4 teams.
In 2013, there was FSU, and a 12-1 Auburn team that looked great, but you also had one-loss teams in Alabama, Mich St who had just beaten previously-undefeated Ohio State, Baylor, and that Ohio State team who had previously run the table. You also had four 1-loss teams from other conferences, including a UCF team that beat Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl, and a Louisville team that destroyed Miami. It was a mess.
In 2012, you had undefeated Notre Dame, who nobody believed in, and then five one-loss teams to pick from: Alabama (beaten by #9 Johnny Football), Florida (beaten by #7 Georgia), Oregon (beaten by #6 Stanford in a weird, low-scoring, OT game), Kansas State (beat 4 ranked teams, but an embarrassing loss to Baylor), and then Northern Illinois. Maybe in a 4-team playoff you keep ALA, FLA and ORE and toss KSST and NIU, but they all had decent arguments.
In 2011, the one-loss contenders to face undefeated LSU included 11-1 Alabama (whose only loss was to LSU, but who got a rematch because SEC!), OK ST (a 2-OT loss to an unranked Iowa St, but won their conference and beat 4 ranked teams), Stanford's Fightin' Lucks (lost to #5 Oregon, who themselves had 2 losses but won the Pac-12), and Boise St (a 1-point loss to TCU), not to mention 12-1 Houston. Maybe you leave out Boise State, but frankly Oregon and Arkansas (lost @Alabama and @LSU) had decent arguments too.
In 2010, undefeated TCU got screwed, and there were 5 good teams from P5 conferences with 1 loss.
In 2009, there were 5 undefeated teams (!), but one-loss Florida was probably better than several of them. The championship that year was decided by conference favoritism.
There's basically never a year where there are two clear-and-obvious favorites to play for the national title, which is why they went to 4 teams. But the problem is, there are frequently good arguments for more than 4 teams. Some years it's 5, some years it's 6, it's rarely more than that. Going back through the entire history of the BCS, it's never been more than 8, so I don't think you'd find any support for expanding beyond 8. But to expand beyond 4 teams, to at least 6 (and probably 8), is the only way to ensure that every team who has an argument that they ought to be up for the national title is given a shot at it.
The goal isn't to give some teams who have no credible argument some sort of consolation prize, i.e. "here you go, thanks for coming, you get a participants' ribbon and get to be blown out by Alabama". It's to put everyone together who didn't have a chance to prove their relative worth on the field, and let them sort it out. There are too many FBS teams and conferences, and too few games in a season, to get a real handle on which teams might really be the best. You can't do that, fairly and completely, with only 4 teams. 4 is way better than 2, don't get me wrong. But 6 or 8 would be optimal.
Or you could have a juggernaut like the 2014 Horned Frogs, a school that was ranked in the top four until the last moment, that obliterated its SEC opponent and former #1 team in its bowl game. The slippery slope is continuing to rationalize the lack of reasonable fairness in the playoff bowl system selection process. The emperor's toga is still sliding up too high for comfort. Still too arbitrary and capricious.Drocca said:
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MentalDisabldLst
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You know what, while I'm at it, let me offer another compromise that I think would accomplish the same goals:
Instead of the committee picking only 4 teams, tell them that their job is to pick all legitimate contenders for the national title, and they may pick no fewer than 4 and no more than 8. If they don't pick exactly 4 or exactly 8, then the top teams get byes. Those teams not receiving byes have quarterfinals played at the higher seed's home field (or at some bowl, I don't really care). Some years they'll pick 4, others 6, others maybe 8. But their job isn't to give 8 teams a reward, it's to pick the teams that have a champion's resume, and to give them a shot. They're trying to draw the line so that nobody can say "well, if you include X, then you have to include Y" - you can draw the line to either include both or exclude both if they have very comparable resumes.
Now, some might counter that the inevitable pressure on the committee ($$$) would lead them to pretty much always pick 8 teams. But if this were done right, you'd have some serious drama in the selection process, the regular season would have just as much meaning because nobody knew how many slots were available, and no pretenders would make it into the playoff. It'll never happen, of course, but that's the kind of aesthetic we're going for, right?
Instead of the committee picking only 4 teams, tell them that their job is to pick all legitimate contenders for the national title, and they may pick no fewer than 4 and no more than 8. If they don't pick exactly 4 or exactly 8, then the top teams get byes. Those teams not receiving byes have quarterfinals played at the higher seed's home field (or at some bowl, I don't really care). Some years they'll pick 4, others 6, others maybe 8. But their job isn't to give 8 teams a reward, it's to pick the teams that have a champion's resume, and to give them a shot. They're trying to draw the line so that nobody can say "well, if you include X, then you have to include Y" - you can draw the line to either include both or exclude both if they have very comparable resumes.
Now, some might counter that the inevitable pressure on the committee ($$$) would lead them to pretty much always pick 8 teams. But if this were done right, you'd have some serious drama in the selection process, the regular season would have just as much meaning because nobody knew how many slots were available, and no pretenders would make it into the playoff. It'll never happen, of course, but that's the kind of aesthetic we're going for, right?
Fred in Lynn said:
Because it didn't happen this year, it never will happen? Seriously, that's your argument?
In 2012, 7-4 Wisconsin got into and won the BTCG. If, instead of playing OOC games against FCS Northern Iowa (which they beat at home by 5 points), Utah State, and UTEP, they had played good teams, they could have lost two or three more and still been in the playoff. In 2011, a 9-3 Seminole team (with wins over Troy and FCS Wofford and blowout losses to mediocre GT and NC St teams) got into and won the ACC title game. And I don;t think we even need to discuss all the putrid Big East teams (then a "power" conference) that would be in your playoff.
MentalDisabldLst said:
Is there anything you can't conflate?
That is an unmitigated disaster. Like how in your right mind do you think that will come out cleanly? Seriously were you part of the Obamacare web roll out?
You literal took a slippery slope and just exposed it every conceivable problem in one swoop meanwhile not at all making progress towards the other side. It is actually incredible you manage to find a solution that pisses off all parties involved. You seriously should run for Congress.
Why would you do this? Like are you just trolling the whole thread? You can't possibly conceive this as a possible solution.
Fred in Lynn said:
TCU was not a national champion claimant after the regular season. It then went to a bowl and beat the No. 3 team from its conference (A three loss team). I still don't think they have a legitimate claim especially with Baylor losing to Michigan St. Ohio St beat Alabama. They are more legitimate.
TCU put themselves in the hole they were in. They played 3 OOC games. One was Minnesota which is decent. One was SMU which is essentially I-AA program and Samford.
You can't do that in the Big 12. There is no championship game and if Texas and Oklahoma end up unimpressive you need to keep your plate clean. Putting up Basketball scores against teams your conference hurts more than it helps. Big 12 was horrific this season. You can't go 6-11 against the other power conferences.
Edit - At the end of the day how can you ever take a team that gave up 61 pts in a game seriously for the National Title.
Seriously, you are going to keep bringing up Wisconsin, a team that didn't win their division and only got in because two superior teams were ineligible? They didn't deserve to be in that game, they got in on two technicalities. They are the only 7-win team and only unranked team to win a power-5 CCG in 55 title games. In any other year that would have been 12-0 Ohio State.WayBackVazquez said:
And I'm not sure which Florida St team you are talking about because they haven't played Troy and Wofford in the same season going back as far as 2002. Certainly wasn't 2011, Clemson won the ACC that year.
Infield Infidel said:
I meant the winner of the 2011 ACCCG, Clemson. The guys that lost 70-33 to a 3-loss Big East team in the Orange Bowl.
WayBackVazquez said:
And #21 Louisville team beat a #3 11-1 Florida in the 2013 Sugar Bowl. Does that mean Florida wasn't worthy? They were in the top 8. Does that mean Louisville was worthy? They weren't in the top 8? #12 GT beat #7 Miss St this season; Did Miss St not belong? No one knows who the best four or eight or whatever number are. It's all educated guesses. So as long as it's guesswork, there will be teams that are and aren't getting in based on the opinion of whoever's talking. The mitigation of subjectivity is more than enough to outweigh a team getting in that people think shouldn't belong. So I'm fine with a team like that Clemson team getting in because it also means a team like that Louisville team would get in.
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TomRicardo said:
You're invited to respond to my detailed post, instead of just my seat-of-the-pants idea.
But for the record: I would consider my proposal to be better than the current system (more inclusive of more teams with a legitimate claim to the national title), accounting for one of your valid objections (the possibility of a team who has no such claim getting into the 8-team playoff as filler - now gone!), and arguably better than an 8-team playoff (because it means higher seeding can mean something dramatic - the possibility of a bye that reduces the teams you have to beat to become champion).
I'd still vote for a straight-up 6- or 8-team playoff, because it's politically simpler and allows more advance planning for the bowls and such. But if you're going to make this out to be a stupid idea, you're going to have to do better than just calling it stupid five different ways. You don't get more right by repeating yourself.
You're just repeating circular arguments. You want to eliminate subjectivity by eliminating subjectivity. Because less subjectivity is better. I disagree. If that 2012 Wisconsin team or the 2011 Clemson team had entered an 8 or 16-team playoff and won the whole ball of wax, that doesn't prove your point to me, don't you see? It just means they won a tournament, and rendered the regular season mostly meaningless. I don't prefer that.
Look, you would prefer to crown a champion based on a tournament (and by essentially extending that tournament to conference championship games). Because, (kind of) objectivity. I would prefer to crown a champion based on a team's performance throughout the year. Because, tradition, integrity of regular season and rivalries, and because extended playoffs are an evil not so necessary here. Can't we just agree to disagree?
Look, you would prefer to crown a champion based on a tournament (and by essentially extending that tournament to conference championship games). Because, (kind of) objectivity. I would prefer to crown a champion based on a team's performance throughout the year. Because, tradition, integrity of regular season and rivalries, and because extended playoffs are an evil not so necessary here. Can't we just agree to disagree?
Yeah, you want to make sure all the teams we know are good are in, which, if you take the top 8, you'll certainly have the top 4, beyond that, who knows. I would prefer that teams we don't know about, like the Louisville team, get a chance. Frankly, it's not happening for at least a few years, maybe even 12, we can argue more about it then 
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MentalDisabldLst
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TomRicardo said:
You realize that the decision about who should go into a playoff is done with the information available at the time, right? And not with the after-the-fact results of Bowl games? I mean, in retrospect, Notre Dame never should have played for the national title despite being undefeated, right? But nobody was arguing they didn't deserve a shot at it.
The fact that TCU pounded a top-10 team, from the hallowed SEC West no less, into paste, is as suggestive of their quality as Ohio State's victory. But given the info we had available at the time - and argued over for pages - there were plenty of reasonable arguments for why TCU deserved a shot at the title. TCU's coin-flip, "who has the ball last?" 3-point loss, AT the eventual #5 team, is about the best loss you could ever have. As several posters said, they considered that an effective tie, given HFA. Compare that to Alabama's loss to Ole Miss, or Oregon's loss (at home!) to a then-unranked Arizona. Or Ohio State's loss at home to West Virginia. If you want to argue that, having watched the games and the teams' strengths, Alabama and Oregon were noticeably better teams than TCU, I won't take issue. But there were plenty of good reasons TCU could give for being #3... like, you know, being ranked #3.
There are some good arguments you make, but this one is totally illogical. If you can't concede that, at the time of selection, TCU has as much of a playoff-deserving resume as Baylor or tOSU, you're not really arguing in good faith.
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WayBackVazquez said:
I think you're responding to Infield Infidel, not me, but just for the record: I certainly wouldn't be the one to insist that, if the playoffs were to expand to 6 or 8 teams, that P5 conference winners automatically be entitled to a berth. Adding such a rule might be necessary in order for the conferences to agree to the system, but I don't think it would necessarily enhance the search for the best team in the country. I'd want the teams who had a credible claim to being the best team in the country to be the ones who get that shot. Frequently, the winners of the big conferences would be in the mix, but you'd also want to include the odd mid-major champion because they don't get the chance to play in the SEC or Pac12, so you don't really know how good they are until you give them a shot. And if you've got a team ranked below some conference rival, who might have beaten that rival if the game were on neutral turf (see: Alabama & LSU 2011), there might be occasions where they deserved a shot at that rematch.
Picking participants in that tournament based on the totality of their season's performance is, I agree, the fairest way to choose the candidates for champion. But since everybody can't play everybody, you can't really know whose seasons were the most impressive unless you expand the number of claimants who are given a chance to prove it on the field of play.
MentalDisabldLst said:
Not really. They lost 61-58. WHO THE HELL GIVES UP 60+ points in a real college football game? They won a conference that basically avoiding playing anyone out of conference and when they did they loss. The whole thing looked awful. When your marquis wins were Minnesota at home (the fourth best team from Ohio St's conference) and Kansas St. at home. Their best road win was a squeaker against West Virginia in the one time they left Texas all year.
Ohio St was the right decision before the bowls and continues to be the right decision after the bowls. Even there we are talking about the place filler for a fourth team so there is two games. Neither team had a season that would have got them a National Championship under the old systems.
The other thing about TCU is even if they won that awful game against Baylor they still would have been the 4th seed going in. FSU still had a better resume.
MentalDisabldLst said:
For what it's worth, I'd thought of this solution the other day myself - it would be my ideal solution if I trusted the committee to implement it correctly and always pick the right number of teams, but I don't, and it would surely confuse too many people to be workable.
By the by, it probably goes without saying, but college football has thrived throughout its entire existence on its lack of clarity - discussions like this are the oxygen to feed its fire. I almost feel the game will lose some of its spark as soon as we figure out a poll/committee/playoff system that pleases everyone; what would anyone have left to argue about?
I never got the argument that "every game matters." I mean, yeah, if you're playing in a major conference then your games matter (until you lose a game or two then none of them matter anymore), but for the vast majority of college football players that don't play in a major conference, they will never play in a game that matters no matter how well they do. Going to an 8 team playoff would do wonders for teams like TCU or even Boise State to play in games that matter all year long.
TomRicardo said:
Oregon gave up 41 points to Cal (5-7).
Ohio State gave up 35 points in a 14-point home loss to VaTech (7-6).
All mighty Alabama gave up 44 points to Auburn.
Florida State gave up 41 points to N.C. State.
If you want to continue to judge TCU -- which ranked 8th nationally in scoring defense at 19.0 per game, near 6th-ranked Alabama (18.4), despite that 61-point game against Baylor -- based on one game, go right ahead. Don't let facts get in the way of a good argument. And for full disclosure, Ohio State was 26th (22.1), Oregon was 27th (22.3), and Florida State was 49th (25.6).
Oh, and hey, TCU did leave Texas on at least one other occasion -- that 42-3 beatdown of Ole Miss in an SEC venue, the Georgia Dome.
EDITED for a misspelling.
TomRicardo said:
Sea Dog already addressed part of this post, but I'd like to point out that you mocking TCU beating Minnesota is a bit ironic, considering that Ohio State's victory over Minnesota was one of the big points in their favor - the other, obviously, was the complete dismemberment of Wisconsin in the title game. Also, as MDL pointed out, TCU might not have what one would call a signature win, but their loss was light years better than Baylor's and tOSU's.
Another thing that gets lost about the Baylor-TCU game is that the end of the 4th quarter contained two plays in which there was pass interference. TCU didn't get the call, so they were forced to punt. On the ensuing drive, Baylor did get the call on 4th down that set them up with very favorable field position, which allowed them to get the winning score with very little time left in the game.
I thought TCU deserved the shot at the playoff far more than Baylor did. I always saw Baylor as a flawed team whose sole talent was outscoring its opponents, whereas TCU was a far more complete team with a great defense and an offense that could score 60 points when it needed to. I do not doubt for a second that a TCU-Baylor rematch on a neutral field for a conference championship would have ended in a TCU victory. Maybe that's enough for TCU to get in. Maybe not. We'll never know.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not one of those fans who gets out the pom-poms for the conference, come bowl season. I have to plug my nose to say nice things about Big 12 teams other than Texas, so it hurts me to my very core to say that TCU was a legitimate contender.
Bosoxen said:
The Minnesota game was at Minnesota for Ohio St. It is far more impressive winning late in the season in Minnesota then beating them at home early in the season. That said I would say that third biggest win in the season. They beat two very good teams in Wisconsin and Michigan St.
The Minnesota win for TCU was probably their second biggest win. Oklahoma and West Virginia were not as impressive as Minnesota this season.
So Ohio States third most impressive win was more impressive than TCU's second. Sure Ohio St lost to a worse opponent but they didn't give up 61 points.
TomRicardo said:
On the road, to the highest-scoring offense in the country. Baylor scored more than 60 points three times and only scored less than 40 three times. That same Baylor team just put up 41 points on a neutral field against the 12th-ranked scoring defense in the country (a ranking which is likely sunk after surrendering the said 41 points). Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the opposition, particularly when they score 24 in the 4th quarter, but that in no way was indicative of TCU's quality. Despite giving up that 61 points, they averaged allowing only 20.3 points per game (good for 16th overall). Gripe all you want about the strength of their schedule - and I will not disagree - but they ended their season by holding the #9 team in the country to three points.
At any rate, they should have only given up 58 points and beaten Baylor. They had a 4th and 3 at the Baylor 45 with just over a minute left in the game. The receiver on the pass from Boykin was interfered with, but there was no flag. I had the sequence confused and said earlier that they punted after that. They instead turned the ball over on downs as a result. Five plays later, Baylor faced a 3rd and 10 from TCU's 43. The same, exact amount of contact occurred as just seconds before, but only this time was a flag thrown, giving Baylor 1st and 10 from the 28 with, I believe, around 30-35 seconds left in the game. Four plays later, Baylor kicked the winning chip shot field goal.
There was a lot of talk yesterday about how Detroit lost to Dallas because of the no-call on the pass interference, but this one didn't occur with eight minutes left in the game. This occurred at the very end of the game, giving TCU a very legitimate gripe, though nary a peep was heard from the national media.
TomRicardo said:
So had Ohio State won 64-61, in your mind that would actually be a worse outcome than outright losing by two touchdowns at home to a 6-6 team. Got it.
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And he's bending over backwards to try and say that TCU wasn't a legitimate contender, so he doesn't have to admit that there were more than 4 this year. Suppose we forget the 2014 season. What about 2009, when there were FIVE undefeated teams? Just toss out Boise St because they're not in the club? What about 2011, 2012 and 2013, which I covered in post #66? You either have to twist logic well past its breaking point, or concede that some years, there are more than 4 legitimate claimants to the throne.
That's the reason to expand the playoffs. Not because "playoffs are fun", or whatever WBV is strawmanning the argument down to.
That's the reason to expand the playoffs. Not because "playoffs are fun", or whatever WBV is strawmanning the argument down to.
Sea Dog said:
No because they would have won. Losing when giving up 61 points (21 in the last 8 minutes) looks bad.
Virginia Tech was a bizarre team this year. They looked great some weeks and simply awful other weeks.
Baylor was a better loss than VT however if TCU loses in less of a train wreck game say 27-24, I think they have a better case for the playoff.
MentalDisabldLst said:
Excuse me, asshole, but if you'd actually bother to read my posts, you'd see I've never even opposed expanding to eight teams. I'm opposed to automatic inclusion of the winner of a conference championship game.
MentalDisabldLst said:
TCU wasn't a national championship contender. I don't need to bend backwards to do that. The only person who thought TCU deserved a National Title was OSU coach.
When has there has been 5 legitimate claimants to the throne? Please name the last season that was true?
The only time I have ever seen this true was 1973 but Oklahoma would not have been allowed to play in the playoffs (postseason ban).
edit - I think the point Goof Troop is missing is neither Ohio St or TCU had a real claim to the National Title after the regular season. Neither would have sniffed it in any other season. But because we have a 4 team playoff now you need a fourth team. Ohio St was a little better than TCU and filled in the fourth spot. We already have had to get a filler for a fourth spot in one of the most flat seasons in college football history. Going to 8 teams is just going to add more pretenders who get a puncher's chance at a Cinderella story. But that isn't the National Championship in College Football. College Football is the closest thing we have in America to the regular season trumps all.
TomRicardo said:
I don't know if it's considered bending over backwards that you keep getting hung up on giving up 61 points to Baylor, but you've now twice ignored the point I made about TCU being within a breath of winning that game and finishing undefeated. To say nothing of the fact that a one-loss TCU was still a much better contender than Florida State, who made it in by sheer virtue of their week-in and week-out Houdini act against mediocre competition - and Winston inexplicably not being suspended for shoving a ref.
Your edit, by the way, sounds an awful lot like you'd prefer the BCS model. That failed miserably because it was wrought with subjectivity and the fans were fed up with the championship not being settled on the field. Whether the field is four teams or eight is irrelevant to the fact that it's still a massively better arrangement than the old SEC champ vs the runner-up setup. Maybe some years we have a Cinderella, but as a fan of college football, I'd much rather watch that than another Alabama-LSU type snoozefest that only happened because SEC and Nick Saban!
TomRicardo said:
If you're going to continually cite that TCU got that one first-place vote in the coaches poll, then for full disclosure, it should be noted that Ohio State didn't get a single first-place vote. And you've gone on the record as saying you have no trouble with the Buckeyes being in the playoff, so you're going two different directions here.
TomRicardo said:
Did some fact-checking and found this Big 12 non-conference stat to be inaccurate. According to ESPN on Dec. 1, the Big 12 was actually 4-6 against the other power conferences, which included 3-0 against the Big Ten. Even lowly Iowa State, which went 0-9 in conference play, notched a road win against a bowl team in Iowa. The Pac-12 dominated at 8-3, then came the ACC (10-7), then the SEC (5-6) and Big 12 (4-6) about even. Big Ten lagged way behind at 6-11, which is what you cited the Big 12 as being.
That same ESPN link, for what it's worth, used its own math to determine the Big 12 the strongest conference this season, just a hair above the SEC.
M
MentalDisabldLst
Guest
WayBackVazquez said:
I had this (sarcasm- and condescension-laden) post of yours in mind when typing that:
WayBackVazquez said:
The reason we disagree is because you seemingly think tournaments are some sort of farce where undeserving cinderellas prance merrily to a title they didn't earn. Playoffs for the sake of playoffs aren't what anyone (except perhaps DotB, who has decent arguments for it) are looking for. You seem to think that playoffs in and of themselves make a mockery of a regular season. While in the extreme, that's true (e.g. NHL, NBA), we're so far away from that in college football that it seems to be a very faint fear indeed.
If you're going to send me expletive-laden tirades in PMs because you're furious that, I guess, someone dared contest your point of view, it would be helpful if you were at least sure that the person you're going all potty-mouth to has in fact mistaken you for someone else, or your position for something you don't believe.
MentalDisabldLst said:
I PMed you because I'd rather not clog up this thread with what a dumbass piece of shit I think you are, though I was 99% certain you'd be unable to keep it there. As to the "reason we disagree," as I explained in that PM, for the most part, we don't. The quote you're citing (which was directed to Infield Infidel) doesn't at all stand for what you say it does. It says what it says, which is automatic inclusion of a CCG winner does not advance the ball with respect to identifying who the best team in a given year is. There are no strawman arguments contained therein. II stated that he favors a larger tournament because it lessens subjectivity. I view playoffs as a sometimes-necessary evil that should be limited to the extent necessary (if only to satisfy the frothing masses) to identify all teams with a colorable claim to having been the best team over the course of a season. Automatic inclusion of a CCG winner is not even close to the least intrusive or most effective means of realizing that goal.
Bosoxen said:
Wow.
That is such incredibly laughable statement I am not even sure where to start with it. I mean Florida St had a tougher scheduler than TCU. Secondly they won. If TCU wins all their games they are in the playoff albeit the fourth seed but they are in. If you win all your games in a power conference, you get a shot. If you don't, you left your fate up to the gods who can tear about your schedule.
Also I never said I prefer the BCS you just inferred that because ... well possibly brain damage ... I am not sure. Why would I prefer a system that many times didn't solve the issue of who was national champion? My argument against 8 team is there has never been a case there were 5 teams with legitimate claims at the national championship (that could play in the postseason)
Sea Dog I counted bowl games were the Big 12 were equally as dismal. The ESPN rankings are just adding the AP votes cast for all the teams in the conference then dividing it by the teams in conference. It is an idiotic ranking system which would be biased towards a conference with fewer teams. FPI makes a bit more sense it has the Big 12 3rd with the worst out of conference record and strength of schedule in the power conferences.
TomRicardo said:
Am I supposed to be impressed by them eeking out wins against a seven-win team and two six-win teams? I wasn't talking about the totality of their schedule. It was a reference to their "gauntlet" of Miami, Boston College and Florida, in which they won by a combined total of 12 points. Here's the thing, I'm far more willing to let go of a single game hiccup on the road against the highest-scoring team in the country than a three-game stretch where a supposed top team is constantly flirting with disaster. That kind of shit might have floated in the BCS era, where your record was really the only thing that mattered, but in an era where giving up 61 points in a single game is supposedly enough to knock you out of contender status, it's a giant red flag.
Hypothetically, if TCU had beaten Baylor, which they have a rightful claim that they should have, who do you bump from the four teams that eventually ended up in the playoff? Personally, I would bump Florida State. That's not hindsight talking. I always viewed them as the weakest of the four.
I never said that you do favor a BCS. I was only stating that what you said sounded like you do. When you use words like "filler" to describe the team that eventually ended up in the title game, it makes your whole argument sound iffy.
Nice touch with the personal attack, by the way. Always enjoy our talks.
Bosoxen said:
You know I rather being drinking with you at a bar.
I would easily bump Ohio St for TCU if TCU wins. Like I said Ohio St was filler this year. The more I think about it, the more I think FSU win thing would come up if TCU won. I think FSU's schedule was harder but I could see someone making the argument TCU didn't flirt with disaster week in and out and give them the three seed. I think both FSU and TCU would have liked the 4 seed (Oregon was a better team than Alabama and both FSU and TCU matched up better against Alabama).
TomRicardo said:
Definitely. Oregon is a buzz saw right now.
Honestly, though, I think TCU would match up pretty well with them. They have the defense to possibly slow them down and the offense to keep up with them scoring-wise. They could play a knock down, drag out defensive battle just as well as a shootout. That's why I would have really liked to see them have a shot in the playoff.
I'll see if I can make the drinking together thing happen. Wife and I have discussed the possibility of throwing caution to the wind and heading to the bash this year.
TomRicardo said:
So at best, you admit to using disingenuous information, because you cannot use wins and losses from bowl games to determine the four playoff entries. That information is not available at the time. You can't cite a conference bowl record as a reason for leaving a team out when they've already been left out. It's moot at that point.
Sea Dog said:
Yea. big 12 was bad this year but weren't as exposed until the bowls.
I think TCU was a good team but they had trouble against the run at times (Baylor ran about 100 yards on them in 4th Quarter). I think that could have gotten them into trouble with Alabama.
As was amply demonstrated in the game against anOSU, 'Bama would have ignored the run regardless of how well it was working.TomRicardo said:
Mr. Wednesday said:
Eh Alabama didn't really give up on running. They tried to start drives off passing when Ohio st loaded the box to free up the pass. However Sims was so horrible they fell into a hole where they were forced to pass.
TomRicardo said:
If the Big 12 was bad, as you say, what does that say about the Big Ten going 0-3 in head-to-head games against that conference? Iowa State, which went 0-9 in the Big 12, won at Iowa, which went bowling. Doesn't speak well for the Buckeyes' inclusion over TCU or Baylor, especially with the Big Ten going 6-11 against Power 5 conferences in the regular season.
Sea Dog said:
Big 10 was better but not great.
Ohio St was the better team. We know it even more now. I am not sure what you are getting at. I don't think TCU beats Alabama.
I don't think TCU's season merited National Championship consideration. I don't think Ohio St. did either but in order to have the playoffs you need four teams. I agree with the committee if you are going to fill out a fourth spot it should be Ohio St. Nothing I have seen after the fact has dissuaded me from thinking the committee was wrong. The more you argue the less I would want to to have 8 team playoff because the the less I think either Ohio St or TCU deserved a chance and could not even imagine if Baylor or Michigan St got a chance. I think Ohio St was just a beneficiary of the system people wanted. It works with the tie into the Bowl games but really it is a system that resolves 30% of the time when you have 3 claimants to the throne. Otherwise you are given second chances to teams that normally wouldn't deserve to be in the conversation.
Lets just look at how we got to where we were (mostly because of the Rose Bowl)
1902 - First Bowl Game - East vs West Game coordinated by the Tournament of Roses where Michigan mercilessly beats up on Stanford
1916-1920s - Second Bowl Game - East vs West starts becoming a yearly ordeal changes name to Rose Bowl
1930s - Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and Sugar Bowl are created
1940s - Conferences start making deals with bowls to have their champion play in it
1947 - PCC and Big 10 make deal with Rose Bowl
1954- The Rose Bowl's "no repeat teams" causes its first split championship season when UCLA and Ohio St can't play each other in the Rose Bowl
1957 - Second split caused because Auburn was on probation (would not have been allowed to win today)
1965 - Disaster as No. 1, No. 2, no. 3 lost their bowl games. Split between Michigan St and Alabama as a result. Murky year all around
1970 - Disaster again as No. 1 and No. 2 lose their bowl games. Split title
1973 - Coach's use to vote before bowl Notre Dame wins 1 vs 2 Sugar Bowl gets AP title. Coach's Poll held after bowl's following this game
1974 - Probation (Oklahoma) again causes split title
1978 - Alabama wins 1 vs 2 match up but coaches decide they like USC better
1984 - BYU wins a mid major making everyone flip out
1990 - "Fifth Down Game" Split
1991 - Rose Bowl blocks Washington from facing Miami in a 1 vs 2 game
1992 - Bowl Coalition formed to prevent bowls from blocking 1 vs 2 game. Rose Bowl declines to join.
1994 - Rose Bowl once again cockblocks 1 vs 2 game.
1997 - Rose Bowl once again cockblocks 1 vs 2 game. Split title again.
1998 - BCS comes into existence Rose Bowl relents.
2003 - AP votes for USC pissed over computer rankings, Split Title! First major BCS controversy with three claimants to the throne two spots
2004 - BCS changes system
2008 - Utah left out of 1 vs 2 game then whoops on Alabama. Begins movement to inclusion for mid majors
2010 - Undefeated TCU left out once again three claimants to the throne. Congress looks into BCS
2011 - Probably the BCS season that would have most benefited from a playoff Alabama gets second try against LSU and wins the title.
2012 - BCS announces playoff
There we are.
BCS was created to stop the Rose Bowl (the original Bowl Game) from screwing up the No. 1 vs No 2 game. Then the BCS had 4 years where they had trouble identifying the top teams including two that screwed mid majors which got Congress involved. Now we have a playoff.
1902 - First Bowl Game - East vs West Game coordinated by the Tournament of Roses where Michigan mercilessly beats up on Stanford
1916-1920s - Second Bowl Game - East vs West starts becoming a yearly ordeal changes name to Rose Bowl
1930s - Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and Sugar Bowl are created
1940s - Conferences start making deals with bowls to have their champion play in it
1947 - PCC and Big 10 make deal with Rose Bowl
1954- The Rose Bowl's "no repeat teams" causes its first split championship season when UCLA and Ohio St can't play each other in the Rose Bowl
1957 - Second split caused because Auburn was on probation (would not have been allowed to win today)
1965 - Disaster as No. 1, No. 2, no. 3 lost their bowl games. Split between Michigan St and Alabama as a result. Murky year all around
1970 - Disaster again as No. 1 and No. 2 lose their bowl games. Split title
1973 - Coach's use to vote before bowl Notre Dame wins 1 vs 2 Sugar Bowl gets AP title. Coach's Poll held after bowl's following this game
1974 - Probation (Oklahoma) again causes split title
1978 - Alabama wins 1 vs 2 match up but coaches decide they like USC better
1984 - BYU wins a mid major making everyone flip out
1990 - "Fifth Down Game" Split
1991 - Rose Bowl blocks Washington from facing Miami in a 1 vs 2 game
1992 - Bowl Coalition formed to prevent bowls from blocking 1 vs 2 game. Rose Bowl declines to join.
1994 - Rose Bowl once again cockblocks 1 vs 2 game.
1997 - Rose Bowl once again cockblocks 1 vs 2 game. Split title again.
1998 - BCS comes into existence Rose Bowl relents.
2003 - AP votes for USC pissed over computer rankings, Split Title! First major BCS controversy with three claimants to the throne two spots
2004 - BCS changes system
2008 - Utah left out of 1 vs 2 game then whoops on Alabama. Begins movement to inclusion for mid majors
2010 - Undefeated TCU left out once again three claimants to the throne. Congress looks into BCS
2011 - Probably the BCS season that would have most benefited from a playoff Alabama gets second try against LSU and wins the title.
2012 - BCS announces playoff
There we are.
BCS was created to stop the Rose Bowl (the original Bowl Game) from screwing up the No. 1 vs No 2 game. Then the BCS had 4 years where they had trouble identifying the top teams including two that screwed mid majors which got Congress involved. Now we have a playoff.
You just put all of those years out there, and yet, you still skipped 2009, when FIVE teams went undefeated. If you can't agree that those 5 teams deserved a shot to play for the National Championship that year, you aren't arguing from an intellectually honest place.
Frankly, this whole conversation about teams "deserving" to play for the championship smells like shit to me anyway. Who the fuck are we, or anyone else, to judge who "deserves" to play for a national championship? That's what makes sports great. You decide those things on the field, not on a fucking computer or with hanging chads. Obviously, in college football with so many teams, it's impossible not to have a system where at some point, there does need to be a vote or equation or whatever to decide who gets into the playoff because that part of it can't be decided on the field with so many teams and so few games, but I'm at least willing to admit that as someone who probably watches and follows college football more than 99.9999999% of the planet, I could never be so confident in my abilities as to think that I could choose the 2 or even 4 teams that "deserve" a shot. It's absurd. I'll happily settle for 8 teams, because as others have said, I think generally, you are going to guarantee that the actual best team in the country will fall in that group (unless you start doing automatic bids for conference champs, something I agree with WBV on) and if that's the best we can get, it is what it is. But to believe that you or anyone else can figure out who the 2 or 4 teams that deserve a shot are, based on a 12 game regular season with 128 possible choices, is just sheer arrogance, IMO.
This belief that some team can just get hot and win a tournament and thus, the best team in the country may not win the national championship is just fucking asinine. Go take away the Patriots first Super Bowl rings if you feel that way. Just give 3-4 more World Series trophies to the Yankees because clearly, they had the best teams in the 2000's. Fuck that shit. If UConn goes on a run and wins 6 games and takes home the title like they did last year. THEY ARE THE BEST TEAM IN THE COUNTRY and deserve to be called national champs, and not only does that sit well with me, it's absolutely perfect, IMO. Championships should be decided on the field, on the court, on the rink or in the arena. Period. College football is the only sport where that isn't the case, and it still isn't. And that's too bad, because as the FCS shows, it can be done, and pretty damn easily.
Frankly, this whole conversation about teams "deserving" to play for the championship smells like shit to me anyway. Who the fuck are we, or anyone else, to judge who "deserves" to play for a national championship? That's what makes sports great. You decide those things on the field, not on a fucking computer or with hanging chads. Obviously, in college football with so many teams, it's impossible not to have a system where at some point, there does need to be a vote or equation or whatever to decide who gets into the playoff because that part of it can't be decided on the field with so many teams and so few games, but I'm at least willing to admit that as someone who probably watches and follows college football more than 99.9999999% of the planet, I could never be so confident in my abilities as to think that I could choose the 2 or even 4 teams that "deserve" a shot. It's absurd. I'll happily settle for 8 teams, because as others have said, I think generally, you are going to guarantee that the actual best team in the country will fall in that group (unless you start doing automatic bids for conference champs, something I agree with WBV on) and if that's the best we can get, it is what it is. But to believe that you or anyone else can figure out who the 2 or 4 teams that deserve a shot are, based on a 12 game regular season with 128 possible choices, is just sheer arrogance, IMO.
This belief that some team can just get hot and win a tournament and thus, the best team in the country may not win the national championship is just fucking asinine. Go take away the Patriots first Super Bowl rings if you feel that way. Just give 3-4 more World Series trophies to the Yankees because clearly, they had the best teams in the 2000's. Fuck that shit. If UConn goes on a run and wins 6 games and takes home the title like they did last year. THEY ARE THE BEST TEAM IN THE COUNTRY and deserve to be called national champs, and not only does that sit well with me, it's absolutely perfect, IMO. Championships should be decided on the field, on the court, on the rink or in the arena. Period. College football is the only sport where that isn't the case, and it still isn't. And that's too bad, because as the FCS shows, it can be done, and pretty damn easily.
One other element of this thread which doesn't sit right with me is how we're judging each team's nonconference schedule. First of all, nearly all nonconference games are played very early in the season, before teams have fully developed and figured out who they are; the polls have always indirectly taken this into account, giving teams who lose early a chance of making up lost ground in a way that teams who lose late in the season cannot, but a cold analysis of competing resumes at the end of the season may forget about this. This also means it's actually difficult to tell whether most of these nonconference games mean what we think they mean at the time: for example, if you look at FSU's win over Notre Dame, at the time Notre Dame was #5 in the country and appeared to be a strong playoff contender. At the end of the season, do you choose to remember that FSU won what appeared to be the game of the season at the time, or do you instead look at Notre Dame's five-loss record at the end of the season and treat this as an unimpressive win against a middling opponent? I don't think there's automatically one right answer to that question.
Additionally, we often seem to assume that each team is fully responsible for the strength of its nonconference schedule. Ultimately your CV is only as good as the teams you beat, but there seems an undercurrent of moralism here which suggests teams should be punished or rewarded for choosing to play a tough or easy schedule, even though many of these matchups are scheduled years in advance and there's no way of knowing whether the games you schedule will be easy or hard. I mean, to take one example, Notre Dame and Michigan State have scheduled a two-game series against one another for 2026 and 2027: who can possibly say how easy or hard a matchup that will be for either team right now? When FSU scheduled Oklahoma State and Ohio State scheduled Virginia Tech as nonconference opponents in 2014 however many years ago, I bet they looked like tougher challenges then than they seem now in hindsight (notwithstanding the fact that VT actually beat OSU). On the other hand, how easy is it for a team like TCU - even with the best will in the world - to schedule tougher nonconference opponents than Minnesota and SMU? Who actually brokers the key nonconference matchups which are arranged ahead of a given season? (Hint: certain TV empires might possibly wield some influence here...)
My overall point is that there's so much noise and inherent unevenness (and often unfairness) to the process of scheduling a team's opponents and then evaluating its performance against them, it seems much safer to cast a wider net and risk including undeserving teams in an eight-team playoff than it is to risk excluding deserving teams from a four-team playoff. In basketball, teams have a much larger sample size of 30-35 games to establish their credentials before the committee picks and seeds them for March Madness; in football, you get 12-13 games, and that simply isn't enough to be certain about anything.
Additionally, we often seem to assume that each team is fully responsible for the strength of its nonconference schedule. Ultimately your CV is only as good as the teams you beat, but there seems an undercurrent of moralism here which suggests teams should be punished or rewarded for choosing to play a tough or easy schedule, even though many of these matchups are scheduled years in advance and there's no way of knowing whether the games you schedule will be easy or hard. I mean, to take one example, Notre Dame and Michigan State have scheduled a two-game series against one another for 2026 and 2027: who can possibly say how easy or hard a matchup that will be for either team right now? When FSU scheduled Oklahoma State and Ohio State scheduled Virginia Tech as nonconference opponents in 2014 however many years ago, I bet they looked like tougher challenges then than they seem now in hindsight (notwithstanding the fact that VT actually beat OSU). On the other hand, how easy is it for a team like TCU - even with the best will in the world - to schedule tougher nonconference opponents than Minnesota and SMU? Who actually brokers the key nonconference matchups which are arranged ahead of a given season? (Hint: certain TV empires might possibly wield some influence here...)
My overall point is that there's so much noise and inherent unevenness (and often unfairness) to the process of scheduling a team's opponents and then evaluating its performance against them, it seems much safer to cast a wider net and risk including undeserving teams in an eight-team playoff than it is to risk excluding deserving teams from a four-team playoff. In basketball, teams have a much larger sample size of 30-35 games to establish their credentials before the committee picks and seeds them for March Madness; in football, you get 12-13 games, and that simply isn't enough to be certain about anything.
And even then, basketball errs on the side of being overly inclusive, with 64 teams, despite having that much larger sample size. People seem to like the tournament anyway. And the tournament still uses a one-and-done format that often results in the "better" team losing, and the "best" team in the country being somebody like last year's UConn team that was almost certainly not the "best" team in the country. I don't hear a lot of complaints about that.ConigliarosPotential said: