DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum College Football II

You can't use this logic. No only is it dumb, but where a team stands in the rankings has been used by every conference for years.

I mean, if we're going to do that, why isn't anyone talking about how Alabama's best win came against a team that lost to Troy?

Teams have been getting away with riding the coattails of their preseason rankings for years. Teams end up higher in the rankings because they started off the season high, despite not living up to expecation.

Alabama is a wonderful example of that this year. Started off at 1 and rode it all the way until they finally ran into a good team, stayed high in the rankings, and are now enjoying the fruits of this.

Look, I can't defend Ohio State and that loss to Iowa. I do think that there should be more focus on the entire package, than 1 game, but that loss is horrible, and indefensible.

But it is funny how Alabama getting in is more on that Iowa loss than anything that Alabama, you know, did in their season.

I have more of a problem with Alabama getting in, than I do Ohio State being left out.

They set a precedent that could have ramifications down the line, why schedule anyone, especially if you're in the upper tier of college football? If you're Ohio State going into next year, loaded with talent, and Haskins (who is bursting at the seams with potential) why even play anyone out of your conference? Why not just ride you preaseason ranking as far as you can?

That's what I am more upset about today. A team literally got into this playoff without beating anyone really good, and without winning their conference, but because of the nature of their preaseason ranking, get a chance to play for a title. That just smells wrong.

I totally get that if not them, then who else? But stop focusing on that, there are 100+ teams in college football, and one got into a 4-team playoff with no good wins. None. Don't talk to me about LSU.

With all of that said, I don't think they should expand, and I am seeing quite a bit of talk of that.

If this season had an 8 team playoff instead of the current 4-team setup, Oklahoma, Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and possibly Wisconsin could have rested guys in the last 2 weeks. Do we really want that?

The Ohio State/Michigan game, the Iron Bowl, those games are complete trash this year, do we want that?

Oh well. For Buckeye fans, next year is looking really promising. I'm still going to watch the playoff because the matchups are good.

But, you better believe this conversation is coming up in the next few years when you have a situation like you have now, like you had in 2015 with Ohio State getting left out, when they were clearly one of the best teams in the land with a fluke loss on a last second field goal, and in the future, when there is a 2-loss SEC team that is up against a team from another conference with 1-loss and a weaker schedule. Oh is that going to be brought up, and fans aren't going to like it.

I am just saying.....OSU got a pass in last year and crapped the bed with a 30 point loss. to Clemson.



Add in a 30 point loss to IOWA this year, and you really expected to get in this year?

At least last year's Ohio State team actually, you know, beat some good teams.

I'd like to see them go to a 6 team format, take the top team from each of the 5 big conferences and one at large team and give the top 2 teams a bye the first week.

U guys lost to a very very TROY LIKE team!!!!

...

Bunch of unrealistic WHINERS ...

Beat the 500 teams and we wouldn’t be having this discussion now would we ...

All expanding is going to do is change what # were debating about ...

This year the debate was about the #4 team ...

if they expand to 6 next year ... the debate will be over the #6 team ...

If they go to 8 ... it’ll be about the #8 team ...

Its an IMPERFECT SYSTEM that once every so often will stumble into the perfect situation ... .
There is NO PERFECT SOLUTION ...

This is a spectacular job by you of deflecting my points back to a point that not only has been hammered home by everyone, but also, a point that most are in agreement on. I mean seriously, this is unbelievable deflection on your part. Well done. By the way, with the name calling, how old are you? I'm guessing like, 13, 14?

Let me guess.... Something, something, something, my mom.

What bowl games are everyone excited about?

Obviously aside from the 2 playoff games:

Ohio State/USC. Great chance to see Darnold against one hell of a pass rush.

Stanford/TCU should be a pretty good game

Iowa St./Memphis is defintely watchable

Sucks that UCF and Auburn may have been at least partially interesting had their coach not bolted. I really hate that side of college football.

I am a Ohio State fan but I agree with Peen on this one. We lost two games by large margins

OSU fans need to stop the homer whining

I don't have a problem with Alabama getting the nod for the 4th spot and I wouldn't have had a problem if the places would have been reversed either. I think it was that close of a decision.

I'm fine with the decision. Sadly I think it was the right one. It's basically came down to Alabama's weaker schedule vs tOSU weaker loss.

If this was an eight team playoff, you would have the 5 conference champs and the three "wild card" teams would be Bama, Auburn & Wisconsin. Round 1 would look like this:

Clemson vs USC
Oklahoma vs Auburn
Georgia vs Wisconsin
Bama vs tOSU

I agree. If we would have taken care of business in Iowa, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We got throttled twice this year, we can't complain about not being in a 4 team playoff for the NC.

j/c:

I think a lot of people are talking out of their butts w/out educating themselves.

I was talking about the criteria that the Committee had in place. That is what I was going by. Not some biased opinion.

My thoughts on the Committees decision is that if you are going to totally ignore the criteria to choose the 4 teams and pick who you want, why have the freaking criteria in the first place.

I want to put college football over the NFL because of all the kneeling, dumb decisions by the Commish, rule changes, etc...............but, at least in the NFL you make the playoffs by earning it w/your record. The college football playoff thing is way too subjective.

Once again, if anyone wants to take the time to research what the Committee said they consider, it wasn't even close between Ohio State and Alabama.

People keep preaching the Iowa loss and it was ugly. It should have hurt Ohio State. However, I think people forget it was 17 to 17 and turnovers began. Sometimes that stuff happens.

Clemson lost to Syracuse, who did NOT win another game after beating Clemson. I am not knocking Clemson or saying they are not deserving, but no one talks about that loss.

Who beat Oklahoma? Answer.........Iowa State, who coincidentally lost to Iowa. My oh my! Again, I think Oklahoma deserves to be.

My point is that placing too much importance on one game is ignorant. It is about the body of the work. NOT ONE GAME! And according to the Committee's criteria, Ohio State should have been in.

I am not a fan of subjective decisions.

All the teams in the playoffs earned it by their record. All of them are 11-1.

I think a 2 loss Toledo deserves it more than anyone else.

Vers, I heard the Committee chairman say in an interview during one of the previous seasons that the criteria they use wasn't set in stone and more emphasis was placed on some criteria then other and that their job was to make sure that the 4 best teams in their eyes made the playoffs.

So you’re saying it’s not about any specific criteria but how they feel on any given day?

Pretty much. I believe the interview was on ESPN a couple of years ago and that's what the chairman said, that the criteria they used wasn't set in stone.

Come on, man.

Years ago, National Champions were decided by votes. That system grew to be despised because of obvious biases.

The BCS took over and people began to despise that because of computer votes and such.

Now, we at least have a playoff, but once again, it is being decided by a couple of handfuls of men....and some of those men are eliminated due to the affiliations.

I am not a fan of subjective votes, especially when you have criteria in place and it is ignored.

I am not trying to convince anyone to agree w/me. Just expressing my opinion. I'm pissed off. My point is that if you aren't going to "use" the criteria you put in place, then get rid of it and just say something like "we will put in who we want." Don't try and BS the public w/some false narrative of being objective.

Look like some pretty good match ups for the playoffs and most of the other "big" bowls.

Now to see which players will actually play in them.

It might help if they just came out and stated that Conference championships don't play into the determination .. 2 loss teams severely penalized .. Statements of fact Might clear things up some .

Maybe they should adopt a computer model for an 8 team playoff?

OSU/USC is a neat matchup ... so is PSU/WASH

i don't even know who's in the Holiday Bowl, but it seems to always be wild too

MSU vs WSU in the Holiday Bowl

I thought it was wrong last year to put a non conf champ in (OSU) just because of 1 less loss that Conf Champ Penn State. I feel the same this year. Putting non conf champ Alabama in and leaving 2 conf champs (OSU and USC) out.

I think the fairest thing to do is make the 5 conf championships the 1st round of the playoffs. Win and your in, lose or do not make this game and you are out. Then the next day the committee will rank the 5 conf champs 1 thru 5 from the body of the entire seasons work.

#4 and #5 Plays 2 weeks later for the right to play #1 on New Years Day. It would look like this.

December 16th
#5 USC vs #4 Ohio State at Peach Bowl site. Winner moves on to face #1 Clemson. Loser stays in Atlanta and plays Central Florida in Peach Bowl.

Then on January 1st
#3 Georgia vs Oklahoma - Rose Bowl
#4 or #5 winner vs #1 Clemson - Suger Bowl

January 8th CFPNC Game
Rose Bowl winner vs Suger Bowl winner.

I think college football has two choices, keep the current subjective system of getting the "best teams" in a playoff or switching to a more objective process, where a conference title game champion gets the spot.

The problem with using conference winners, there's 5 of them. Any method that chops off one, would be subjective. We could expand to 6 teams, but the 6th team would be, you guessed it, subjective (unless one more conference is added to be an official member of the P5).

Also, a conference title game winner might not be the best team from that conference. Say an unranked Maryland had 3 OOC losses but still got into the Big 10 title game with a perfect conference record. They end up beating a undefeated #1 overall ranked Illinois. Assuming Illinois would still be ranked #4 overall after a close loss on a neutral field, would you really want Maryland in the CFP?

That could happen because they use conference win/loss records and not overall records to determine the division winners. It's so backwards compared to the NFL. An NFL team could go undefeated in the division and still miss the playoffs if they lost a lot of non-division games. Very different than college.

I'm okay with the decision to put in Bama. Any team that has 2 losses and one of them was a beatdown, they deserve to stay home.

You're then officially shutting out any team not in the P5. Maybe that's already the case, but there's at least a small chance it could happen today.

Also, if they change to a conference title game winner selection process, ranking teams throughout the year becomes pointless. Heck, out of conference games become exhibition games with nothing on the line. The only games that matter are conference games. Win your division, then the conference title game and then advance through the playoff to win a national title.

Notre Dame fans disagree.

Sadly, I think the criteria is fluid. What is important one year is not the next.

This year it seems a horrendous loss was more than enough to offset a conference chanmpionship (vs no conf championship), three top 25 wins (all ranked higher than Bama's 2 top 25 wins) and a "better" loss (losing to 1-loss conf champion OU is better than losing to a 3-loss conf runner up). So, that is the criteria for the year.

Bama is the first team to make the playoffs while losing their game of the season.

I am not too worked up over this. I knew that Iowa game was going to be the turd in the punch bowl. It was a horrible thing that should not have happened, but it did and that is on us.

There aren't any established criteria. All we have is the rationale that they used to select the teams for any particular year...and the committee has been very careful in not putting anything concrete out there. This gives them the option to change that rationale from season to season and not be held accountable for anything.

Don't discount the fact the committee is probably leaning towards causing a little chaos of their own. College football and the yearly debate go hand in hand. It's part of it's charm. They embrace the discussion:

- Who starts the season ranked #1?
- Why team X starts so low?
- Who is ranked where in the first CFP ranking?s
- Who can afford a loss and who can't?
- Why did team X only drop 4 spots with a loss?
- Why didn't team Y jump more with a win?
- Team Z didn't play, why did they go up?
- Who needs to win out?
- Who had the better loss?
- Who had crappy wins?

Keeping the criteria fluid stimulates the discussion. That's why I don't think we'll ever go to a simple "win your conference title game and get in" selection method. It's boring, there's no debate, rankings don't matter and as jfanent also noted, Notre Dame wouldn't be included.

Also, this is a TV show and ratings matter. They should be allowed to select Ohio State, Bama or UCF based on their assessment of the potential ratings. If all resumes are equal, go with the team that will deliver more eyes.

I don't know if I'd agree that Bama is a better media darling than OSU. I think there is viewer fatigue with both. That's why I was rooting for Wisconsin. In a way, beating Wisconsin hurt OSU and the Big10. Too bad I guess.

Also, what up with forcing Toledo play Appalachian State every bowl season? The previous two years they met when Toledo didn't win the MAC title. Heck, Toledo didn't even play in the MAC title game in each of the past two season. Yet, they get sent to Mobile to play Appalachian State.

This year, they're 11-2, lost to Miami of Fla (which was close late in the 3rd Q), then a blowout to Ohio University and then win the MAC title.....and get sent where for a bowl game? Mobile, Alabama to play Appalachian State for the 3rd year in a row.

Lame.

IF the TV contract with NBC ever ends ... they’ll then join the HIGHEST BIDDER CONFERENCE ...

It SUCKS ... bit college football is about 1 thing and 1 thing only ... $$$$$$$ ...

Why the hell would ND even consider joining a conference now ... it would be a HUGE PAY CUT for them ...

There still the biggest draw in college football ... theres a reason there always ranked WAY HIGHER than they should be every pre-season and it ain’t cause folks like Catholics ... ..

Ohio University vs Alabama-Birmingham in the BAHAMAS BOWL.

yay

And the year before, Michigan State won the big 10 and had 1 loss to an unranked Nebraska team.. they got in and Alabama promptly beat them 38-0..

I was kind of hoping OSU got in but if they did, they needed to show up.. getting spanked 3 times in a row as a conference becomes a pattern and kills your ability to question others strength of schedule.

You all seem to forget about Ohio State beating Alabama and winning the 2014 National Title ... If you want to go back go all the way back to when they started the 4 team playoff ...