Posted on 01/07/2018 7:57:00 PM PST by Impy
What: 2018 College Football Playoff National Championship, Division 1, Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS)
When: Monday, 1-8-2018, 8:15 Eastern Standard Time
Where: Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta GA, TV and Radio: ESPN (yeah I know)
Who: #1 Ranked SEC Champion Georgia Bulldogs (13-1), Coach Kirby Smart, versus The #4 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide (12-1), Coach Nick Saban. Saban is looking to tie coach Bear Bryant's record 6 national titles.
Why: Why not? I heard the President is attending the game
And that’s not how NCAA Division I decides its champion.
The current playoff format is flawed, but an improvement over the previous Bowl system.
I wager we’ll be seeing an eight-team playoff before long.
Making it a real playoff would improve it even more.
This isn’t the championship.
It’s SEC playoff II.
I hope our defense can sustain that ferocity they had against Clemson, but that will be hard to do for two straight games. I’m hoping, though.
Agreed, the offense needs to do its part. It’s infuriating how many weapons we have on offense, but the O has been our achilles heel.
There are several reasons for the lackluster offense: Subpar play by Hurts (and I’ve been a big defender of him), a suspect O-line and horrid play calling by Coach Daboll. I haven’t been impressed with Daboll at all and I’m not convinced that he is the right choice as Offensive Coordinator.
It’s absolutely maddening how Daboll tends to go away from what is working. He also has a tendency to forget about our superior stable of running backs.
They better have their act together tomorrow night.
Yep- UCF
That should ONLY be relevant if: a) the two teams have not met head-to-head b) the two teams have the same number of losses c) the two teams can be compared by common opponents. Well, let's start UCF vs. Alabama. a) they have not met head to head b) Alabama has one more loss than UCF. c) They DO have a common opponent - Auburn. UCF beat Auburn, Alabama didn't. Case closed. Then, let's talk UCF vs. Georgia. a) they have not met head to head b) Georgia has one more loss than UCF. c) They DO have a common opponent - Auburn. UCF beat Auburn. Georgia split against them in two games. Georgia, if they beat Bama, has more legitimate claim than Alabama but they still have one loss and UCF has zero. Strength of schedule should be irrelevant unless you have run out of other tiebreakers. It should NEVER be spoken of like the first criteria. Only an imbecile would make that argument.
I agre with you a little but UCF only played Auburn who they beat and maybe Memphis who were ranked once or twice this year
Playing SEC is just brutal and it shakes down teams and inariably they get losses
No other conference with talent as deep
But I do agree they should have had some shot
Nothing to stop an add on game and make a network bid for it for Feb 1/2
I think a much broader based playoffs is the only solution to satisfy everyone
My dad would never believe a metro college of recent note like UCF could play so well
Next Nashville State will be ranked..lol
Or Miami Dade community....or NYSU at Stoney Brook..lol
ROLL TIDE! :-)
I think he has a point. Any team, especially if they are the ONLY team that year, to win all the games has earned the NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP designation.
I agree.
My daughter graduated 2 years ago and my nephew heads to Bana next fall. Roll Tide!
As Izzo goes, so goes his buddy, Saban.
Georgia.
Bama also
Offense vs. Defense Matchup and Analysis
Current rank scoring rank ydg rank
#3 Georgia Offense #23: 9 Pass 8 Run
#4 Alabama Defense #1: 1 Pass 1 Run
#4 Alabama Offense #9: 13 Pass 5 Run
#3 Georgia Defense #3: 2 Pass 20 Run
This is why we have the top-four playoffs. The bottom two were the best and the best of the best is #4 Alabama who they almost did not get put back in the top four because the Tide lost a game late in the season. Not sure why losing a game late in the season makes you worse that a team that loses one or two games early in the season. Some of this ranking system looks a little like how they judge a prizefight by remembering the latter rounds better than the early rounds.
This will be a well-played, low-scoring, knock-down, drag-out defensive battle extraordinaire all the way. The best part of the game will be when Georgia has the ball. Alabama’s top scoring defense in the country and top pass and run yardage defensive in the country will slow down Georgia’s excellent offense in both run and pass. ‘Bama’s excellent run game should score against Georgia’s run defense. Alabama will have to be careful in their passing game against Georgia’s #2 pass defense in the country.
Winner: Alabama.
(My laptop’s in the shop so my game-time banter will be limited.)
There will be A LOT of defense. The first and third best defenses in the nation.
Wow. Bad analogy. If they played head-to-head, you toss out everything else because then you no longer have a hypothetical game but a real game as evidence. It's true. New England beat the Giants in the regular season that year just as Georgia lost to Auburn this season but then won in the SEC title game. You'd say Georgia is the conference champion.
But the NFL stages a fairer playoff system where 37.5% of the top teams engage in a playoff every year. The NCAA (or CFP) engages in a playoff system where the top 3.5% engages in a playoff system, one that appears to shut off arbitrarily any school not in the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12 or SEC.
IMO, there should be a separate playoff among the All American Conference, Conference USA, MAC, Sunbelt, Big West and Mountain West for a nation title and call the current CFP what it truly is - a national championship among five conferences.
But since the CFP declares itself a national championship among ALL FBS schools, they should act like it and not deny teams who win every game on their schedule, plus their bowl game. They want to pretend they are like March Madness where a school like Butler or Temple could play for all the marbles when this season proves that's untrue. The CFP would have seeded two-loss Ohio State before undefeated UCF. Heck, they almost seeded three-loss Stanford ahead of UCF.
I hear that "SEC is so tough, blah blah" every year. If that's the case, the Big 10 should be playing for the national championship because they won all but one of their bowl games. SEC was middle-of-the-pack in their bowls.
Was Daboll the guy Sabian was yelling at during the Clemson game on the sidelines after some bone-headed play or other? Why doesn’t Sabian just call the plays?
That would be "heads to Banana"... :)
UCF has one of the best scoring defenses in the country. But Alabama has the #1 scoring defense in the country.
UCF has one of the best pass defenses in the country. But Alabama has the #1 pass and run defense in the country.
UCF’s offense showed up around 50th in the country in the pass and run. But Alabama has the #9 scoring offence and # 5 run and #13 pass offense.
I think Alabama is a better team than UCF. I can’t think of a better system than the one they have now of playing off the top four teams. The bottom two, #3 Georgia and #4 Alabama turned out to be the two best and I think we’ll see Alabama as the best.
As far as calculating the top 25 college teams goes, the way I see it, no matter what factors and weighted measurements are used, there will always be disagreements about it. Don’t know how you can expand anymore games to beyond the top four. IMO you can’t have, or shouldn’t have, more than one extra football game beyond the bowl games, which is what we have now. The risk of injury is too great.
There will always be disappointments in the formula to calculate the FBS top 25 because there are so many moving parts, but I think the process, if not the formula, is a good one. Maybe the formula can be improved. There certainly are a lot of moving parts and from what I’ve seen, you get 25 people and they have 25 different ways they would do the FBS formula.
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