Posted on 12/03/2023 9:27:52 AM PST by C19fan
1: Michigan 2: Washington 3: Texas 4: 'Bama
(Excerpt) Read more at collegefootballplayoff.com ...
There was no good reason for 2011 Oklahoma State (who got left out of the championship game between undefeated LSU and a one-loss Alabama, whose only loss that year had been against LSU!) or 2004 Auburn (finished undefeated, but was left out of the championship game between undefeated Oklahoma and USC) to not get a chance to prove it on the field.
For that matter, how about the decision that 2008 Florida and Oklahoma (who both finished 12-1) deserved a championship berth, but 11-1 USC (Pac-10 champ) and Penn State (Big 10 co-champion, as the conference didn't actually have a championship game to its own until 2011), and 12-0 Utah (Mountain West champs, would eventually beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl) and Boise State (WAC champs) didn't?
There have always been complaints about leaving undefeated Group of Five teams out, but those exact same complaints would have been lodged against a two-team system (and a two-team system never would have allowed 2021 Cincinnati in).
To me the real proof this was an SEC driven decision is that Alabama previously ranked 7 jumped ahead of Ohio State who were ranked 6th and only lost to currently number 1 ranked Michigan.
The logic to me fails at that point. Saban has always struck me as a classy guy. If I were him I would call team together and lay out case to pass it FSU and vote on it.
The SEC ESPN Disney paymasters can go to hell. Disney losing so much money probably desperately need an SEC team in.
“Best four teams” line is in the eye of the beholder — in this case the Disney/ESPN/SEC paymasters. Why play the game if W-Ls don’t matter?
Saban will probably quit or be fired, but he and team will be hero’s forever.
FSU will get a chance to show how great they are in the bowl game.
FSU vs Georgia, it’s a shame one of them has to win.
It’s a game I will watch without the sound on. That’s for sure!
If GA had won, I think you would have seen:
1. Georgia
2. Michigan
3. Washington
4. Texas or FSU?
I wonder how many players for those two teams intend to sit out their bowl game. A Georgia or FSU player who is slated to be a top pick in the NFL draft next spring has no incentive to show up for the game.
A team like OSU that loses its conference championship game has very little leverage to complain about being left out of the four-team playoff when it loses out to a conference champion with an identical record.
...including a road win against LSU, who had a national championship several years ago.
Too cute, a FSU fan chest-thumpin' about playing LSU this year, who Bama plays every year. LOL
They also beat Clemson who has two national championships in the past decade.
Bama beat Clemson twice in the playoffs. And Bama has had three national championships in the past decade (seasons 2013 to 2022), plus three more shortly before that (2009, 2011, and 2012). And Bama beat Auburn this year, who had a natty in 2010. And Bama beat Georgia who has the past two national championships.
Like other SEC teams, Bama regularly plays many teams with natty's in the past 20 years.
But who is Florida this year? On FSU's regular schedule, Clemson was the only one that was still in the CFP rankings leading up the final rankings: https://www.espn.com/college-football/rankings/_/poll/21/week/15/year/2023/seasontype/2.
After the ACC title game that means FSU played 2 of those teams. Bama played 5 of them --- FIVE. Selah.
I'm not counting teams that were great in years past. I'm looking at teams good enough this year to have still been in the rankings at the end of the regular season.
Brief correction; Iowa was the one who lost the Big Ten championship.
Ohio State didn't even make it to their conference championship due to the loss against Michigan. Their rivalry game was basically a play-in for their conference title.
Not to contest your point. Just wanted to say that it seems many times Alabama and Georgia were selected for Championship rounds.
It just seems to me there is a heavy SEC bias based on $$$$.
See my previous comment in Post #121. Alabama won a national title that year even though it had demonstrated that it wasn't even the best team within its division of the SEC that season.
Probably so. See my previous comments about the Alabama national title in 2017. In that scenario, Alabama was effectively REWARDED for its failure to qualify for the SEC championship game.
Irrelevant. Alabama lost by 10 points at home. In every other sport, strength of schedule is a tie-breaker for teams with identical records. There’s no reason for an undefeated Power 5 conference champion to have been leapfrogged by two 1-loss teams. The only explanation is the money involved in SEC TV contracts.
The decision to exclude FSU had nothing to do with anything that happened on the football field.
Too cute, a FSU fan chest-thumpin' about playing LSU this year, who Bama plays every year. LOL
And FSU beat LSU by a greater margin than Alabama, and they did it in Baton Rouge.
The whole thing is retarded, and you sound retarded trying to justify it.
In other sports, teams play the same opponents.
Mich favored by 2.5 over Bama. 😂😂😂
Mich has no chance.
Yes, Alabama's strength of schedule should give them a big edge if the teams were even.
But it is objectively retarded to take the points I made above and tell me that Alabama's schedule was so far and away tougher than FSU, that even with a home loss of 10 points, they deserve to leapfrog over an undefeated Power 5 conference champion. FSU won all of their games and won on the road at Clemson, Gainesville, Baton Rouge, and won their final two games (one a road rivalry game and other a conference championship against a 2 loss team) WITHOUT their Heisman candidate QB.
Alas, the College Football Playoff was guaranteed to run into these sorts of scenarios when they only set it up as a four-team bracket.
No, this is not a problem that was inherent in the system. The only time this should have ever even been an issue was if there were 5 undefeated Power 5 champions. If that were to have happened, and Texas and Georgia had won out, then yes, FSU should have been excluded. They had the weakest schedule of the 5.
But strength of schedule in a Power 5 context should never allow teams with losses to jump over undefeated conference champions.
Based on what evidence?
Specifically the playoff's historical prejudice towards the SEC and the size of the TV contracts involved. The SEC contract with ESPN is reportedly $6 billion for 20 years. The ACC's is over billion dollars less and focuses more on basketball.
My guess is that all of the simping for Alabama on ESPN over the weekend (defending their near-loss at Auburn and their 10 point home loss) was probably due to some upstairs phone calls to the anchors.
The strength of schedule arguments being regurgitated here all sound like COVID or climate change talking points, using a silly statistical model that falls apart when looked at in context.
No. In the NFL, teams in the same division play different non-conference opponents. Strength of schedule is the 6th tie-breaker after overall record, head to head, division record, record in common games, conference record, and margin of victory average.
To be in the CFP you have to be in the top 4 of 133 FBS teams (ratio is one out of 33). That's way too many varieties of schedules to make record the see-all-do-all in college that it is in the NFL.
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