Playoff expansion

RPMdawg

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

That's why you need a good resume game to get in, and why the regular season of college football is the best out of every sport in the world. It keeps pretty much the entire regular season like playoff game atmospheres. You lose, your chances of getting in dwindle mightily, and requires other teams to start losing... And according to your theory, we will never know if Ga Southern could knock off Bama in the championship game last year do we? Will never know, since they didn't play that game.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

In what other sport other than collage football are a bunch of games played and then a committee decides who the best 4 or 8 teams are. Conference champions should matter. Game results matter in sports. Not what people think they know. If it's going to be a vote for the NC, let everyone that wants to vote- vote. Not just the folks that think they know best.

"Thats why they play the games". Any team can be beat on any given day. There will never be a cindarella story in CF, cause they'll never get a chance.

In saying all of this I do feel the playoff system is better than what we had . But because of the voting process it gets flawed . Take the subjectivity out of it. Use conference winners whether they're the best teams or not. They won their conference period.

RxDawg

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

That's why you need a good resume game to get in, and why the regular season of college football is the best out of every sport in the world. It keeps pretty much the entire regular season like playoff game atmospheres. You lose, your chances of getting in dwindle mightily, and requires other teams to start losing... And according to your theory, we will never know if Ga Southern could knock off Bama in the championship game last year do we? Will never know, since they didn't play that game.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

Sure, but more times than not, the conference champion is going to be deserving and a pretty darn good team. That's where the 3 wildcards come in. Like Bama last year. UCF too, give those fans some kind of hope. Than watch their dreams get crushed on national TV haha. Fact is right now, the bottom half of Div 1a pretty much has no hope in even getting a chance to winning it all. That doesn't seem right.

ftn49

@levander said:
Here’s a video I watched awhile back that should help you guys who want playoff expansion understand what you are pushing for.

One thing Saban doesn’t say is it not only affects players sitting out bowl games. But it also affects which schools recruits are willing to consider.

https://youtu.be/nTubMhVKDvI

The single most thing I dislike about college football rather than the pros is the bowl system. I'm am absolutely at peace with kids who want to skip meaningless bowl games to protect themselves from injury. And I would love a 16 team tournament. Because you never know.

Just for equal measure, the best part about the college game in my opinion at least as it relates to the field is the overtime system. Absolutely love it.

pgjackson

@ftn49 said:

@levander said:
Here’s a video I watched awhile back that should help you guys who want playoff expansion understand what you are pushing for.

One thing Saban doesn’t say is it not only affects players sitting out bowl games. But it also affects which schools recruits are willing to consider.

https://youtu.be/nTubMhVKDvI

The single most thing I dislike about college football rather than the pros is the bowl system. I'm am absolutely at peace with kids who want to skip meaningless bowl games to protect themselves from injury. And I would love a 16 team tournament. Because you never know.

Just for equal measure, the best part about the college game in my opinion at least as it relates to the field is the overtime system. Absolutely love it.

I bet a 16 team playoff would result in better OOC matchups. With 16 teams you could drop 2-3 games and still make it. Right now everyone is afraid to schedule the blue-bloods because that one loss might be enough to drop you out of the running. I'm starting to warm up to the expanded bracket idea.

levander

@ftn49 said:

@levander said:
Here’s a video I watched awhile back that should help you guys who want playoff expansion understand what you are pushing for.

One thing Saban doesn’t say is it not only affects players sitting out bowl games. But it also affects which schools recruits are willing to consider.

https://youtu.be/nTubMhVKDvI

The single most thing I dislike about college football rather than the pros is the bowl system. I'm am absolutely at peace with kids who want to skip meaningless bowl games to protect themselves from injury. And I would love a 16 team tournament. Because you never know.

Just for equal measure, the best part about the college game in my opinion at least as it relates to the field is the overtime system. Absolutely love it.

It sounds like you’re trading something incidental that only rarely happens (overtime) for something that’s integral to the system (the bowl system).

Do you consider yourself more of a college fan or a pro fan?

You sound like a pro fan to me. Because your opinion makes more sense to me if you’re more of a pro fan.

Teddy

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

That's why you need a good resume game to get in, and why the regular season of college football is the best out of every sport in the world. It keeps pretty much the entire regular season like playoff game atmospheres. You lose, your chances of getting in dwindle mightily, and requires other teams to start losing... And according to your theory, we will never know if Ga Southern could knock off Bama in the championship game last year do we? Will never know, since they didn't play that game.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

I hear what you're saying about their SOS and I agree with it in general. I didn't think they deserved to be in last year. I also thought they would beat Auburn because we knew Auburn was a little worn down and disappointed in how we ended their season. On the other hand, it was UCF's Super Bowl and they played that way.

My one issue with that argument, though, is that you are basically telling UCF that there was nothing they could have done. It was completely out of their hands. It did not matter at all what they did they were not going to get in. In effect, it's the exact reason the playoff was created in the first place. The same thing happened to Auburn in 2004. Undefeated SEC champ who didn't get a shot because Oklahoma and USC started that season ranked ahead of them and never lost.

They have to schedule games against top 10-15 opponents, or at least a few top 25 teams (not in your conference). We don't really know what they look like against top competition outside their conference (other than their Super Bowl you mentioned). I know some top 10 teams will stay away from pretty good G5 schools, but all won't. Heck, I'd rather see UGA play them than Austin Peay... Maybe they should lobby to join the Big 12, as that conference needs teams, and allows the Big 12 to expand its footprint. I agree it's tough for teams outside the power 5 conferences to make it, but there's a reason (they usually don't play tough schedules).

I agree on the schedule piece. However, the challenge there is that the schedules are made years in advance yet we then look back retroactively at the end of the season to validate whether the schedule was worthy or not. For example, years ago when it was scheduled Texas and USC probably both thought tomorrow night's game would be a marquee matchup. However, now that game looks rather ho-hum unless you're a fan of one of those programs. We think our season opening games against Clemson and Oregon down the road should be big. A lot can change in 5-6 years.

Somewhat true. But you don’t book Illinois, for example, expecting them to be good.

Teddy

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

That's why you need a good resume game to get in, and why the regular season of college football is the best out of every sport in the world. It keeps pretty much the entire regular season like playoff game atmospheres. You lose, your chances of getting in dwindle mightily, and requires other teams to start losing... And according to your theory, we will never know if Ga Southern could knock off Bama in the championship game last year do we? Will never know, since they didn't play that game.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

Maybe we need to get rid of the subjective "Best" team and just go with Conference Champions. That will eliminate all whining and complaining. Of course there is a chance some low ranked team happens to win their conference, like if in 2016 the #19 VT had beaten Clemson in the ACCCG. Well, Clemson is out and VT is in. Sorry, that's how it goes.

Then you run the risk of eliminating the best teams getting in. Who wants to watch the #19 VT play the best teams?

Teddy

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:
@Teddy I just did. Argue that a team is "worthy" until you are blue in the face. If the argument is subjective--you simply can't prove it.

For academic exercise see this article--https://usat.ly/2zJ6jP8

It's always going to be subjective until we go the "everyone gets a trophy" route.

Umm...no. Wins and losses are the only objective measure. You don't get named conference champ based on a vote.

The article just highlights the subjective nature of the current system.

Ok, let’s just go on wins, losses, and SOS. Those are all objective. Who’s been left out now?

RPMdawg

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:
@Teddy I just did. Argue that a team is "worthy" until you are blue in the face. If the argument is subjective--you simply can't prove it.

For academic exercise see this article--https://usat.ly/2zJ6jP8

It's always going to be subjective until we go the "everyone gets a trophy" route.

Umm...no. Wins and losses are the only objective measure. You don't get named conference champ based on a vote.

The article just highlights the subjective nature of the current system.

Ok, let’s just go on wins, losses, and SOS. Those are all objective. Who’s been left out now?

Is SOS objective?

pgjackson

@Teddy said:

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

That's why you need a good resume game to get in, and why the regular season of college football is the best out of every sport in the world. It keeps pretty much the entire regular season like playoff game atmospheres. You lose, your chances of getting in dwindle mightily, and requires other teams to start losing... And according to your theory, we will never know if Ga Southern could knock off Bama in the championship game last year do we? Will never know, since they didn't play that game.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

Maybe we need to get rid of the subjective "Best" team and just go with Conference Champions. That will eliminate all whining and complaining. Of course there is a chance some low ranked team happens to win their conference, like if in 2016 the #19 VT had beaten Clemson in the ACCCG. Well, Clemson is out and VT is in. Sorry, that's how it goes.

Then you run the risk of eliminating the best teams getting in. Who wants to watch the #19 VT play the best teams?

They are conference champs. The conference champion is the top team in that conference. "Best" is subjective. It really means nothing. In advertising, "best" is a word you can use to describe literally anything because it can't be proven. How do you know that an 11-1 team is actually "better" than a 10-2 team without settling it on the field? Maybe those two losses came against highly ranked teams while the 11-1 team played a bunch of nobodies. Conference championships are supposed to help identify the "best" teams.

Teddy

@RPMdawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:
@Teddy I just did. Argue that a team is "worthy" until you are blue in the face. If the argument is subjective--you simply can't prove it.

For academic exercise see this article--https://usat.ly/2zJ6jP8

It's always going to be subjective until we go the "everyone gets a trophy" route.

Umm...no. Wins and losses are the only objective measure. You don't get named conference champ based on a vote.

The article just highlights the subjective nature of the current system.

Ok, let’s just go on wins, losses, and SOS. Those are all objective. Who’s been left out now?

Is SOS objective?

I think so, after 12 games you have a good idea of what talent your opponents had, or didn’t have. 100% objective, no. But as close as you’ll get. It’s clearly heavily weighted, completely objective or not, as UCF didn’t get in. They don’t reward cupcake schedules, as it should be. Like I said awhile ago, P5 teams should just go to the sun belt, AAC, etc. if they want to go undefeated and get an automatic bid. Since it seems wins and losses are what some folks want, since it’s the only objective material that can be found.

pgjackson

I just hope it doesn't turn into an NFL system where teams can clinch a playoff spot with several games remaining and then coast the rest of the season without worry of beating the remaining teams. Right now, every game still matters.

Teddy

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

Maybe we need to get rid of the subjective "Best" team and just go with Conference Champions. That will eliminate all whining and complaining. Of course there is a chance some low ranked team happens to win their conference, like if in 2016 the #19 VT had beaten Clemson in the ACCCG. Well, Clemson is out and VT is in. Sorry, that's how it goes.

Then you run the risk of eliminating the best teams getting in. Who wants to watch the #19 VT play the best teams?

They are conference champs. The conference champion is the top team in that conference. "Best" is subjective. It really means nothing. In advertising, "best" is a word you can use to describe literally anything because it can't be proven. How do you know that an 11-1 team is actually "better" than a 10-2 team without settling it on the field? Maybe those two losses came against highly ranked teams while the 11-1 team played a bunch of nobodies. Conference championships are supposed to help identify the "best" teams.

Conference champions determine the best in one conference, not the entire country. And how to determine between two similar teams, yes, look at who each team beat and lost to. That generally settles it pretty easily.

And on a separate note, all this love for UCF on this thread. They were ranked #12 heading into the bowl games. It wasn’t even close.

levander

@pgjackson said:
I just hope it doesn't turn into an NFL system where teams can clinch a playoff spot with several games remaining and then coast the rest of the season without worry of beating the remaining teams. Right now, every game still matters.

Expanding the playoff system is all about making college football like the NFL. How could that possibly not happen?

pgjackson

@levander said:

@pgjackson said:
I just hope it doesn't turn into an NFL system where teams can clinch a playoff spot with several games remaining and then coast the rest of the season without worry of beating the remaining teams. Right now, every game still matters.

Expanding the playoff system is all about making college football like the NFL. How could that possibly not happen?

Because the NFL doesn't have rankings. They have straight-up records and division leaders. There is no way the NCAA could do a playoff simply based on a team's record. If they did it could not include the Group of 5 conferences. Going 10-2 in the SEC is much different than going 10-2 in the WAC or MWC.

With that in mind, what about a 10-team bracket where every P5 division winner gets in regardless of what team actually wins the conference? So, each P5 conference gets to send 2 teams. Of course the B12 would have to create two divisions and all the "Independents" would have to join a conference.

JayDog

@Teddy said:

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@pgjackson said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@RxDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@JayDog said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Teddy said:

@PTDawg said:

@Bankwalker said:
Name the 6,7,8 seeds since 2012 who would have had a LEGITIMATE chance to win the 3 games necessary. Expanded playoffs at this level is pointless.

You'd never know for sure unless you played the games.

I wasn't advocating a random matchup for the national title. I was talking about creating opportunity for access to a playoff across the entire sport rather than just the power 5. Your GA Southern vs Bama example is a red herring and not relevant to the discussion.

My point with the example is the “we’ll never knows” don’t work well in this debate. Again, your resume’ is what matters. No deserving team has been left out yet.

No deserving team has been left out--that is a subjective statement. Tell it to the fans and media who have been in vocal disagreement. The selection process itself is subjective. The "eye test" is one of the criteria the committee uses to determine who is "worthy". Strength of schedule also has an element of subjectivity. Alabama had a very weak SOS last year. A lot of opinion goes into all of it.

Name a team that should've been in, and we can then start this debate.

Penn State last year. Perhaps even UCF... last year. And that's just last year.

My biggest argument though is that we have 5 major conferences in college football, and 4 spots. How can you objectively fill that?

Please reference UCF's SOS. End of story. But if you want to dive deeper, winning by 7 over SMU and 10 over Navy (2 of their "tougher" games) really screams best team? Penn State: Lost to OSU and Michigan St. Pretty sure Bama only lost to Auburn... Any others?

You act like you completely rebuked my statement, you didn't. Plus I said "perhaps" UCF. They won a bunch of games. They did beat, albeit an unmotivated team, Auburn. Besides that wasn't my greatest point. My greatest point is 5 major football conferences, 4 playoff spots. It needs to expand. Put the onus on winning the conference again, and sprinkle in a few exciting teams for flavor. I honestly think it sounds great.

The best 4 or 8 teams might not come from a conference champion. So the whole, let all the conference champions in is not good, to put it nicely.

Maybe we need to get rid of the subjective "Best" team and just go with Conference Champions. That will eliminate all whining and complaining. Of course there is a chance some low ranked team happens to win their conference, like if in 2016 the #19 VT had beaten Clemson in the ACCCG. Well, Clemson is out and VT is in. Sorry, that's how it goes.

Then you run the risk of eliminating the best teams getting in. Who wants to watch the #19 VT play the best teams?

They are conference champs. The conference champion is the top team in that conference. "Best" is subjective. It really means nothing. In advertising, "best" is a word you can use to describe literally anything because it can't be proven. How do you know that an 11-1 team is actually "better" than a 10-2 team without settling it on the field? Maybe those two losses came against highly ranked teams while the 11-1 team played a bunch of nobodies. Conference championships are supposed to help identify the "best" teams.

Conference champions determine the best in one conference, not the entire country. And how to determine between two similar teams, yes, look at who each team beat and lost to. That generally settles it pretty easily.

And on a separate note, all this love for UCF on this thread. They were ranked #12 heading into the bowl games. It wasn’t even close.

Alabama is arguably the "best" team in the country on paper based on recruiting over the years. They were not best when losing to Auburn. They didn't look it when almost losing to us. Our busted coverage and the poor referee performance made them champions. They earned the "best" title with a win. We can whine about things that happened in the game but in the end they won and we didn't. Very objective.

By your metric, if the playoff is populated with one loss teams and Alabama, the "best" team in the nation, doesn't get in--then head to head play is meaningless. No champ can claim the title of best because Bama didn't get the chance to prove it.

RPMdawg

Did the BEST team win the national championship last year, or did the team that won the NC game win the title?

pgjackson

@RPMdawg said:
Did the BEST team win the national championship last year, or did the team that won the NC game win the title?

I believe that the "best" teams made the playoffs, but I think OSU and USC have legit arguments.

RPMdawg

@pgjackson said:

@RPMdawg said:
Did the BEST team win the national championship last year, or did the team that won the NC game win the title?

I believe that the "best" teams made the playoffs, but I think OSU and USC have legit arguments.

Probably. It just seems that some's beliefs just disregard the outcome of games. If a team wins, they may or may not be the better team but they are the winners. The way things are now is probably the the best of both worlds for appeasing bowl and playoff folks.