Jump to content

chainsaw

Full Members
  • Posts

    10762
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation

15267 Surly 1%

About chainsaw

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. It's not do or die but there are still playoff stakes. Byes, home field, all of which could be highly consequential depending on who you're playing and who you get to avoid. It might seem unfair, but as I've been saying about the CFP committee, if the question is "who is the best" why should evidence that comes from a conference championship game be ignored? For example, what happens if Virginia beats Duke in a very unimpressive way, and their best guys all get injured in the process. In that case, why should Virginia get an automatic qualification? When the dust settles, maybe the five "best" conference champions are from the SEC, B1G, Big XII, and two G5 conferences. Virginia could cry "that's not fair, we would have been better off if we didn't play in the conference championship game" And the correct response to Virginia would be, the committee's job isn't to reward teams for winning, it's to select the "best" teams to ensure that the CFP has the best participants and is as competitive as possible. If Virginia shows us that it is not one of the five "best" conference champions and that it is not one of the seven "best" at large teams, I don't particularly care or have much sympathy for the fact that we wouldn't have known about Virginia's lack of merit if it hadn't been for that last game against Duke. The committee knows now, and its job is to select the "best" and not the most "deserving." On the flip side, I believe we exposed Texas A&M, and they might actually be benefiting from avoiding another chance to be exposed. Is anyone crying, "that's not fair, Texas A&M would have a lower seed if they had to face Alabama in Atlanta" or anything along those lines? The same can be said about Oregon and Ole Miss. The correct response is that the committee's job isn't to punish teams for failing to qualify for a conference championship game; it's to select the "best" teams to ensure that the CFP has the best participants and is as competitive as possible. Texas A&M showed us that it is one of the seven "best" at large teams. We can speculate that some team it hasn't played yet is likely to have exposed them as frauds, but that kind of speculation is no substitute for evidence. Right now the best evidence that Texas A&M is a fraud came from Notre Dame (got unlucky and lost at home), South Carolina (self explanatory), and Texas (27-17). These kinds of speculative arguments can be made in favor of and against basically any team in the field. If you are selecting the "best" then you ask who is playing the best football right now and who is likely to play that level of football in the playoffs. That is why Texas A&M should go down in the rankings (it's also "fair" because they just lost), it is why Ole Miss should also go down (Kiffin gone, so while it might not feel "fair" it would be a logical conclusion that they won't be able to play as well), and it is why Oklahoma's narrow win over LSU should give the committee strong reason to reconsider if it really is a top ten team. All I ask for is a fair process for determining who the best teams are, even if that fair process leads to outcomes that feel unfair because they punish teams for making (and losing) CCGs or for having their coaches poached away. It is more important that the best teams be selected than it is for the most deserving teams or the teams with the best records not to be excluded.
  2. But is that actually a good way to choose the best at large teams? By simply ignoring recent evidence that the losing team might not actually be any good?
  3. To be fair: making the IST, having the record they have, and doing it without their top players for most of the season, is still exceeding expectations by a lot. He's by no means a perfect coach, but he's doing something right. It's just frustrating to know how much better they would be if they could fix these fixable things.
  4. This is kind of what Ohio State, Oregon, and Tennessee benefited from last season. It's unavoidable. CCG is high risk and high reward. If you're from a good conference, most of the time you should be good enough that even if you lose you won't drop out of the playoff. However, if you underperform in such a game while being a bubble team? Why should the committee ignore that? Surely there is precedent in the men's basketball tourney where a bubble team shits the bed in their conference tourney and gets left out for that reason. It makes less sense to ignore on-field evidence of a team's quality than it would to "punish" a team who makes a CCG for demonstrating that they are not one of the ten/twelve/whatever "best" at large teams.
  5. But it's still possible for, say, Indiana to lose so badly that it can't be called a top four team anymore and to lose the bye for that reason. As long as that's true, then you can be "punished" for something that happens in a CCG, and I have no problem with that.
  6. In theory the committee's rankings are supposed to be blind to the qualification consequences. If you lose big and can fall out of the top four, it should also be possible to lose big and fall out of the top ten.
  7. Texas had to play Clemson at home instead of getting a bye week because Texas lost in the SEC CG. That's a punishment, isn't it?
  8. The committee's job is to pick the best team of 136 teams, rank it, then pick the best team of the remaining 135 teams, rank it #2, then pick the best team of the remaining 134 teams, rank it #3, and so on and so forth until 25 teams are ranked. The FSU precedent tells us that by "best" they mean "most likely to win in the playoffs" and not just "team that has the most impressive record" (even though the two are highly correlated). So let's run this thought experiment. It's hard to argue that Ohio State is not the "best" team. Undefeated in a good conference, and beat good out-of-conference opponents. Has barely trailed all season. Of the remaining 135 teams, the only undefeated team is Indiana. Also in a good conference. I'm going to be somewhat controversial here, because if you're asking me whether there's a better team in that 135, I would say yes, and that team is Georgia. My reasoning is simple: in the absence of some really peculiar advantage in terms of matchups or injuries, virtually any playoff team would feel better about its chances against Indiana than it would against Georgia. Maybe that's SEC bias, but I don't think I'm out of line saying that Georgia would be undefeated with Indiana's schedule, while Indiana probably would have dropped a game (or more). Of the remaining 134 teams, the only undefeated team is Indiana. Who is best among Indiana, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Ole Miss, and Oregon? This is a hard question to answer. In terms of talent, I believe it's Texas A&M, but Indiana has a better QB and a better win (Oregon) than Texas A&M (ND). So I would call 3-4 a tie. If Ohio State beats Indiana in the CCG that should be enough to dock them down to #4 (even though I don't believe it changes the answer to the real question, which is whether opponents are more scared to face Texas A&M than Indiana) Of the remaining 132 teams, you have Texas Tech, Ole Miss, Oregon, and BYU each with one loss; Oklahoma, ND, Bama, Miami, Utah, and Vandy with two losses; and Texas, Michigan, and USC with their three losses. Of these teams, the team with the most defensible claims to being "best" are the one loss teams from strong conferences: Ole Miss and Oregon. If I think Georgia is better than Indiana then I should also think losing to Georgia is less bad than losing to Indiana, but on the other hand I can see about half the field of teams preferring to face Ole Miss in a playoff game. More talent, more money, the whole thing. So, I'm going to say Oregon is the "best" team of those 132 and Ole Miss is the "best" team remaining after that Of the remaining 130 teams, you have Texas Tech and BYU each with one loss; Oklahoma, ND, Bama, Miami, Utah, and Vandy with two losses; and Texas, Michigan, and USC with their three losses. I'll be blunt. I think most of the field would rather face one of BYU, Texas Tech, Utah, and USC (the "we like our chances" camp). So I'm going to set them aside for now. A good argument could be made that, of those 130 options, Texas is the team that puts the most fear into everyone else if the game is played in December or January. By the same logic, very good arguments could also be made about Alabama, Miami, and Notre Dame, all of which are teams that can boast recent postseason success (an ability to "peak at the right time") on top of elite talent (the "Fuck" camp). Everyone else (Oklahoma, Vandy, and Michigan) are closer to that "we like our chances" camp. So, who is "best" among Texas, Alabama, Miami, and Notre Dame? My gut tells me Notre Dame is not the best of those four, but maybe isn't the worst, but then again lost to Miami (but would it lose in December/January)? The same can be asked about Alabama, which is why a loss in December would cut against the idea that it is "best" of the four, even if that loss is to a great team in a conference championship game. By "best," I mean "strikes the most fear in playoff opponents"
  9. You're right. I would say all of those teams are overranked and overrated. Notre Dame I sort of understand the invisible hand of moneyed interests trying to help them qualify since they have no access to an auto bid. Indiana and Tech could very easily be exposed in the playoffs, though. Assuming Indiana loses to Ohio State in the conference title game, I don't have an issue with them having a playoff bid just like they had one last year.
  10. I would avoid indulging concepts like "more deserving," but I agree that the argument for who's better is easier to make when BYU has two losses instead of one. If Tech loses, the argument that Texas is better is easier to make. The committee would be dumb to allow two teams from that conference to get in.
  11. Well, sure, but if that were actually the case an undefeated G5 team would always be ranked ahead of a 1-loss P4 team, and a 1-loss G5 team would always be ranked ahead of a 2-loss P4 team, and so-on and so forth, but that clearly isn't true. There are 1-loss teams who are currently ranked behind ND, ousux, and Alabama.
  12. For rankings purposes, they are selecting who is "best" and ranking accordingly. The five "best" conference champs take up five of the spots on the bracket, and the seven "best" remaining teams on the rankings are the teams who fill out the rest of the bracket, which is seeded according to their ranking.
  13. The mission of the CFP committee, from its website: https://collegefootballplayoff.com/sports/2016/10/24/selection-committee-protocol It does not say to select the "most deserving" teams. It says to select the "best" teams. That's a very meaningful distinction. The key phrases to me here is: "comparable teams" Must Team A have the same record as Team B in order for them to be "comparable" enough that the "process" comes into play? Because I believe Texas has everyone else beat as far as these factors are concerned. The only principled way to avoid using these factors is by saying 3-loss teams cannot be "comparable" to 2-loss teams. Honestly, they should record and televise the entire deliberation process. Full transparency, like an ACC video review of a ruling on the field.
  14. Nobody seriously believes that any other team in the CFP conversation would have won three of five against Ohio State, Vandy, ousux, aggy, and Georgia. If BYU were to sneak in, they would be blown out and embarrassed. Same goes for Utah, Virginia, and whichever G5 gets in. "Deserve" should not have anything to do with it. The task of the committee is to find the five best conference champions and the seven best at-large teams, using all of the information available to it. The five best conference champs will come from the P4 conferences and from one G5 conference. I don't think anyone here would disagree that Texas for most of the season was not one of the seven best at-large teams, but they clearly improved and are currently better at least six of the other teams in the CFP conversation. I don't think any of the other six teams should come from the Big XII, and the only teams outside the SEC and B1G who have any business being considered one of the seven best at-large teams are Miami and Notre Dame (in that order). We should not be rewarding teams for avoiding tough competition by granting them playoff spots.
×
×
  • Create New...