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Thread for general discussion of this year's playoffs, outside of the game-specific threads.

(Stewart Mandel) College Football Playoff scenarios: How to root for controversy and chaos on championship weekend

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Chaos has yet to rain down on the College Football Playoff race. Will we finally get some on the last weekend of the season? We have nine conference championship games on Friday and Saturday, but realistically, only two will affect which bubble teams do or do not get in: the Big 12 (BYU-Texas Tech) and the SEC (Alabama-Georgia). Three others — the ACC (Duke-Virginia), American (North Texas-Tulane) and Sun Belt (Troy-James Madison) — will determine the final two automatic qualifier (AQ) berths.

We’ll get to those in a minute. But first, let’s predict what the field will look like based on the four possible permutations involving the Big 12 and SEC games. Most pressingly, how do they affect four schools on either side of the cut line: No. 9 Alabama (10-2), No. 10 Notre Dame (10-2), No. 11 BYU (11-1) and No. 12 Miami (10-2)?

Texas Tech beats BYU, Alabama beats Georgia

This combo officially eliminates BYU, which is already on the outside looking in. And that creates an opening for Miami. The Canes would now be just one spot behind the Irish. The committee has always said that head-to-head is a tiebreaker when teams are “close.” It doesn’t get any closer than that. “The head-to-head is one data point that the committee will use,” committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Tuesday night.

“It’s obviously easier to use that data point when the teams are back-to-back as opposed to when they’re separated by a team or two or three, as has been the case.” Meanwhile, Alabama would obviously move up from No. 9 with a second win this season over Georgia and an SEC championship. The best guess here is the Tide would move into the top four and earn a bye.

1
Ohio State-Indiana winner (13-0)
2
Ohio State-Indiana loser (12-1)
3
Texas Tech (12-1)
4
Alabama (11-2)
5
Georgia (11-2)
6
Oregon (11-1)
7
Ole Miss (11-1)
8
Texas A&M (11-1)
9
Oklahoma (10-2)
10
Miami (10-2)
11
Notre Dame (10-2)
12
BYU (11-2)

Texas Tech beats BYU, Georgia beats Alabama

Once again, BYU is out. But is Alabama out too? And if so, is Notre Dame as well? It may depend on how much Alabama loses by. If it’s a close game, the Tide either stay where they are or only drop one spot, in which case there’s still separation between Notre Dame and Miami. But what if Georgia wins 28-10? Would the committee dare drop Alabama out? If so, then Notre Dame and Miami both make it. But I’m going with the first scenario.

1
Ohio State-Indiana winner (13-0)
2
Georgia (12-1)
3
Ohio State-Indiana loser (12-1)
4
Texas Tech (12-1)
5
Oregon (11-1)
6
Ole Miss (11-1)
7
Texas A&M (11-1)
8
Oklahoma (10-2)
9
Notre Dame (10-2)
10
Alabama (10-3)
11
Miami (10-2)
12
BYU (11-2)

BYU beats Texas Tech, Alabama beats Georgia

This one seems simple. BYU would earn an automatic berth, but Texas Tech is unlikely to fall out of the field. And Alabama is safely in as well. The ND-Miami debate becomes moot.

1
Ohio State-Indiana winner (13-0)
2
Ohio State-Indiana loser (12-1)
3
Alabama (11-2)
4
Georgia (11-2)
5
Oregon (11-1)
6
BYU (12-1)
7
Texas Tech (11-2)
8
Ole Miss (11-1)
9
Texas A&M (11-1)
10
Oklahoma (10-2)
11
Miami (10-2)
12
Notre Dame (10-2)

BYU beats Texas Tech, Georgia beats Alabama

Again, both Miami and Notre Dame get bounced.

1
Ohio State-Indiana winner (13-0)
2
Georgia (12-1)
3
Ohio State-Indiana loser (12-1)
4
Oregon (11-1)
5
BYU (12-1)
6
Texas Tech (11-2)
7
Ole Miss (11-1)
8
Texas A&M (11-1)
9
Oklahoma (10-2)
10
Alabama (10-3)
11
Miami (10-2)
12
Notre Dame (10-2)

All told, Notre Dame, winner of 10 in a row in largely dominant fashion, only makes the field in one of the four scenarios. But so does Miami. The Irish need to root for Georgia. The Canes need to root for Alabama. And both need to root against BYU. Now, on to those other championship games, and the question everyone has been asking: Will the ACC get shut out if 7-5 Duke upsets 10-2 Virginia?

If the No. 17 Cavaliers win, it’s pretty straightforward: They’ll get the fourth AQ bid and the No. 11 seed, while the winner in the American between No. 20 Tulane (10-2) and No. 24 North Texas (11-1) will get the fifth AQ bid and the No. 12 seed. If Duke wins, expect the American champ to move up to the No. 11 seed. Then the fifth and final automatic berth will depend on whether unranked Duke jumps above No. 25 James Madison (11-1), a 23-point favorite over Troy (8-4) in the Sun Belt title game.

Here’s their resume comparison (as of Dec. 3). The first three categories are from The Athletic’s Austin Mock’s ratings.

CATEGORY
Overall rating
JMU     
23
DUKE
49
Strength of record
25
65
Strength of schedule    
118
66
Top 25 (Sagarin)
0-0
0-0
Top 50 (Sagarin)
0-1
1-3

Duke played tougher competition (obviously), but the overall ratings and strength of record indicate JMU’s 11-1 finish against its schedule was considerably more impressive than Duke’s 7-5 against its harder schedule. Beating a top-25 Virginia team would close the gap, but probably not by enough. And consider this: Duke did not even appear in the Others Receiving Votes section of this week’s AP poll. Which means it was no better than No. 42.

Given the committee’s rankings are not that different than AP’s, here’s guessing the Blue Devils wouldn’t jump 17 spots for beating Virginia. The best guess here is that Duke gets shut out. Having deduced all that, here’s what the final bracket might look like if the Vegas favorites win every conference title game except in the ACC. I.e., the ACC’s worst nightmare.

Capture.thumb.PNG.ec3b471bffd89ff918420705e3428d5f.PNG

 

Posted

(David Hale) Week 15 Anger Index: The case for Texas and month-long gripes for Miami, BYU

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The first College Football Playoff rankings came out five weeks ago. They looked a lot like tonight's rankings. We've had precious little movement at the top, with a few teams jockeying up or down a slot, but effectively no seismic shifts in the landscape. BYU and Texas are the only two teams that were projected in the field in the committee's first ranking that aren't now -- and they're just barely on the outside with reasonable arguments for inclusion.

Since the first CFP ranking, teams ranked in the top 18 are a combined 55-9, with six of those losses coming to other teams ranked in the top 18. All three outliers are courtesy of -- you guessed it -- the ACC (Louisville to Cal, Virginia to Wake and Georgia Tech to Pitt). That's a massive anomaly. Last year, top-18 teams at this point had lost 19 games, including 14 to teams outside their own grouping. Top-10 teams are 33-4 this year. In the first 11 years of the playoff, top-10 teams had lost an average of nine games by this point in the season.

The two words that best describe this year's playoff push are "status quo." That, of course, has been bad news for all the teams on the outside looking in -- from those with valid cases such as Miami, BYU and Vanderbilt, to underdogs such as USC, Utah or Arizona that might've had a shot in a more chaotic year. But the real loser in this copy and paste rankings season is all the fans who just want to see things get weird.

It's a sad state of affairs when we're left to rely on MACtion and the ACC to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to college football drama. The power players need to step up -- or, perhaps, ratchet down -- their game to add a bit more drama. The good news is, the committee's ad hoc reasoning, mushmouthed explanations and mind-boggling about-faces still leave plenty to argue about, even if the big picture hasn't changed all that much.

Here's this week's biggest slights, snubs and shenanigans.

1. Texas Longhorns (9-3, No. 13)

It's not entirely clear how this committee values wins. For the past month, the priority has certainly appeared to be about which team has the better losses (unless, of course, you're Alabama). That seems a foolish way to prioritize playoff teams, since the goal of the playoff isn't to lose to good teams but to win games. Does Texas have a bad loss? Yes. A 29-21 defeat to woeful Florida -- even if the Gators also played Georgia and Ole Miss close and just walloped a team that beat Alabama head-to-head -- is problematic.

But look who Texas has beaten: No. 7 Texas A&M by 10, No. 8 Oklahoma by 17 and No. 14 Vandy by three (in a game they led by 24 in the fourth quarter). That's the résumé of a team capable of winning a national championship -- even if the Horns were also capable of losing to a second-rate SEC team. Are we trying to find teams with the most upside or give participation trophies to the ones which have not lost an ugly one? (Except, again, Alabama.)

And it's not as if the committee believes an extra loss is disqualifying. Oklahoma, Alabama, Notre Dame and Miami all have two losses and are ranked ahead of one-loss BYU (more on that in a moment), so what's the harm of moving a three-loss Texas ahead of a two-loss team that has accomplished less? This all comes back to the most frequent and justified criticism of the committee: The same rules aren't applied evenly. In some cases, record matters. In some cases, best wins matter. In some cases, better losses matter.

The standard varies based on the team being considered. But if the committee is going to err in favor of any team, it should probably do so for one that's proved -- not once, not twice, but three times -- that it can beat an elite opponent. Oh, and moving Texas up ahead of, say, Notre Dame would also have the added bonus of allowing the committee to sidestep another tricky situation. Which leads us to...

2. (tie). BYU Cougars (11-1, No. 11) and Miami Hurricanes (10-2, No. 12)

We're putting these two teams together because we've already lamented the committee's utterly disingenuous evaluation of them repeatedly, so it feels redundant to keep going down the same rabbit hole. But, for the sake of two programs being astonishingly misevaluated, let's do one more round. For Miami, the logic is obvious: The Canes beat Notre Dame head-to-head.

But let's keep going. Miami's two losses -- SMU and Louisville -- would rank as the fourth- and fifth-toughest games on Notre Dame's schedule, had the Irish played them. Instead, Notre Dame has cruised through an essentially listless slate. Six of Notre Dame's 10 wins came against teams that beat zero or one other Power 4 opponent. Stanford -- seriously, Stanford! -- is Notre Dame's fourth-best win (by record). Yes, Notre Dame played well enough in losses to two very good teams, but one of those teams has the same record and is somehow ranked lower! Even if this is strictly about the "eye test," there's little argument for ignoring the head-to-head outcome. Notre Dame's strength of record is 13th. Miami's is 14th. Notre Dame's game control is fifth. Miami's is sixth. If all else is the same, how is head-to-head not the deciding factor?

Yet, here's a little more salt in the wound for the Canes: Had Florida State finished 6-2 instead of 2-6 in ACC play, Miami would've won the (fifth) tiebreaker for a spot in the ACC title game and could've locked up its place in the playoff by simply beating Virginia. Instead, the Canes will sit at home and watch and hope and, at this point, probably get left out. Chess, not checkers, by rival FSU.

As for BYU, the committee's desire to overlook the Cougars makes no sense. Let's take a look at a blind résumé, shall we? (Note: Best wins and composite top 40 based on an average of SP+, FPI and Sagarin ratings.)

Team A: No. 6 strength of record, No. 14 game control, best win vs. No. 11, next vs. No. 28, loss to No. 5, four wins vs. composite top 40, five wins vs. teams that finished 7-5 or better

Team B: No. 7 strength of record, No. 10 game control, best win vs. No. 13, next vs. No. 27, loss to No. 7, three wins vs. composite top-40, two wins vs. teams that finished 7-5 or better

Now, just based on that information, Team A would seem the obvious choice. Now what if I told you Team B just lost its head coach, too? That's right, Team A is BYU and Team B is Ole Miss. Every bit of data here suggests the Cougars are, at worst, on even footing with the Rebels or ahead, and yet the committee has Ole Miss ranked five spots higher. This is, arguably, the second year in a row in which BYU was clearly the most overlooked team in the country.

3. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (10-2, No. 10)

A week ago, Notre Dame was ranked one spot ahead of Alabama. Then on Saturday, the Irish beat 4-8 Stanford by 29 (in a game they at one point led 42-3), while Alabama beat 5-7 Auburn by seven (in a game the Tigers had a chance to tie before fumbling in Tide territory late). The committee looked at those two results and said, "You know what, we like what we saw from the Tide! Move 'em up!"

What could possibly be the logic for shifting opinions on these two teams? The only other team that jumped another winning team was Texas, and the Longhorns beat the No. 3 team in the country emphatically, not a second-tier team that fired its head coach a month ago. Oh, and hasn't the committee made it pretty clear losses are supposed to matter? Well, Notre Dame has two losses to teams ranked in the top 12. Alabama got beat by a Florida State team that finished 5-7.

Even by the eye test, this makes little sense. Notre Dame has proved to be one of the most complete, dominant teams in the country, with a secondary that's near impossible to throw on, a rookie quarterback who has been nearly flawless and a running back who might well be the best player in the country. Alabama, on the other hand, has a one-note offense that can't run the football.

We're not believers in using advanced metrics as a ranking of accomplishment, but if this is simply a "who's better" debate...

  •     SP+ ranks Notre Dame fifth and Alabama 12th.
  •     FPI ranks Notre Dame third and Alabama sixth.
  •     Sagarin ranks Notre Dame second and Alabama seventh.
  •     FEI ranks Notre Dame fourth and Alabama ninth.

So, again, we ask: Why would the committee possibly make this change? We'd wager you know the answer. That sticky Canes vs. Irish head-to-head debate is a real headache for the committee. But if Notre Dame's currently the last team in and something unexpected happens this weekend (hello, BYU over Texas Tech), then the committee can do as it did in 2014 and wash its hands of a tough choice and keep both Notre Dame and Miami out.

(It's also interesting that a seven-point win over a team with a losing record is enough to jump Notre Dame, but a 31-point win over a ranked Pitt did nothing for Miami's relative placement with the Irish despite -- and we're not sure anyone has mentioned this yet -- a head-to-head win!) But, speaking of Alabama...

4. Championship game participants

Step into the time machine with us for a moment, all the way back to championship week 2024. Here's the state of play: Alabama, at 9-3, is ranked No. 11, the first team out of the playoff and also out of the SEC title game. Still, the Tide and the SEC hope there's a pathway to salvation because SMU -- 11-1 and ranked eighth -- still has a game to play against Clemson in the ACC championship. If the Mustangs were to lose, couldn't the committee then justify slotting SMU behind Alabama based on another data point, even though the Tide were simply sitting at home watching the action?

This was the case being made throughout the run up to the ACC championship last season. SMU, which should've been celebrating a miraculously successful first season in the Power 4, spent hours upon hours defending itself against criticism that it didn't belong in the same conversation with big, bad Bama. Rhett Lashlee hinted he thought the committee's vote was rigged, SMU players lamented their status on the chopping block despite a ranking that should've put them safely in the playoff field, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made the rounds arguing that Alabama's (and Ole Miss' and South Carolina's) strength of schedule ought to put them ahead of SMU (and others).

OK, back to the present day. Here we are with Alabama sitting perilously on the dividing line between in the field and out -- a week ago, it would have been the last team in, but of course the committee had other ideas this time around -- with a game to play against Georgia in the SEC championship. An ACC team (Miami) sits just a tick behind the Tide in the rankings, but it will be off this week. So, what happens if Alabama loses?

The comparison to last year's SMU isn't even a particularly fair one. The Mustangs were at No. 8 before the ACC title game. Alabama is at No. 9 (and probably should be a spot or two lower). SMU's game against Clemson was new territory. A loss to Georgia will actually undermine Alabama's best argument for inclusion -- the three-point win in Athens in September. And while SMU did make the playoff field last year, a last-second loss on a 56-yard field goal still dropped the Mustangs from No. 8 to No. 10 in the rankings.

Play this scenario out now: Alabama, ranked at No. 9, plays a team that currently counts as the Tide's best win. Imagine if Georgia wins the rematch and does so convincingly. The committee docked SMU two spots for a last-second loss, so surely it will do at least that much to Alabama for a more convincing defeat, right? And here's the other thing: Even with the ACC title game loss last year, SMU was 11-2 -- one less loss than Alabama had. A Tide loss in the SEC title game will be defeat No. 3 -- one more than Notre Dame or Miami or (presumably) BYU.

It's hard not to see a conspiracy here given the committee's inexplicable flip-flop between Alabama and Notre Dame. It's hard not to see brand bias in how the Tide's championship week narrative diverges from SMU's a year ago. It's not at all hard to envision a scenario where Alabama loses to Georgia, gets in as the last team anyway, and it's all explained away as a completely reasonable decision.

5. James Madison Dukes (11-1, No. 25)

Well, the committee finally weighed in on more than one team outside the Power 4 -- mostly because it was just impossible to find enough Power 4 teams worth ranking -- and the news isn't good for JMU. With the committee deciding already that North Texas is the higher ranked team, the Dukes' only hope for the playoff would seem to be a Duke win in the ACC title game.

But what exactly has the committee seen to warrant that decision? Check out the numbers.

Best win (by average FPI, SP+ and Sagarin ranking)
JMU: No. 54 Old Dominion
UNT: No. 62 Washington State

Next best
JMU: No. 62 Washington State
UNT: No. 68 Navy

Loss
JMU: No. 29 Louisville
UNT: No. 24 USF

Wins vs. bowl-eligible
JMU: six
UNT: five

Strength of record
JMU: 18th
UNT: 22nd

FPI
JMU: 28th
UNT: 37th

There are certainly some check marks in North Texas' favor, including a more impressive win over common opponent Washington State and a slightly better SP+ ranking, but on the whole, James Madison has had the tougher path here. That can change should UNT beat Tulane, but the committee should've waited for that to happen. Instead, it has made it clear JMU isn't sniffing the playoff unless it comes at the expense of the ACC.

Also angry this week: Vanderbilt Commodores (10-2, No. 14); The ACC leadership who voted on its tiebreaker policies; Manny Diaz, who has to try to make a coherent argument for his five-loss Duke Blue Devils getting in ahead of a one-loss JMU; Every 8-4 team with a markedly better résumé than 9-3 Houston, which isn't ranked this week; and Lane Kiffin's yoga instructor and Juice Kiffin's dog walker.

 

Posted
18 minutes ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

My prediction:

1. Indiana

2 Georgia

3. Ohio St

4. Tech

5. Oregon

6. Ole Miss

7. A&M

8. OU

9. Notre Dame

10. Bama

11. Miami

12. BYU

(JMU over Duke)

That’s what the ESPN mole said so that’s what it will be. 

Posted
17 minutes ago, Reynolds Woodcock said:

My prediction:

1. Indiana

2 Georgia

3. Ohio St

4. Tech

5. Oregon

6. Ole Miss

7. A&M

8. OU

9. Notre Dame

10. Bama

11. Miami

12. BYU

(JMU over Duke)

Keeping BYU in to get death star'd by Oregon would be a real donkey show. JMU or Duke will be the same.

I get it, you want to reward teams for winning their conference. Just didn't think too hard about there being a bunch of sisters of the poor conferences that are not playing D-1 level football

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
Just now, Captainant said:

Keeping BYU in to get death star'd by Oregon would be a real donkey show. JMU or Duke will be the same.

I get it, you want to reward teams for winning their conference. Just didn't think too hard about there being a bunch of sisters of the poor conferences that are not playing D-1 level football

BYU is eliminated. The last two spots will be Tulane and one of either JMU or Duke. The real cut off is 10. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Keeping BYU in to get death star'd by Oregon would be a real donkey show. JMU or Duke will be the same.

I get it, you want to reward teams for winning their conference. Just didn't think too hard about there being a bunch of sisters of the poor conferences that are not playing D-1 level football

Props for "donkey show."

  • Haha 1
Posted (edited)

Inshallah

I think I’d rather just do the BCS system and have IU play UGA on January 2 for all the marbles. 

Edited by Duane Moore
Just saw this was already posted by @satyanash in the polls thread. Too many of these for the same topic to keep up
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Posted (edited)

They either need to give the committee a stricter structure or just use computer models.  The weekly rankings are supposed to give a good sense of where you stand, but they've moved idle teams and teams without a notable outcome in pretty much every week this year.  

No matter whether you think we are done or not, we are open in sportsbooks, which means enough people think idle Texas could be swapped with another idle team that it is a betting prop.

The big issue with computer models is that it is really hard to exclude "run up the score" stats in them and have good output. 

And most modelers don't really understand football.  They just have generic modified Elo's or stat regression's that they could apply to any sport or game.  These aren't bad, but they aren't good either.  We all see the headscratchers that Sagarin puts out at times.  And his BCS-qualified model was even worse.

Edited by JBJ
  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
5 minutes ago, JBJ said:

The big issue with computer models is that it is really hard to exclude "run up the score" stats in them and have good output. 

And most modelers don't really understand football.  They just have generic modified Elo's or stat regression's that they could apply to any sport or game.  These aren't bad, but they aren't good either.  We all see the headscratchers that Sagarin puts out at times.  And his BCS-qualified model was even worse.

Didn't Sagarin's BCS-qualified model take care of the "running up the score" problem by excluding margin of victory?

Posted

We would be in better shape today if they had just expanded to 8 teams when the Pac12 was still around.  All five major conferences could pick their automatic qualifier with whatever criteria they wished.  Then three at large to round out the eight. I doubt the Pac12 never would have disbanded with an auto bid at stake. 

Too late for that now. 

Posted
Just now, satyanash said:

Didn't Sagarin's BCS-qualified model take care of the "running up the score" problem by excluding margin of victory?

Yes.  All BCS models did.  You could only consider W-L, no scores and no stats, which just isn't enough.

Posted

JMU and Tulane are absolutely jokes. It proves that any metric talked about isn’t realistic. The CFP committee is a complete failure. It needs to be revamped.

Posted

After watching all of the conference championship matchups yesterday, Indiana, tOSU, and Georgia look to all be legit. They all three pass the eyeball test. I think the eventual champion will come from one of those three teams, and would beat any team from Tech on up by at least two touchdowns. I haven't watched much of Oregon, but Indiana went to their house and whipped them. 

CHIEF

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Posted

Pete Thamel: Big Ten proposing idea for 24- or 28-team CFP, sources say

Quote

The Big Ten has considered an idea of a massive expansion of the College Football Playoff that would grow the postseason to 24 or 28 teams, sources told ESPN. While the idea is in the early stages, the proposal eliminates conference title games and offers a large number of auto bids for all four power leagues, sources said. For example, in the 28-team model, the Big Ten and SEC would each get seven auto bids while the ACC and Big 12 would each receive five.

There would be two auto bids for the non-Power 4 conferences and two at-large teams. The 28-team format would put 20 playoff games on campus, which would accentuate the success of that from last year's CFP. The CFP committee would seed the field and pick the at-large teams. Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti ran the idea by his conference Wednesday, sources said, and that it has begun being shared by others.

The 2025 season will be the second year of the 12-team playoff. College football leaders have been discussing expansion to 16 teams over the past year, but disagreement over the number of at-large teams vs. auto bids has been a sticking point.

 

  • Haha 1
Posted
5 hours ago, taybo20 said:

JMU and Tulane are absolutely jokes. It proves that any metric talked about isn’t realistic. The CFP committee is a complete failure. It needs to be revamped.

The G5 need to go first. P4 only. Proceed from there.

Posted

(David Hale) CFP Anger Index: A difficult choice but a ridiculous process

Quote

Twelve years into the College Football Playoff, the committee may have been tasked with its toughest decision yet. On one hand, there's Alabama, the bluest of blue bloods, a team that played the sixth-toughest schedule in the country, with seven wins over FPI top-40 opponents, and whose final loss -- the one that put the Tide squarely on the bubble -- came in the SEC championship game, while others like Miami and Notre Dame sat at home.

On the other hand, there's Notre Dame, the most storied program in the sport's history with a legion of fans from coast to coast. The Irish are playing exceptional football, winning 10 straight all by double digits, and their lone losses, way back in August and early September, came to two other top-tier teams by a combined four points.

Then on the metaphorical third hand is Miami, a team that began the season with fireworks, sagged in the middle, then responded to its No. 18 placement in the first set of rankings by reeling off four straight wins by an average of 27 points per game. Oh, and Miami holds a head-to-head win over Notre Dame, albeit one that came in the first week of the season and that the committee may or may not consider from week to week.

Spread around a few garnishes of Texas, Vanderbilt and BYU on the plate and add a dessert course of a Duke-JMU argument that could result in bumping a Power 4 conference from the playoff entirely and it's a tough year to be a committee member.

There have been others, of course. In 2014, the committee punted on a tricky Baylor-TCU debate in favor of Ohio State, and the Buckeyes won it all. In 2017, amid a chaotic final week, the committee handed its final bid to Alabama, despite its absence from the SEC championship game, and the Tide went on to win a championship. In 2023, the committee snubbed an undefeated Florida State, because of an injury to QB Jordan Travis, and the Seminoles have gone on to lose 18 of their next 25 games.

The results after a controversial decision always seem to lead to the same conclusion: The committee got things right. And yet, as the committee so often notes after each rankings release, the results alone don't tell the whole story. In football, perhaps more than any other sport, the process matters. And the committee's process, from the outset of that first playoff 12 years ago, has been a mess.

The ultimate verdict of Sunday's final ranking showcased the disaster vividly. Step away from the whole process, and the decision to rank Miami ahead of Notre Dame makes perfect sense. They have the same record. Miami won head-to-head. Most rational folks, aligned with neither side, would acknowledge the committee came to a sensible conclusion. But look at the process and try to follow the committee's rationale, and it's like climbing the stairs in an M.C. Escher painting.

In the first ranking, Notre Dame was eight spots ahead of Miami. Both won out, both by big margins, and each week along the way, Notre Dame remained ahead of Miami. Last week, Alabama -- fresh off a near disaster in the Iron Bowl -- leapfrogged Notre Dame despite the Irish dominating Stanford 49-20. That was a head-scratcher, unless, of course, you believed the minor conspiracy that the committee was setting up a direct comparison between Miami and Notre Dame by having them ranked one right after the other.

And, what do you know, that's what we got. After BYU lost its conference championship, the Cougars dropped in the rankings -- something that didn't happen to Alabama for a similar blowout defeat, it should be noted -- and Notre Dame and Miami were separated by nothing other than the committee's whims.

So while both sat home on their couches on championship weekend, Miami somehow did enough to push its way into the playoff instead of Notre Dame. Is it a reasonable conclusion? Yes! Is it a ridiculous process that got us here? A thousand yeses!

Let's consider how the committee evaluates teams for a moment. Which variables matter most? We've gone from Florida State's battle against game control in 2014 to Notre Dame's résumé boasting two quality losses in 2025. Does head-to-head matter? For five weeks it might not, but in the last week it clearly did. The committee is supposed to evaluate a school's entire body of work, but does that mean a September loss can't be overshadowed by clear and obvious growth throughout a season?

Do conference championships matter? Winning them is supposed to be a factor -- though, ask 2023 Florida State about that -- so shouldn't a loss matter, too? A year ago, committee chair Warde Manuel said it might -- including docking SMU two spots after a three-point loss to Clemson in the ACC conference championship game, even if it didn't knock the Mustangs out of the playoff. But Alabama's 21-point loss Saturday meant nothing.

Ranked wins are great, but of course the committee decides who earns the distinction of being ranked. The eye test is the best argument for one team, the data for another, and no one can be sure which metric matters more, because again, it depends. For a committee composed primarily of former coaches and active ADs, the human element -- perceptions, expectations, projections, biases and misunderstandings -- loom like a cloud over every mention of strength of record or game control.

Or boil it down to the most basic debate: Are we trying to find the best teams or the most deserving? And how do we even define those two things? From week to week, the answer is a shrug emoji and a Mad Libs of metrics and records pieced together like those magnetic words people put on their refrigerator.

All of this leads to arguments, which is likely a feature of the system, not a bug. Debate is part of the DNA of sports. But ironically, no one seems to contradict the committee more than the committee itself. The case for Team A so often sounds like the mirror image of the case against Team B. Alabama jumped Notre Dame in last week's rankings after an ugly win over Auburn, but Miami's dominant victory on the road against a ranked Pitt team made no difference. When Texas A&M needed a Houdini act to beat South Carolina, that wasn't a knock on the Aggies, the committee chair said, but when Alabama narrowly escaped those same Gamecocks, it was a flaw in the Tide's résumé. Ranked wins are great -- but only if the team was ranked at the time, or maybe if it ends up ranked in the future. Also, the committee does the ranking so, whew.

And when those explanations get parsed by fans in the aftermath of perplexing decisions -- Alabama's "impressive" seven-point win over 5-7 Auburn allowing the Tide to leapfrog Notre Dame after a 29-point Irish win over 4-8 Stanford, for example -- the outcome isn't just disagreements and debate. It's conspiratorial thinking. It's a hollowing out of trust in the process. It's a belief that the deck is stacked ahead of time. And that's a disservice to the sport, the teams involved, and the committee itself. Good folks work hard and care about their role, but because their process is so immensely flawed, the presumption of nefarious motives isn't just fodder for the message boards, but increasingly, mainstream thinking.

Imagine for a moment this wasn't about college football. Imagine instead this was clinical trials for a new drug or a prized astrophysicist trying to explain an anomaly deep in outer space or, heck, assembling a bookshelf you bought from IKEA. Any such endeavor requires not just a result that seems to work, but a process that can be repeated, again and again, by a completely different set of people, before anyone gives it enough credence that a majority of people -- even ones who don't understand the process at all -- believe in the work that was done and trust the results provided.

We don't have to understand Einstein's theory of relativity to believe in its basic principles. Relativity remains a theory, not a fact, but it is commonly accepted around the world by brilliant scientists and guys watching "Interstellar" at 3 a.m. on cable alike, because we can all appreciate a stringent process, rigorous testing, and an ability to withstand criticism from dissenting voices.

If we can do that for quantum physics, then surely we can do that for a college football playoff, right? Instead, we'll continue to argue. That's OK. The arguments are part of the fun. But at the foundation of those arguments are real people -- players, coaches, administrators, support staffs and even the fans. While no result will make everyone happy, the least this sport owes them is a process they can understand.

1. Notre Dame Fighting Irish (10-2, No. 11)

Way back on Nov. 4, Notre Dame was 6-2 with a three-point loss to Miami on its résumé. The committee believed the Irish were the No. 10 team in the country. On that same date, Miami was 6-2 with a three-point win over Notre Dame on its résumé. The committee believed the Canes were the No. 18 team in the country. This isn't complicated math, but just for clarity's sake: Five weeks ago, these two teams had the same record, Miami had a head-to-head win, and the committee believed Notre Dame was eight spots better.

That would certainly seem to indicate a sincere and strong belief that, the Week 1 result be damned, the Irish were clearly the better team overall. So, what has happened since then? Notre Dame is 4-0 with a win over a ranked team and an average margin of 38 points per game. Miami is 4-0 with a win over a ranked team and an average margin of 27.5 points per game. And yet, when the committee put its rankings together this time around, Miami is one spot ahead of Notre Dame.

There is every reason to be suspicious of the committee's initial evaluation of these two teams. Perhaps those Nov. 4 rankings were a mistake. But the committee waited five weeks to correct that mistake, and during that span, the Irish absolutely demoralized everyone they played -- including two teams that Miami also played, but Notre Dame won by more.

Nothing that has happened between the first rankings and the last suggests Notre Dame got worse relative to Miami, and yet a full nine spots in the rankings have shifted between the two. If this was all about the committee playing the long game, using the opening scenes to set up a dramatic showdown between Miami and Notre Dame in the final act, then kudos for creating some exceptional TV.

As far as offering an honest weekly evaluation of college football teams, however, this was an absurd farce that served as a slap in the face to coach Marcus Freeman and his team and leaves us without the chance to see arguably the best player in the country, Jeremiyah Love, in the biggest games of the year.

2. Texas A&M Aggies (11-1, No. 7)

Typically the difference between a No. 6 and a No. 7 ranking is negligible. Both get a home game in the first round, both have a good shot to advance. This year, however, it's a little different. Thanks to the ACC's pratfall of a season, two Group of 5 teams made the final field. That means both the No. 5 seed and the No. 6 seed get to play teams from outside the big-boy conferences, while the No. 7 seed lands a genuine contender on the docket in Round 1.

The loser of this lottery is Texas A&M, and that's a pretty tough take to defend. Let's look at the résumés.

  • Team A: No. 10 in FPI, best win vs. FPI No. 3, loss to FPI No. 13, No. 3 strength of record, five wins vs. bowl-eligible teams, six wins vs. FPI top 40
  • Team B: No. 12 in FPI, best win vs. FPI No. 15, loss to SP+ No. 6, No 6 strength of record, four wins vs. bowl-eligible teams, four wins vs. FPI top 40

They're close, but the edge in nearly every metric is with Team A. That's Texas A&M. Or how about this: Against five common opponents, A&M has a scoring edge of 2 points, including a far better win over LSU, their best common foe. Is it splitting hairs? Of course, but that's the committee's job. And the results of that hair-splitting are the difference between Ole Miss getting a rematch with a Tulane team it beat by 35 in September or facing off against a red-hot Miami eager to prove it belonged in the field.

3. Texas Longhorns (9-3, No. 13)

On Saturday, the SEC commissioner was asked to state his case for his league's bubble teams. He offered an inclusive take. "I view that there are seven of our teams at the conclusion of the 12-game season over 14 weeks that merit inclusion in the playoff," Sankey said. And yet, here we are, with just a measly five SEC teams in the field, including one getting a first-round bye and three hosting home games. It's a slap in the face!

Truth is, Vanderbilt was quite good this year, with a strength of record ahead of both Notre Dame and Miami, and the world would simply be a better place with Diego Pavia in the playoff. Truth is, if the goal of the playoff is to seed it with the best teams -- the teams capable of beating other elite teams and making a run for a championship -- then Texas had as good a case as anyone, with head-to-head wins over Oklahoma, Vandy and Texas A&M. Heck, compare these two résumés:

  • Team A: Three losses, the worst loss to FPI No. 53 by eight and three wins vs. FPI top-15 teams
  • Team B: Three losses, the worst loss to FPI No. 74 by 14 and two wins vs. FPI top-15 teams

Team A also has a 17-point win over a team that beat Team B. So, who would you take? Don't ask Sankey. His answer is both. But Team A is Texas and Team B is Alabama, and the Longhorns have looked markedly better over the past month of the season than the flailing Tide.

4. Duke Blue Devils (8-5, unranked)

You have to hand it to Manny Diaz. The man can make a coherent argument for a lost cause.

"We played 10 Power 4 teams. Comparing us to James Madison, for example, who had a fantastic season -- their strength of schedule is in the 100s. Ours is in the 50s. Seven wins in our conference. Seven Power 4 wins as opposed to zero Power 4 wins. The ACC champions. ... I'm watching them play Troy at home [in the Sun Belt championship] and Troy had a backup quarterback in for most of the game, right? And it's a three-point game until, really, the last few minutes of the game when they were able to pull away. They won the game and their conference, but you just can't compare going through the Sun Belt this year -- the Sun Belt has been a really good conference in years past, but most of their top teams are just having down years. They're not challenged the way they would've been going through a normal Sun Belt schedule. Then you start comparing strength of schedule -- if you simply go into wins and losses, you have to look at who you're playing against. That's the whole point of why you play a Power 4 schedule. There's a reason these coaches are all leaving to take Power 4 jobs. There's a recognition that's where the best competition is."

That was no small jab at JMU, whose coach, Bob Chesney, is leaving for a Power 4 job at UCLA. It also probably gets Diaz removed from Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill's Christmas card list, which given that ACC commissioner Jim Phillips can't be pleased with Duke torpedoing his conference's reputation by winning the league with five losses, is going to leave a lot of extra space on Diaz's mantle this holiday season.

5. BYU Cougars (11-2, No. 12)

Alabama lost a championship game by 21 points to a top-four team. It didn't budge in the rankings. BYU lost a championship game by 27 points to a top-four team. It dropped a spot. Did it ultimately matter for the Cougars? No. They weren't sniffing the playoff unless they beat Texas Tech. But on principle, they ought to be angry about the double standard.

Moreover, BYU was the most overlooked team all season -- the one that had a good case, a comparable résumé, and virtually no one outside of Provo cheerleading for them. Which, oddly enough, feels about the same as last year, when BYU had a perfectly good case alongside Alabama, Miami, Ole Miss and South Carolina, and no one seemed to bat an eye when they finished a distant 17th -- behind Clemson, even -- in the committee's final ranking.

Also angry this week: Virginia Cavaliers (10-3, No. 19 and dropped two spots -- more than any other conference championship game loser, despite playing the closest conference championship game), Tennessee Volunteers, LSU Tigers, Illinois Fighting Illini and Missouri Tigers (all 8-4, all unranked, and all with a better strength of record than the Arizona Wildcats or the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets), Lane Kiffin (astonished the committee didn't value his departure more).

 

Posted
3 hours ago, CHIEF said:

After watching all of the conference championship matchups yesterday, Indiana, tOSU, and Georgia look to all be legit. They all three pass the eyeball test. I think the eventual champion will come from one of those three teams, and would beat any team from Tech on up by at least two touchdowns. I haven't watched much of Oregon, but Indiana went to their house and whipped them. 

CHIEF

Game was even worse than the scoreboard, but Oregon was basically missing their 2-deep at WR, and I haven't followed them enough to know who is healthy now.

The other two teams that could likely challenge the whole thing were left out.

 

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Posted

Stewart Mandel: The College Football Playoff can’t keep changing every year to fix its latest controversy

Quote

We’re only two years into the 12-team College Football Playoff, and you can already see an annual tradition brewing: People screaming, “THEY’VE GOT TO FIX THIS!” Last year, it was the No. 9 (Boise State) and No. 12 (Arizona State) teams getting first-round byes instead of No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Penn State due to a conference champion requirement. The commissioners stepped in a few months later and changed the format to keep that from happening again.

This year, it’s No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 James Madison getting automatic berths while No. 11 Notre Dame stays home, thanks to 8-5 Duke winning the ACC. There were immediate calls on ESPN and on X to introduce a minimum-ranking threshold to keep that from happening again. They’re all focused on the wrong problem. The chief takeaway from the 2025 College Football Playoff race is the need to end the selection committee’s weekly Tuesday night rankings show to make sure this never happens again.

This being Alabama losing the SEC title game by three touchdowns and remaining in the same No. 9 spot as last week, thus ensuring the 10-3 Tide an at-large berth, and Miami and Notre Dame finally swapping places without either playing another game. None of those things would have happened if the committee hadn’t spent five weeks boxing itself into a corner so ESPN could fill a half hour of programming on Tuesday nights. Or more accurately, so that ESPN will pay the conferences more money than it otherwise would.

“Any rankings or show before this last one is an absolute joke and a waste of time,” jilted Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua told Yahoo Sports after the selections. “If the rankings shows are legitimate, there is no logical explanation for what happened to us.” Worth noting: Bevacqua’s predecessor, Jack Swarbrick, along with the FBS conference commissioners, signed off on the ESPN contract that birthed those rankings shows.

Were there no weekly rankings, I do believe Alabama, which lost two of its last three Power 4 games (at home to Oklahoma and 28-7 to Georgia), would be out. No one could accuse the committee of “punishing” the Tide for losing a 13th game because no one would know where they were ranked in the first place. Both 10-2 Miami and 10-2 Notre Dame would then be in, their seeding properly reflecting the Canes’ head-to-head win. No one would have ever known the order was flipped for five weeks before that, because there would have been no five-week pecking order.

The Tuesday night shows have always been a silly exercise full of inconsistencies and contradictory statements by the selection committee chair, but in the four-team CFP, they were fairly harmless. Everyone got predictably worked up, but also, everyone knew only the final edition mattered. But now that spots 9 through 11 matter far more than they used to, we’re seeing just how drastically five weeks of fake rankings can taint the selection process. But the conferences can’t shake them, because the conferences like money.

Next season marks the beginning of the CFP’s new six-year contract with ESPN, which will pay the FBS conferences $7.8 billion. And yes, it still includes a stipulation that the committee release five sets of rankings before Selection Sunday. This year, the Nov. 4, 11 and 25 shows averaged between 714,000 and 961,000 viewers, with the Nov. 18 edition that aired between games of the Champions Classic in basketball spiking to 1.6 million. Even the lower-rated ones are the same or better than ESPN gets for one of those weeknight Tulane-UTSA games. And studio shows are a lot cheaper to produce.

The only way they’ll ever go away is if the commissioners are willing to take a little less money in exchange for eliminating the CFP’s single biggest credibility killer. “I think what happens over the course of the five or six weeks that we have this show, it really sets the expectations, allows us to share a little bit of a peek behind the curtain of how we’re ranking teams from week to week,” committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said Sunday. Fine. They should give everyone a peek behind the curtain a month ahead of time, like the basketball committee does with its top-16 reveal, then go back behind the curtain and stay there until Dec. 7.

Instead, the commissioners will probably focus on finding a way to exclude the next James Madison, as if it’s the Sun Belt school’s fault that a five-loss team won the ACC.  And they’ll spend at least another year locked in a Tony Petitti-vs.-Greg Sankey stalemate over the best format for a 16- or 24-team Playoff. This is all too familiar to those of us who lived through 16 years of the BCS. Every year, without fail, some unforeseen controversy would arise, prompting them to tweak the formula used to select the teams, only to do it again after the next inevitable unforeseen controversy. It was needlessly confusing, and it damaged the system’s credibility to the point where we had Congressional hearings and threats of antitrust investigations.

If they’re not careful, this generation of commissioners will take the CFP down the same path. Why not try this instead: Keep the format the same for a while. Don’t force the public to reeducate itself every year as to how the Playoff works. And don’t make it so exhausting that it’s too intimidating for a new or casual fan to understand. Focus on the one change that would benefit the product more than anything: A selection process that doesn’t undermine itself before the committee even selects the teams.

Joe Rexrode: The College Football Playoff committee did a bad job. Here’s how we would fix it

Quote

In the end, the College Football Playoff selection committee of 2025 gave us controversy, inane explanations rife with contradictions, and a first round that will be 50% watchable at best — sorry, but James Madison at Oregon and Tulane at Ole Miss look like terrible games. Two of those three things are hard to avoid. We’ll have controversy every year. Unsavory matchups are going to happen. And though it was Notre Dame that got the short straw in Sunday’s final rankings, outrage would have greeted Miami or Alabama being left out as well. Vanderbilt, Texas and BYU also have legitimate beef.

There’s a case for several different fields of 12 other than the one the committee gave us. But the field is defensible. It’s the process that got us here, the confusion and ridicule created along the way, that’s indefensible. The committee must do better in 2026. We demand it. Because we have no other option. Everybody gets that, right? Of course, the coaches of teams that were left will say that this absolutely must be taken out of the hands of a committee. They have to say something. But aside from them, everyone who follows and cares about college football knows that humans are the only way.

Which means human improvement is the only way. Transparency is the clear fix. Imagine computers deciding this. I realize we could probably construct an AI “Wizard of Oz” who resembles Knute Rockne or Keith Jackson to do it all and explain the field each week in a folksy way. But it’s still just numbers, and there is no perfect formula. Imagine conference standings determining the field, or even putting teams in position to play their way into the field. Duke coach Manny Diaz said on the “Andy and Ari On3” podcast last week that the “only one way to fix this” is to “take this away from committees, and we’ve got to get this on the field.”

That sounds great. Until you consider that Diaz’s five-loss team’s appearance in the ACC title game against Virginia — an overtime win that was not enough to get the Blue Devils in  — was only possible because of tiebreakers in the oversized, double-coast Atlantic Coast Conference. Conference expansion has created completely different schedules among teams in the same league, which actually demands that we have humans sort things out. So even if we get to an expanded field or a “play-in” weekend, as Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti has been pushing, it can’t be with the automatic bids he’s been talking about. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, his league has three teams in this field and there isn’t a fourth with any kind of case.

Some years, the Big Ten will have more than that, of course. But no one engaging in semi-rational thought could believe that wildly disparate conference schedules and the conference standings that result should shape the Playoff in any way. Anyone calling what we have now a “disaster” would quickly find a better fit for that word. Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Texas and BYU are the teams the humans making these decisions would pit against each other if more opportunities existed.

This is how it must be. Let’s go back two years. In my rather unpopular opinion, the committee got it right in leaving Florida State out of the field after we all saw how diminished the Seminoles were without quarterback Jordan Travis. For everyone screaming that Florida State “earned its way” into the field — well, yeah, the team with Travis did. It’s like boarding a flight, watching the pilot take ill and leave the cockpit, and still demanding the flight take off because you paid for the ticket and, hey, the wings still work! But regardless of what you think about that specific situation, are we not better off if future situations can be hashed out by people rather than dictated by numbers or standings? Yes, we are.

And while the committee would benefit from an end to the weekly rankings and explanations, that’s not the answer. ESPN wouldn’t let it be the answer, anyway. The answer is more access. More explanation. More transparency. More accountability. There’s absolutely no reason the committee shouldn’t share all the numbers they are using. There’s no reason we shouldn’t hear them in their actual deliberations. The ACC’s experiment with drawing the curtain back on instant replay decisions is an example of why this would work. Yes, these are much, much longer conversations. But C-SPAN exists, doesn’t it? Take ESPN News and turn it into CFP-SPAN each fall.

I’ll regrettably admit for the sake of this column that my wife and I are longtime “Big Brother” watchers. Sometimes we’d find ourselves checking out the show’s 24-hour live feed, which is even more regrettable to admit. It was almost always completely boring and uneventful. But every once in a while, a profanity-laced argument would make it all worthwhile. And don’t worry, if you don’t have time to watch these people talk defensive stop rate amid bites of lobster salad sandwiches, someone will watch it all for you and make sure you hear about the important stuff.

Most of the conspiracy talk around these choices each year is brain-dead — you would think the “all about brand and ratings!” stuff would have died with SMU over Alabama last year, but conspiracy theorists rarely let facts change their feelings. Still, if the CFP people care about quieting such complaints, all they have to do is let everyone in on the actual discussions and free everyone from the nonsensical explanations. Oh, and we should also completely do away with active administrators on the committee to eliminate obvious conflicts of interest. It should be made up of retired coaches and retired college football media members only. People are going to be deciding the field in the future, but you have to have the right ones.

See, this is actually a pretty easy fix. Which is good, because there’s so much else to address. Congratulations to the top four seeds: Indiana, Ohio State, Georgia and Texas Tech. For your amazing seasons, you get a bye in the first round and then… won’t be able to enjoy some of the most amazing scenes imaginable in your home stadiums, because the quarterfinals will be played at bowl sites.

 

Posted

lol letting retired football coaches and writers do the selection is a terrible idea.

Hot take: a bunch of nerds who don’t watch football. Give them the principles and the advanced metrics they are allowed to consider and then have them do a 1/done selection meeting. 
 

Far better than letting Mack and RC Slocum pick. 

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Posted

Matt Hayes: CFP bracket, selection process needs to change. It's a dumpster fire

Quote

So much drama, so few answers to a college football postseason that, now more than ever, is a raging dumpster fire.  This much we know about the annual beauty pageant of a demolition derby: Everyone knows the surest, safest way to get to Valhalla is to win every single game.   Lose, and you’re at the contradictions and consternation of the College Football Playoff selection committee, and the human condition that fuels it.

And by human condition, I mean that absolute absurdity of it all. If strength of schedule was raised this offseason to the top of the metrics for the 12-member committee, how does James Madison — with the 128th-ranked schedule and without a win over a Power conference team — earn one of the five precious automatic qualifying spots for conference champions?

If winning a conference championship game is a critical metric, why wouldn’t losing a conference championship game be the same? Indiana won the Big Ten Championship game, and earned the No. 1 seed. Texas Tech won the Big 12, and Georgia won the SEC, and both earned a first-round bye. But Duke won the ACC, had a significantly tougher schedule and better wins than JMU, yet JMU earned the final automatic bid for the top five conference champions because it coasted through the Sun Belt and Duke lost five games in the ACC.

Ohio State lost to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship game, and fell. BYU was routed by Texas Tech in the Big 12 Championship game, and fell. Alabama was routed by Georgia in the SEC Championship game, and didn’t move — and stayed in the CFP as the only (and first) three-loss team. I ask you, who in their right mind believes Alabama, which lost to Oklahoma at home three weeks ago, nearly lost Auburn, and got blown out by Georgia, should be part of the party?

Meanwhile, there is Texas, which has three wins over the CFP Top 14, penalized for playing a nonconference game at No. 2 Ohio State — and losing by seven points. Then there’s the curious case of Notre Dame, the epicenter of the contradictory absurdity of the selection committee. For a month the 12-member committee explained Notre Dame wasn’t the same team that lost to Miami in the season opener and deserved to be among the fortunate 12.

The Irish, they say, were playing as well as anyone in the country. Until Championship Week arrived and Notre Dame wasn’t playing, and somehow fell out. How, you ask? We don’t really know, so maybe committee chairman and Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek can help. Or maybe he can’t. “The way BYU played in the conference championship game, it was worthy of Miami moving ahead of them,” Yurachek said.

This is why no one trusts the selection committee. What in blue blazes does BYU have to do with the Notre Dame-Miami argument? Because, Yurachek tried to awkwardly explain, the committee never really looked at Notre Dame and Miami — and Miami’s head-to-head win over Notre Dame was never considered — until the two teams were right next to each other in the poll. And BYU’s big loss to Texas Tech made that happen. Really, he said that. 

Look, the process has to change. The idea college football can have a playoff to determine a national champion and 10 teams are evaluated one way, and two teams (Tulane and JMU) are evaluated a completely different way, is the craziest looney of all. That the CFP can sell Ole Miss playing host to Tulane — a game we saw in September, where Tulane lost by 35 — and JMU playing at Oregon as part of four elite games to begin the postseason, isn’t realistic or productive for the health of the sport.

One Group of Five team is fine. Not preferable, but doable. A second at the expense of a Power conference champion or a more deserving team, is absolutely mind-numbing. This isn’t the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, where a mid-major can shock a Power conference team because one player gets hot and scores 30. There’s no comparison, and the fanciful pollyanna idea of anyone selling it is ridiculous.

There will be tweaks to the format this offseason, with or without the move to 16 teams. It should start with a limit on Group of Five teams, and a minimum threshold to earn a spot. No more gifts, no more automatic qualifications. The gift is reaching the threshold to be considered. Not rolling into the sport’s marquee event as a raging dumpster fire.

 

Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Hot take: a bunch of nerds who don’t watch football. Give them the principles and the advanced metrics they are allowed to consider and then have them do a 1/done selection meeting. 

Seriously.  You could probably get 12 Data Science majors from MIT to do a better job using advanced stats, SOR/SOS, etc. and don't watch a single second of football.  Don't even give them team names.  

And the obvious answer is - stop with the weekly rankings. Just release them at the end.  Or you can do a top 12 once a season, like how the NCAA committees do top 16 reveals in basketball. 

Edited by Js1
  • Like 1
Posted
5 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Seriously.  You could probably get 12 Data Science majors from MIT to do a better job using advanced stats, SOR/SOS, etc. and don't watch a single second of football.  Don't even give them team names.  

And the obvious answer is - stop with the weekly rankings. Just release them at the end.  Or you can do a top 12 once a season, like how the NCAA committees do top 16 reveals in basketball. 

Yeah, if we aren’t doing the weekly check-ins there is some grumbling but not full-bore meltdowns. The final pool is justifiable and defensible— but the committee had to make some WTF individual movements week to week to get here. 

Posted
1 minute ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Yeah, if we aren’t doing the weekly check-ins there is some grumbling but not full-bore meltdowns. The final pool is justifiable and defensible— but the committee had to make some WTF individual movements week to week to get here. 

2 sneak reveals would be fine

Week 9 first reveal (usually is week 10 now) 
Week 12
Week 15 final reveal 

Posted
19 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Seriously.  You could probably get 12 Data Science majors from MIT to do a better job using advanced stats, SOR/SOS, etc. and don't watch a single second of football.  Don't even give them team names.  

And the obvious answer is - stop with the weekly rankings. Just release them at the end.  Or you can do a top 12 once a season, like how the NCAA committees do top 16 reveals in basketball. 

The blind bit is a good tweak, too. You can hand them blind resumes with a star for the conference champs and say they have to include five of them for the final pool. 

Posted
32 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Seriously.  You could probably get 12 Data Science majors from MIT to do a better job using advanced stats, SOR/SOS, etc. and don't watch a single second of football.  Don't even give them team names.  

And the obvious answer is - stop with the weekly rankings. Just release them at the end.  Or you can do a top 12 once a season, like how the NCAA committees do top 16 reveals in basketball. 

its not complicated to need 12 MIT data scientists , the problem has always been structural - there are perverse incentives on NOT objectively using metrics to drive ranking position 

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