Man I was way off. 41-8 instead of my 42-7 prediction.
Also I posted back in like 5 Miami would win it all...
Also I posted back in like 5 Miami would win it all...
2017 College Football Game Thread - Week 11
- Thread starter SoxJox
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The last two weeks alone have shown how easy it is for things to unexpectedly get shaken up, and Wisconsin still has a long way to go with games against Michigan, a rivalry game (admittedly against a team whose most recent moment of relevance came about 25 years ago when an episode of Coach used game footage of them to represent Minnesota State's appearance in the Pioneer Bowl), and OSU.
And all this with a QB whose decision making ability seems to be getting worse by the week and who will be playing the rest of the season without his leading receiver. The defense certainly appears to be for real, the running game is, well, like it usually is, but Hornibrook keeps trying to make passes he shouldn't, and that problem could compound itself if they end up trailing later in the game. Granted, one of those pick 6s yesterday was on a tipped ball, but it was still a terrible throw.
Seems counter intuitive after giving up 66 yards to a ranked team, and with a Heisman candidate in the backfield, but Wisconsin really doesn't have much margin for error here.
And all this with a QB whose decision making ability seems to be getting worse by the week and who will be playing the rest of the season without his leading receiver. The defense certainly appears to be for real, the running game is, well, like it usually is, but Hornibrook keeps trying to make passes he shouldn't, and that problem could compound itself if they end up trailing later in the game. Granted, one of those pick 6s yesterday was on a tipped ball, but it was still a terrible throw.
Seems counter intuitive after giving up 66 yards to a ranked team, and with a Heisman candidate in the backfield, but Wisconsin really doesn't have much margin for error here.
Georgia and Alabama both have to go on the road to win rivalry week, at Georgia Tech and at Auburn, respectively. Why is everyone assuming those are wins?
I’m pissed Barkley has absolutely disappeared to let Baker Mayfield take a commanding Heisman lead.
If anyone on the East Coast bothered watching non-USC west coast games then Bryce Love would neck-and-neck with Mayfield.
I think it's a three horse race now between Mayfield, Love and Taylor, and if Oklahoma and Wisconsin lose, it goes to Love. If Oklahoma and Wiscy win out, it goes to Mayfield, and if OK loses and Wiscy wins out, it goes to Taylor.
LOL, no. It's a good story, and they certainly deserve a top tier Bowl game, but as long as the playoff is 4 teams, it can really only involve teams from the top conferences, unless you have a team that comes out of a smaller conference that absolutely lays the wood to everyone they play, etc. Then, maybe there would be an argument, but UCF isn't that team.
This is a perfect explanation of why the current college football playoff is still a joke. It's better than it once was, but until a team like UCF has a shot (which probably entails an 8 or 16 team playoff) it's not going to interest people who aren't totally into college football already.
I don't get why this isn't obvious to the NCAA; March Madness is a template that is clear and easy to duplicate (and FCS and lower divisions manage it no problem in college football), and it obviously brings in non-college basketball fans regularly. Outside of people who are already CFB fans, clinging to nonsense bowls that are pure exhibitions instead of a real playoff makes no sense.
I don't agree. Every week of CFB being like a playoff game is much better to me than the March Madness system.
You're probably already a fan of college football though, right? They're not going to lose you.
To me it's a pretty inferior product to other sports, and until the playoffs were introduced I almost never watched at all. The playoff has put it on my radar to where I'll pay some attention (and because of the playoffs, I'll follow the regular season a little bit), but a broader playoff would really be interesting and I suspect it'd bring in a lot more casual fans (as it does in basketball, or World Cup soccer, or a host of other sports). And the hardcore fans aren't going anywhere.
Barkley is still very much present. It's the offensive line's run blocking that has disappeared. It's also why the other elements of Penn State's offense (read Trace McSorley running/passing and receivers) have been able to pick up the slack, with defenses keying and birddogging Barkley on every play.
Still, Barkley's Heisman hopes are gone I believe.
I agree with some of this, and I'm prerty sure you are aware of this, but for others, the NCAA doesn't run the playoff, or the BCS before it. The conferences run it with a minimized input from the non-power 5 conferences. That said, it'll be 8 teams eventually although the soonest it could happen is 2020.
UCF has waylaid most of the teams on their schedule. SBN has a new metric out called Résumé S&P+, which is a backward looking version of S&P+; it shows how better/worse by point differential a team is compared to an avg top-5 team vs that team's schedule. UCF is 5th at +5.2 pts better than a top 5 team would have played their schedule (they are also 5th in regular S&P+, which is more of a forward looking predictive stat. They've been top 10 all season)
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You're preaching to the choir here. I'm a diehard, watch every single game I can possibly watch in a weekend, college football fan (even though I have no real rooting interest as I went to PC, which doesn't have football, so I truly watch it because I love the game), and I probably made my first posts about having a playoff system in the FBS on this site almost 15 years ago. I still don't understand why they can't eliminate the Bowls entirely, and simply use the same locations as the venues for the playoff games. I guarantee whatever conferences are making whatever money on these Bowl games that nobody attends and nobody watches would make much, much more money on them if it were a true playoff with 16 or even 32 teams. Not only that, I think there is enough interest around the country that an NIT type of tournament for the teams that don't get into the playoff would also draw huge numbers, so you could end with even more schools playing longer than just the regular season.
I seriously have never heard an argument against a large playoff system that I felt was truly persuasive. The number of games is one that comes up a lot, but between the conference championship, and the the playoffs now, the national champ and runner up are playing like 15 games. If you reduce the regular season to 10 games across the board (ie. do away with a bunch of these useless out-of-conference beatdowns), then you'd have most teams playing 11-12 games, and only the top few playing more, just like it is now.
I understand the argument about losing a game or two from the schedule from smaller schools that don't get into the playoff, but whether it's an NIT, or something else (maybe some profit sharing across the board from the big tournament), there has to be a way to make it at least revenue neutral for the rest of the teams left out. There will be so much money flying around, like March Madness, that if every college had a piece of the pie, so to speak, I guarantee that Troy or Old Dominion or whoever would be happy to give up one of their regular scheduled beatings at the hands of a Power 5 school in return for a couple million bucks for doing nothing.
A real concern here - at least to some - is that a tournament with as many as 32 teams means that the participants in the eventual championship game - on top of their 13 preceding games (to include a conference championship) will have played an extra 5 games. I don't think the system would be real keen on that idea.
And I'm not sure what the attraction to the top 32 teams would be. According to Wiki,
In my mind, the only real reason to expand the tournament (beyond generating more $$) is to reduce to some more acceptable level the elimination of teams that could argue a legitimate case to be included. You can only extend that argument so far. I don't think there are many that look at the AP and Coaches polls, and then the deciding FCS rankings and think an argument can be made much beyond the top 8, or perhaps 10. Beyond that, it's jilted skivvy wavers and alumni crying in spilled milk.
And I'm not sure what the attraction to the top 32 teams would be. According to Wiki,
So it would appear that there hasn't been all that much interest beyond the top 25.
In my mind, the only real reason to expand the tournament (beyond generating more $$) is to reduce to some more acceptable level the elimination of teams that could argue a legitimate case to be included. You can only extend that argument so far. I don't think there are many that look at the AP and Coaches polls, and then the deciding FCS rankings and think an argument can be made much beyond the top 8, or perhaps 10. Beyond that, it's jilted skivvy wavers and alumni crying in spilled milk.
An argument that can be made for what?
The argument for an expanded playoff is having an expanded PLAYOFF. By saying there should only be 8 teams, you're relying on two value judgments. First, that only 8 teams "deserve" the right to play for the national championship, and then which teams "deserve" to be among those 8. The rationale for expanding beyond that is that we're not talking about deserving; we're talking about letting a playoff or tournament decide it on the field, and including in that tournament as many teams as we logistically can. Some would argue that the 2004 Red Sox or 2007 Giants didn't "deserve" to be in their sport's tournament, but yet they won it all.
And as for what the attraction for teams outside the AP rankings would be, I guess the same as it is in basketball. That a team like Villanova in 1985 can catch lightning in a bottle.
Perhaps I am operating on a flawed assumption, one that I based on discussion that from my mind's eye has centered predominantly (not exclusively) on the "deservedness" factor, and teams that deserved to get in are being subjectively left out.
If, as you suggest, the goal instead is to merely EXPAND ala March Madness, then yeah, I agree with you. I still have my doubts that the system will swallow the idea of teams playing up to 5 additional games. But I could be wrong - in fact, wouldn't mind being wrong. I'd love to see more games.
If, as you suggest, the goal instead is to merely EXPAND ala March Madness, then yeah, I agree with you. I still have my doubts that the system will swallow the idea of teams playing up to 5 additional games. But I could be wrong - in fact, wouldn't mind being wrong. I'd love to see more games.
Sure, but even under your original assumption, what makes only 8 teams "deserving"? It's an arbitrary number, and will always be if it's set up this way. If you can have a situation where there's a consensus #1 team, from the consensus #1 conference, who's played the consensus #1 schedule and gone 12-0 and the other 3 teams have all lost 2 games, perhaps even to that #1 team, are those three other teams really "deserving" to play for a chance to be #1? They just get to do so because we've decided we want a playoff and we need 4 teams. It's really not any different with 8 or 16 or 32. And number 5 or 9 or 17 or 33 will always gripe because they got left out.
I'm totally for going to 8 teams, and I used to think using smaller bowls for a quaterfinal round was a good idea, but I changed my mind because they are already asking fans of finalists to go to usually 3 neutral site games in 7 weeks (CCG, playoff bowl, title game). Using bowls for 8-teams playoffs would make 4 neutral sites games in 7 weeks. That's a lot of travel and cost for fans. Just have the quarterfinals on campus. The crowds will be insane and we might finally see some southern teams go north in cold weather. It would also be good for teams in conference title games to know that if they don't win the conference title game but still make the playoffs, they might have to play a true road game in the first round. The bowls are essentially the same as the NIT, a nice thing for decent teams that didn't make the tournament. The coaches and players are happy to have a trip, an extra game, and three or four extra weeks of practice.
edit: FSU is so desperate for the extra practice that comes with a bowl game that they rescheduled a previously cancelled game against ULM on Dec 2 (same day as conference title games). FSU needs to beat Delaware St, Florida, and ULM to get to 6-6.
edit: FSU is so desperate for the extra practice that comes with a bowl game that they rescheduled a previously cancelled game against ULM on Dec 2 (same day as conference title games). FSU needs to beat Delaware St, Florida, and ULM to get to 6-6.
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Oh, by all means, I recognize that the "top 8" comment is arbitrary. It was intended only to illustrate that if taking a position of "deserving", you really can't extend it much beyond that IF you also want to avoid teams having to play an 18-game, or relatively more expanded season. There's a balance in here somewhere. I'm just not sure where it is.
So what we really are left with is an imperfect solution to an unsolvable dilemma. But in the end, the NCAA and FCS Committee will come to some [eventually different] solution.
And to be clear, I'm not now arguing for or against any particular position. I'm just pointing to various aspects of the argument, how the "deserved" position is subjective, but also that expanding to some relatively larger number of teams can possibly be problematic. Hell, even the 32 team hypothetical includes subjectivity...what about that 33rd team - as you recognize? It is not unlike what the NCAA BB tourney does, and even they have bastardized the system to have play-in games for the 64th spot. I mean, really?
I think the answer likely lies somewhere in between.
I talked about that in the post right before yours, see below. Why keep the current number of games in the regular season? That's my response. Get rid of some of these useless non-conference regular season games. And allow profit sharing for the teams that don't make the tourney, so the money they lose by not having additional regular season games becomes revenue-neutral, if not positive (assuming they don't create a separate NIT type tournament for these teams, which I also advocate)
The number of games is one that comes up a lot, but between the conference championship, and the the playoffs now, the national champ and runner up are playing like 15 games. If you reduce the regular season to 10 games across the board (ie. do away with a bunch of these useless out-of-conference beatdowns), then you'd have most teams playing 11-12 games, and only the top few playing more, just like it is now.
The thing is the games are so much more than just the $ they make from the gate/tv rights, especially for some of the small town colleges. They bring in mucho bucks to hotels, restaurants, etc. The university uses them as additional alumni networking events for fund raising as things like that. Alumni love getting back to campus and meeting up with people. It's hard to explain how much of a social event the games are for them to someone who didn't go to college in that kind of environment.
Tell someone who has season tickets to Alabama or Georgia or Clemson or Miss St or any number of other big Southern football schools that they're going to lose 2 home games a year at a minimum and it's a non-starter. And for a lot of these people the "dumb" bowl games are just as if not more important than what some northerner thinks they should change to in the interest of a championship tournament. It's their history and tradition. Look at how the Big/Pac 10 cried about losing the Rose Bowl every 4 years or whatever it was. Now multiply that by about a million.