Bowl Gamethread - Screw it, all the bowls.
- Thread starter Infield Infidel
- Start date
Pizza for breakfast; two naps; ribeye and New York strip for dinner; Alabama and free shoes university losing: damn good New Year's Day
Unnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh.
Oh well, it's not like you get any right to complain about anything when your team's had the run mine had.
Go out and win the offseason again.
Oh well, it's not like you get any right to complain about anything when your team's had the run mine had.
Go out and win the offseason again.
Does the Boise State/Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl count as a big game? I remember that one ending very late.Al Zarilla said:
So Michigan lands harbaugh, but Ohio state goes to the national championship game and still has a better coach
Thanks guys! I don't think I'm sleeping tonight. I've wanted a CFB playoff for so, so long and day one couldn't have gone any better.
I'm also really surprised to see the Buckeye support around these parts, btw. Maybe I'll pop in more often.
Happy, happy, joy, joy! Can't wait until the 12th. I'm most happy about how the B1G did as a whole. It has been a great bowl season for the conference! Maybe we can even put some of that "B1G sucks/SEC is the ultimate awesome" talk to bed for a bit.
Absolutely not. 4 is perfect. I'd kick and scream, but begrudgingly accept 6 with two byes. Today was absolutely perfect and the committee got it right. If you finish 5th, tough crap. Win more (or at least win a conference championship game). I would have said it even if the Buckeyes got left out.Luis Taint said:
I'm also really surprised to see the Buckeye support around these parts, btw. Maybe I'll pop in more often.
Happy, happy, joy, joy! Can't wait until the 12th. I'm most happy about how the B1G did as a whole. It has been a great bowl season for the conference! Maybe we can even put some of that "B1G sucks/SEC is the ultimate awesome" talk to bed for a bit.
Screw that. TCU proved that they should have been in with their ass kicking of Ole Miss. The only way to avoid any controversy is to expand the field.Sille Skrub said:
I ended up watching the second half in bed with my tablet. It was aweome and awful. Just too late. Way, way, way too late. But at least tOSU got it done. And I love that Saban autocorrects to Satan, which I found out this morning texting a friend.
Bring on the Ducks.
Bring on the Ducks.
Simple solution: SEC West should have a home and home, nothing OOC, 12 games, best record wins it, unless a tie, where you have a tiebreaking game(s)
This is stupid. You'd have the same controversy if there were 6 or 8 teams.jsinger121 said:
Ole Miss was not as good as people thought. There's a reason they dropped to 9.
This is like Yogi Berra's idea of moving the bases back to get rid of the close plays. There are always going to be teams complaining that they got left out when other (lesser?) teams got in.jsinger121 said:
Those are reasonable arguments for a playoff. I'm just pointing out that "they need to expand to eliminate controversy" doesn't make a lot of sense.BigSoxFan said:
But that squabbling about the tournament pretty much ends two or three days after the selection is announced. Nobody thinks these teams have a shot at a championship. TCU fans will never stop complaining about this year, and probably rightly so.BigSoxFan said:
I think eight teams is the sweet spot. You presumably get all the major conference champions plus a couple at large teams including that year's Boise St should their resume pass the eye test. You get all the zero and one loss teams in this way too. The fringe teams that don't make an eight team playoff will usually have multiple losses, so who cares if they raise a stink, they lost the right to complain with the second game they dropped. Any more than eight is diluting the pool too much IMO.
Eight would be perfect, but four is fine, at least for now. They (and we) need to see this a few years to figure out how it goes. We currently have a sample size of 1. This year there were 6 good teams, maybe next year there's only 2 or 3 and the fourth team gets in and is the proverbial happy-to-be-there team. Teams are scheduling up on their future schedules so I'm expecting more two-loss teams. What if there are only 2 or 3 teams with 1 or fewer losses, and a cadre of two-loss teams? At that point, really who cares, if you want to get in play a tough schedule and lose less than 2 games.
There's also a lot of issues with travel (for fans and teams), classes, concussions and injuries with more games, and probably other stuff. They probably would have to have either the quarters or semis on-campus, because the final next week will be the third neutral site game in a row, and that's a lot to ask of the fanbases, especially smaller fanbases or those way far from the bowl sites. Do you have the quarters right after the conference title games, and only leave 2 weeks until the bowls? Do you have the bowls be the quarters and have the semis on-campus and the final on MLK day?
There's also a lot of issues with travel (for fans and teams), classes, concussions and injuries with more games, and probably other stuff. They probably would have to have either the quarters or semis on-campus, because the final next week will be the third neutral site game in a row, and that's a lot to ask of the fanbases, especially smaller fanbases or those way far from the bowl sites. Do you have the quarters right after the conference title games, and only leave 2 weeks until the bowls? Do you have the bowls be the quarters and have the semis on-campus and the final on MLK day?
Yeah, it would almost be ideal if there was a variable number of teams in the tournament - some years there should be two, some three, some six, probably rarely any more than that. I don't see that idea getting a lot of traction though.BigSoxFan said:
As for "prove on the field who the best team is," tournaments sometimes do this well and sometimes don't. If there were eight teams in the tournament, one would be likely have been Michigan State, which lost by 19 to Oregon and by 12 to Ohio State at home. If they get hot or lucky and beat those teams (or teams that beat those teams) in the tournament by slim margins, does that really prove on the field who the best team is?
I'm not necessarily anti-tournament, but I also don't assume that playoffs are the best way to do things just because that's how we do things in the other sports. There are pluses and minuses.
I'm not using it as an argument against 8 teams. I have no problem with an 8 team playoff, but to say that expanding to 8 teams will eliminate controversy is dumb. I mean, shit, the NFL has 12 teams and there's still controversy over the 7 win Panthers team making the playoffs.BigSoxFan said:
4 teams or 20 teams, I'm all for it, but you will never eliminate the controversy. And that's what makes it fun!
The hoops tourney has pretty much proven that no matter who you are, if you win the tourney, the argument about who deserves the title stops. You can have 'what if' side arguments like people do with Houston/NCState, but nobody ever makes the case that NCState doesn't deserve the title. You win it on the field and that takes a bunch of the useless arguments off the table. Discussing who the best team is won't be much of a conversation after someone wins the title on the field, be in 2 or 3 additional games.Super Nomario said:
VCU was one of the last teams in the tournament in 2011 (Jay Bilas called their selection indefensible) and made it all the way to the Final Four, so that argument doesn't quite cut it either.Philip Jeff Frye said:
What year was that. So, I guess, no. Nothing is too late when you live in CA though.mandro ramtinez said:
Infield Infidel said:
One more game over the course of a month isn't going to be an issue for the players or the fans.
Stevie1der said:
No way. 4 teams are enough. This year was as flat a year in college football as you can have and no one (outside of Texas) is arguing Baylor or TCU should have been in the playoffs.
If there was one or two truly dominant teams in college football it would be even more apparent. I simply don't see a scenario where there are five teams people can legitimately claim are the best in the Nation. I can see three and you add a fourth to have two games.
Lets not be naive here. Money is going to drive this wagon.
The two games last night were huge. Attendance sellouts and I'm assuming the ratings will be off the charts. Those games interest fans beyond the schools reach. So if they feel an additional round will not water down the final four games, I suspect they get there eventually. Especially when you compare the ratings to the existing ratings of those bowls in the past years and compared to the other big bowl games this year.
I think 4 teams is perfect right now, but I'm guessing we get to 8 by 2020.
The two games last night were huge. Attendance sellouts and I'm assuming the ratings will be off the charts. Those games interest fans beyond the schools reach. So if they feel an additional round will not water down the final four games, I suspect they get there eventually. Especially when you compare the ratings to the existing ratings of those bowls in the past years and compared to the other big bowl games this year.
I think 4 teams is perfect right now, but I'm guessing we get to 8 by 2020.
There's a difference between saying TCU should have made the tourney, and saying that their exclusion is going to mar the whole playoff with controversy. The former is an eminently defensible position, though the committee's decision looks better in hindsight (not just tOSU's victory, but the strong showing of the B1G overall). The latter is simply ridiculous.
I'd like to see an 8-team playoff with automatic berths for the top 5 conference and a guaranteed spot for at least one non-P5 team, but I understand there are legitimate obstacles to that beyond simply entrenched interests (e.g., the surprisingly influential stand-alone "charities" that run the major bowl games).
I'd like to see an 8-team playoff with automatic berths for the top 5 conference and a guaranteed spot for at least one non-P5 team, but I understand there are legitimate obstacles to that beyond simply entrenched interests (e.g., the surprisingly influential stand-alone "charities" that run the major bowl games).
I agree with what you're saying. Someone can correct me on this, but I don't believe there's a historical precedent for decreasing the number of playoff teams in any sport, ever. As soon as we (probably inevitably) go to 8 teams, there will be almost immediate discussion about expanding to 12 or 16 teams and little-to-no discussion about rolling back to 4. Since you can't go backward, I think you have to be pretty conservative about how much to go forward.Infield Infidel said:
Sort of. I would argue that once you set up the playoff structure, no one cares about "best team" anymore, it becomes about who is the "champion" - which may or may not be the same thing. The 2007 10-6 Giants beat the 16-0 Pats in the Super Bowl and were unambiguously NFL champions. For better or worse, there's basically no discussion about whether the Giants were the "best team," because it's considered irrelevant. The goal is not to be the best team; it's to be the champions. That eliminates some ambiguity, but there's also something perverse about it.PaulinMyrBch said:
TomRicardo said:
The bowl results suggest TCU would have been a far better choice than FSU. However, there's no way the undefeated defending champion could have been left out of the tournament. So, the committee got it right in their inaugural year.
I actually think we'll have less of these arguments in the future because I think teams in the power 5 will start scheduling more out of conference games against the other power 5. TCU learned a big lesson this year, they didn't play enough good teams and had nothing on their out of conference schedule that would have pushed them over the top. And fair or not, the Big 12 was considered weak and the only way to eliminate that talk is to play a strong out of conference schedule.
This is good for college football fans, the out of conference portion of the season will start to become really exciting as teams realize they need to have a stronger schedule to get into the playoff. The non-conference portion of the schedule is basically a glorified exhibition.
This is good for college football fans, the out of conference portion of the season will start to become really exciting as teams realize they need to have a stronger schedule to get into the playoff. The non-conference portion of the schedule is basically a glorified exhibition.
johnmd20 said:
Are you talking about neutral site games, or on campus? Short planning time for neutral sites games has been an issue. Attendance for the conference title games have been down because of the short amount of planning time for people to get to the games, economic downturn, and fans preferring to go to the bowl game. SEC has been fine because it's always in Atlanta and is a drive for most SEC teams, but Pac 12 title game had terrible attendance this year, ACC attendance has been been up and down, Big 12 had issues when they had their game. A week's notice for 60,000+ people to fill 2/3 of the Rose Bowl or AT&T stadium is not the easiest thing to do. Final four can do it because they have four fanbases, and half the fans are guaranteed two games over three days.
I think the title game next week will be fine, and the bowls will be fine because they have cachet, but if they try to add another round of neutral site games, that will stretch the purse. There's only so much vacation time. Plus classes start earlier at some schools so a lot of students won't have the free time they have during winter break.
I tell you what, i'd love to see warm weather teams go to Ohio or Michigan in the December. It's one of the best parts of the NFL playoffs.
WTF are you talking about, 1) Minnesota was a better team than VTech. 2) Big 12-2 was considered stronger than the B1G.FL4WL3SS said:
The Big Ten was also considered weak, so I don't know what you're trying to say. The Big 12 and Big Ten were both considered weak by a lot of people.Dan to Theo to Ben said:
Also, I was making a completely different point and this is what you took out of it?
You were making multiple statements. But that other one was wrong too. Why would OSU schedule a VT from now on? Why would TCu schedule a Minnesota? Why would Wisconsin schedule an LSU?
Florida State's inclusion proves that you shouldn't schedule these extra loseable games.
if this was Purdue v. TCU or OSU v. Texas, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Florida State's inclusion proves that you shouldn't schedule these extra loseable games.
if this was Purdue v. TCU or OSU v. Texas, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Infield Infidel said:
That would be phenomenal and enable the stadiums to easily be filled in the round of 8 games!
What the fuck are you even asking? My point was that teams will start scheduling stronger out of conference games and have better out of conference schedules in order to increase their case for the playoffs. I'm not wrong, you're just short-sighted.Dan to Theo to Ben said:
OSU isn't going to schedule a VT from now on, that's my entire point. They'll fill those Navy, Bowling Green and VT games with games against stronger SEC, Pac-12, Big 12 and ACC teams. You don't think that next year if a team like TCU puts together a very strong out of conference schedule that helps propel them into the playoffs that other schools won't start following suit? It's survival of the fittest and schools now have reason to start putting together stronger schedules. The committee made it clear that schedule matters, a lot.