I listened to a debate last night about OSU. The selection committee, being human, will be really tempted to put them out of the top four because they’re missing their best player, and won’t be able to put up as good a fight. But is that fair to OSU, by not giving them a chance, and ignoring the fact that their record up to then is what it is?
I dunno.
Not at all. Frankly, I think any 0 or 1 loss Conference Champs (P5) should be automatic bids unless a tie needs to be settled. And I think Wins/Losses should be the first and primary criteria of that tie-breaker.
I thought the whole point of the Selection Committee was to chose the Best Four Teams, full stop. I don’t see why ‘Conference Champion’ should automatically get you anything. An 11-1 FSU team that just lost to GaTech may still be a better team than 11-1 tOSU team playing with their third string QB.
Then why isn’t Marshall being considered? They are 11-1!! IMO Conference Championships do not trump body of work. the ACC is much better conference than the B1G. The only big wins tOSU would have is Michigan St and Wisconsin and the only notable wins they had were from within the conference. A team is (probably) going to emerge from the conference with great record so the only gauge of reference is the OoC record, and the top four or five teams in the B1G didn’t have any meaningful OoC wins.
For the record, I am an alumnus of Georgia Tech. And no, I don’t think GT should be in the playoff mix should they win the ACC Championship. They lost to DUKE and UNC in games that they played poorly. FSU is the class the ACC and I believe an 12-1 FSU is better than a 11-2 Ga Tech.
Agree!
Lets take two hypothetical FSU teams, a team that lost early and a team that lost late.
A. 12-1 FSU team that lost in Week 1 to Okie State and won the remaining the games, including ACC Championship.
B. 12-1 FSU team that went undefeated until the ACC Championship and then lost to Ga Tech in the ACC Championship.
IMO, I think most people would value the FSU in the A hypothetical over FSU in the B hypothetical. Team A would probably be a lock for the playoff over a 12-1 Ohio State and Team B that probably has little chance in the committee over a 12-1 tOSU.
And that is just silly! It should not matter when a team lost.
It is ultimately a matter of opinion whether a team should get extra credit for winning its conference championship; it seems to me that if not, then why bother awarding conference championships at all? But there is no logical argument to be made that would convince anyone either way. Also, giving an advantage to conference champions will tend to produce geographical diversity among the playoff participants, which is good for the sport. Even assuming for the sake of argument that two or three of the objectively best teams every year come from the SEC, the long-term effect of having most of the playoff teams be from the SEC will be that everyone outside the former Confederacy loses interest in college football.
Here are the official criteria that the committee is supposed to rely on in making its judgments; you will note that they are extremely vague, but do specifically mention, among other things, conference champion status as a factor that should be taken into account when choosing between “comparable” teams, with the term “comparable” being left undefined, thus pretty much allowing them to do whatever they want. They are also supposed to take into account factors which may influence a team’s FUTURE performance, which implies that they will, or at least could, mark down tOSU due to their QB’s injury. I don’t think this is really fair to tOSU, but it could be argued that it is more important to be fair to the fans who want to watch the best game possible. This is also why it is arguably reasonable to weight late-season performance more heavily; a team which lost last week, all other things being equal, is probably more likely to lose next week than is a team which hasn’t lost since September, even if they do have the same overall record.
notfrommensa, as I said, you are going to have to do a lot better to convince me that the gap between the ACC and B1G is comparable to the difference between any power conference and Conference USA. If we’re going to define conference strength purely based on this season’s interconference results, it seems to me that the Pac-12 is so clearly the strongest conference that we should get at least two, if not three, playoff teams!
The Conference Championship criteria should be way down the pecking order. I want a conference to show me that they are good, rather than tell me that they are good. The B1G has been all Hat and No Cattle. No statement wins from its top contenders. NONE. Ohio State lost to a below average ACC team (Va Tech), while beating Navy, Kent st and Cincy. Wisky lost to a below average LSU team, while beating South Florida, Western Illinois, and Bowling Green.
Back in September after MSU lost to Oregon, Wisky lost to LSU, OSU lost to Va Tech, Nebraska almost lost to McNeese state everyone was saying that the B1G was out of the playoffs.
What really has changed since then? Not a whole lot. Three teams emerged as the best of the conference. With the B1G playing each other, that was Predictable, it was going to happen. All a conference championship tells me is that tOSU or Wisky is the best of the conference. It does not tell me how good the conference is.
Look through this thread, I was not on the ACC bandwagon until this past weekend. The ACC has been the Red-Headed stepchild of the Power Five conference for years. It took a sweep of the in-state rivalry OoC games for me to move the ACC ahead of the B1G.
If GT, Clemson, and Louisville had not beat their in state rivals this past weekend, I would not be as passionate for FSU to be in the playoffs should they lose to Tech this weekend.
The best snow skier in Jamaica is just the best snow skier in Jamaica no matter what kind of propaganda the Jamaica press wants to write. Until he beats some world class talent, all he is the best snow skier in Jamaica.
The B1G had their chance to beat some big time teams early in the year, and aside from Indiana over Mizzou, they did not do it. As far Indiana beating Mizzou, it has to be corollary of the Blind Pig finding a acorn, a fluke.
Um, dude, FSU also has no decent wins to speak of, either in or out of their conference. They have beat the #19 and #21 teams, and that’s using the poll which is most generous to them. If OSU beats Wisconsin, they will have two wins better than FSU’s best. If Georgia Tech beats FSU, they will too.
Would you like to explain why the Big 10 was 3-1 this year against the **much stronger **ACC? Nebraska, a middle-of-the-pack B1G team, beat Miami by 10, while the “class of the ACC” beat them by only 3. Iowa beat Pitt, and Maryland beat Syracuse. V-Tech’s win over OSU was something, and as I have said, should move OSU to the back of the line of one-loss conference champions, but also clearly at least as big a fluke as Indiana beating Missouri.
So when the ACC beats the weakest SEC teams it proves how great the ACC is. But when a B1G team beats the SEC east division champ its a fluke…OK
The other thing I keep finding laughable is the Baylor / TCU argument, that the head to head shouldn’t matter. I believe I understand why the committee hasn’t considered it yet, as TCU has already beaten K-state, and Baylor is yet to play them, but all things equal (11-1 and 11-1) the head to head should be the first thing you look at.
Otherwise in the Rose bowl, let’s say Alabama beats and unbeaten FSU in overtime. Is the committee going to jump back in and say, “Well now they are both 12-1, but FSU’s loss is better than Alabama’s, so let’s advance FSU to the Championship game.” :smack:
There really aren’t enough inter-conference games to be meaningful. If a lower tier team from conference A gets beat by an upper tier team from conference B, that’s to be expected. There aren’t that many games between comparable teams of different conferences. Michigan State-Oregon was one such game, and unfortunately the Ducks won. Michigan-Utah was not such a game. I would count the first game against the Big Ten, the second not so much.
FSU scheduled 3 OoC teams that have been top 10 teams in the last ten years
Florida has won the BCS game in the last 10 years.
Okie State finished third in the polls in this decade (2011)
Notre Dame played for the BCS game a few years ago.
Going into this season, no other Power Five team had as tough a schedule as Florida State. Maybe part of the reason Okie State and Notre Dame sucked later in the season is because they got beat by FSU. Notre Dame was rolling and undefeated when they went into Tallahassee.
Why is Michigan State so good? What teams have they beat?
Eastern Michigan?
Wyoming?
Jacksonville State (wait a minute, I thought that was a SEC Cupcake!!)
Just who is saying that Mizzou should be in the playoffs should they beat 'Bama? The loss against Indiana is automatic Disqualification for that honor. Certainly not me nor anyone I know (I live in Missouri). By the same token, tOSU’s fluke loss against Va Tech should be automatic Disqualification for the playoff.
A 12-1 FSU team that lost to Ga Tech in the ACC Championship game should be given higher preference than a 12-1 tOSU B1G Conference Champs that lost to Va Tech early in the year.
Well, Georgia is hardly one of the weakest SEC teams. And I think when you look at the overall season performance of Indiana and Missouri, it would be difficult to call that game anything other than a huge fluke (and the same is true of Ohio State - Virginia Tech).
10-2 season record. There are some teams in the Big Ten having down years this year, normally wins against Michigan, Nebraska, and Penn State are quality wins. Not so much this year. We’ve got Oregon coming here next year, hopefully it won’t be 95 degrees for that game. Not to mention hopefully a win against an SEC team in a bowl this year.
If FSU loses to GT in the ACC final, they shouldn’t be in. They barely beat marginal teams about every week this year. Ohio State should get in, Oregon, FSU if they win, Alabama if they win, and Baylor/TCU if one or more flop in front of them.
I’ll grant you Georgia but Florida, South Carolina & Kentucky have a combined record of 17-18. Not exactly the cream of the crop there.
If by “whole point of the Selection Committee,” you refer to the criteria for selecting the four teams for the playoff, then you are correct. In fact, they are specifically told not to consider “championships” (although, of course, they can consider the teams that were beaten in conference championship games).
One problem is, the committee received no instruction as to what the definition of “top four teams” is. One person might base it on the entire season, while another might want to choose “the top four teams at the moment.”
Also note that they can’t stop at #4 as they need to rank the rest of the teams for New Year’s Day Bowl eligibility purposes. Even if none of the four playoff teams are a conference champion, they need to determine the highest ranked team below the top 4 from (a) the SEC, (b) the Big 10, and (c) Notre Dame to determine who gets the non-ACC Orange Bowl berth. (If at least two of the top four are conference champions, there will be bowl spots remaining after the automatic ones are filled; the committee has to choose the highest-ranked remaining teams in this case.)
I just realized something; if, somehow, none of the four playoff teams are conference champions, then once the committee fills the non-ACC Orange Bowl berth, they have five spots remaining - and six automatic qualifiers left.
Oh, this is hilarious. Weren’t you just arguing this morning that it shouldn’t matter when a team lost? But now you are saying that Notre Dame’s five losses shouldn’t count against FSU because they were undefeated when the teams met? Who knows, maybe Jacksonville State would be undefeated and marching toward the playoff if Michigan State hadn’t beaten them in week one! You can’t prove that they wouldn’t be!!
Care to actually address any of the points I made above about FSU’s lame schedule and the superiority of the B1G over the ACC in interconference play this year? Or was pointing out that FSU’s schedule didn’t look so lame in September supposed to be somehow relevant?
And as to Michigan State, it is true that their best win is Nebraska, which ain’t saying much. On the other hand, all of their other six B1G wins were by 14 points or more, usually much more. FSU’s last three wins, all against crappy teams, came by a TOTAL of 12 points.
I will concede the basic point that, if you totally discount the conference championship angle, it is reasonably possible to argue that a 12-1 FSU would be more impressive than a 12-1 tOSU. I just think it would be silly to discount the championship.
From the link I posted above to the official CFP site:
The committee will select the teams using a process that distinguishes among otherwise comparable teams by considering conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory) and other relevant factors that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.
Michigan and Utah are both fifth in their division. If you ignore divisions, Utah is tied for sixth in their conference and Michigan is tied for eighth. I’d call those pretty comparable.
And speaking of Michigan…Farewell Brady Hoke.