I think you vastly underestimate the cold tolerance of the fans of the home teams. I’d be surprised if any B1G school didn’t have more in attendance than the PAC-12 championship in all but the worst conditions. The Packers don’t have any issues at Lambeau Field in the NFL playoffs or late season home games. I might make the trip to Columbus for an OSU-Baylor game and I’m a Michigan State fan. The Horseshoe would be rocking. Potentially it would be rocking in a very literal, “the stadium feels like it might collapse” kind of way.
I generally agree with your point that expanding the playoff doesn’t make the whining about just missing it any better. Wherever you draw the line it gets difficult to determine just in versus just missed it.
Reportedly, the main reason UAB didn’t get a “farewell” bowl bid was (a) Conference USA only gets five contracted bowls, and had to give them to the five teams that finished 7-5 or better (Middle Tennessee State, the only other 6-6 CUSA team, didn’t get into a bowl either, IIRC), and (b) there was only one spot available for an at-large team - Army’s spot in the Armed Forces Bowl, but even if Army beats Navy next week, it would only be 5-7 - and that spot went to Pitt.
Beating 5 bowl-bound teams (Illinois, Nebraska, Rutgers, Maryland, and Penn State and having the only 2 losses be against teams in the final four.
The lesser MSU beat 5 bowl-bound teams (LSU, A&M, Auburn, South Alabama, and Arkansas), and 1 of 2 losses against a team in the final four.
I think it was more of a case of the committee cutting a deal saying we’ll screw MSU to compensate for OSU getting in. I’m looking forward to both Big Ten finalists whipping their SEC opponents in bowl games in SEC territory.
Or that year near the beginning of BCS (2001?) when Nebraska didn’t even play in the Big 12 Champ game and jumped over the two teams that did, even tho the Big 12 champ game winner, CU, had beaten them.
Yeah, this year is a better system, but it still needs work.
So if Mississippi State hadn’t jumped over Michigan State, Michigan State would be in the Orange Bowl against Georgia Tech.
When the Big Ten plays in the Orange Bowl, for some reason the ACC gets a slot in the Citrus Bowl (I guess the Big Ten’s slot?). So the ACC would have had another bowl slot, and wouldn’t have had to send Pitt to the Armed Forces Bowl, opening it up for UAB. So the real loser in the battle of the MSUs is UAB?
I think it was a mistake for the CFP committee to release its weekly rankings from a credibilty standpoint. From a ratings, hype and controversy standpoint I’m sure it’s worked out well.
I know. The extra travel and added game is the biggest reason I wasn’t in favor of an 8-team playoff before. But how about this? Scrap the conference championship games. They’re essentially meaningless in a playoff world anyway - seriously, Mizzou wasn’t the second-best team in the SEC, nor was Wisconsin the next-best team in the B1G.
Go by the penultimate rankings. Play the quarterfinal games at the present conference championship sites, or some other regional site if that’s unworkable. Now you’re playing games in almost the exact same way you’re doing now.
Here’s this year as an example:
-Michigan State vs Alabama (Atlanta)
-Arizona vs Oregon (Santa Clara)
-Baylor vs TCU (okay, Indianapolis probably isn’t a good site - how about Dallas?)
-Ohio State vs Florida State (Charlotte)
How about that? Even better, that’s only one SEC team.
I agree. This is just making me madder … if they’re going to change their criteria so much between December 2 and December 7, why even make those earlier rankings public?
I know the difference between 5 and 6 is just as relevant as that between 18 and 32, but still - the committee claimed they put Baylor above TCU because of head to head. That game was October 11. You had TCU two spots ahead of Baylor on December 2. How can you say with a straight face you didn’t include a game result for two freaking months, and only considered it in the final rankings?
Just bullcrap. Ohio State has the name and the rep. It was an obvious ESPN-influenced decision, or at least the “glamour” and “allure” of the B1G brand that lifted them in. Virginia Tech, that should be all you have to say.
I don’t know if conferences really care all that much about a “clear champion.” As long as they’re guaranteed to get that champ into the playoffs, determine it however you want. The Big XII might say their champion every year is the highest-ranked team with either “Texas” or “Oklahoma” in its name (Texas Christian excluded, of course).
I mean, “clear champion”? When Michigan State was clearly better than Wisconsin? Or Auburn and Mississippi State were both better than Missouri? The divisions are arbitrary. Championship games aren’t necessarily definitive.
But this is true, I agree. Hard to argue with the cash, since it’s blatantly obvious that’s what this is all about.
Sure they are. They may not pick the best team (they don’t in any sport) but they are definitive.
Under the scheme you outlined, and assuming the 12 and 14 team conferences stay unchanged, you can have two teams have the same record – 12-0 Georgia and 12-0 Alabama, or 12-0 Iowa and 12-0 Michigan – and they never play each other becuase they both got thrown into an 8 team playoff and one got knocked off by someone random (Utah or Boise or whatever).
For a lot of fans, rivalries, traditions, regionalism and conference championships are almost as big a deal as national championships. An outcome like the above would be very unsatisfying to them.
I’m not a fan of conference championship games, and I agree with everything in this sentence. The problem is conference expansion. If you have 10 teams in a conference, you can play 9 games round-robin and determine your champion on the field without tacking on a (sometimes) meaningless extra game.
So who had the bright idea that 12, 14 or 16-team conferences was such a swell thing?
They didn’t change their criteria - they waited until key info was in.
Until Baylor played K State they were missing a huge component of their schedule, K State. TCU had already played them and only had a loser left to play. Baylor hadn’t played them yet so the committee had much less information than after the K State game.
This is exactlty the reason why the AP poll is broken in the opposite direction, they don’t move teams around very much as we gain more information.
This was the correct move, to re-evaluate after having complete info.
I keep telling myself I’m going to leave this topic alone, but then you people keep pulling me back IN!
I could probably buy this, if the committee said this was the thinking behind their rankings. But you know what Jeff Gray said the reason was to put Baylor ahead of TCU?
Head to head. That game was in October. Why did it not apply December 2, when TCU was 3rd and Baylor 6th, but it suddenly was the main factor December 7 to put Baylor 5th and TCU 6th?
Yeah, Baylor beat KSU. But TCU beat Iowa State (oh, my poor, poor Cyclones) waaaay more handily than Baylor did, and the Baylor-ISU game wasn’t close.
I don’t see where there was enough “additional information” from this week’s games to make these kind of changes between December 2 and December 7. Which is why I would be in favor of the committee keeping things to themselves until the final rankings come out. They just appear devious, bipolar, and somewhat clueless otherwise, because their justifications for these changes make very little sense.
IIRC, The SEC was the first conference to go 12 teams and a Conference Championship, when they added USCe and Arkansas to the league back in the early 90’s.
Obviously, the BIG12, ACC, B1G, and PACxx thought it was a good idea as they eventually got to 12 (or more) teams.
Re: Committee elevating Baylor above TCU from Dec 2nd to to Dec 7.
IMO, a reasonable explanation* from the committee could have been that Baylor had not yet beat Kansas State and TCU had beat them. TCU’s SoS was much better going into the last week, and Baylor caught up by playing K-State while TCU was playing ISU.
BTW, Why wasn’t K-State playing Kansas in the last game? and TCU playing ISU. OU was playing OkieSt, ISU should have been playing WVU and the Texas teams should have been playing each other. It was the last weekof the regular season, they should have all been playing instate rivalries, if applicable.
Not that I would have bought the explanation, but I think it would have been reasonable.
They’re definitive in naming a champion, but not necessarily in selecting the best team, right. Saying you’re picking your conference champion by reverse alphabetical order is also definitive, in its own way.
Hell, we find situations like your B1G/SEC hypothetical NOW. You could have two teams in the SEC West finish 11-1, and one in the SEC East finish 11-1. Guess what - they aren’t all going to play each other. You gotta use tiebreakers, whether it’s for the championship game or your conference championship title, it’s all the same.
And teams can be beat by someone random anytime, not just in a playoff. That’s the essence behind playing a game on the field. Why would it matter for Iowa and Michigan to never meet, if they both got in the playoff anyway? So they shared the Big Ten title … okay, big whoop. Isn’t the playoff spot more important these days?
I totally agree with you about tradition, history, and all the background of college football. That’s why I love it. That’s why I hate huge conferences where supposed conference “mates” hardly ever see each other on the field. It’s crass and stupid - but it’s lucrative, and that’s the college sports landscape we live in.
I never minded the old pre-BCS days, with split national champions and ironclad conference bowl tie-ins so two unbeaten teams might never have the chance to play. That was fine with me. I loved it. But those days are never coming back.
Even a playoff isn’t necessarily going to end up with the best team winning. That’s what the word “upset” means. So a 12-0 Michigan team gets knocked off by 9-3 Kansas State in a first round playoff, and B1G fans never get to see them face 12-0 Iowa. You know what? The national fans as a whole won’t really care. The B1G sure won’t, they’ll be too busy counting all that playoff money.
I don’t like it much, either. But if the conferences are going to get too big to play round-robin, that’s the way it goes.
UAB wasn’t the only bowl-eligible team left out; the Armed Forces Bowl could have also chosen Middle Tennessee State, Texas State, or Ohio U. Since the game is in Fort Worth, I’m a little surprised they went with Pitt over Texas State.
That 2001 season had a crazy ending, that helped Nebraska get in:
Nebraska was #1 or #2. 2-loss Colorado slaughters us, one of those surreal “is someone punking my TV feed?” type of games.
Nebraska, with 1 loss, falls behind Miami, and 3 other teams with 1 loss: Texas, Tennessee, Florida. In the next couple weeks, a totally unlikely sequence happens:
Florida loses to Tennessee (a rescheduled game due to a hurricane, I think)
Texas loses to Colorado in the Big XII title game
Tennessee then loses to LSU in the SEC title game
Had any ONE of those won, it would’ve been them vs Miami. All of the sudden, we’re pretty much the only 1-loss team.
We Husker fans dismiss the Colorado game as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke. Some think it was better to assign Colorado to play in the Big XII game for us so we have extra practice time. (We had a kinda-sorta rivalry with Colorado, and were not above childishly taunting CU fans).
Then we played Miami and wished any of those other teams could’ve been there
I don’t think the playoffs would’ve helped much that year. Those other teams probably tanked on purpose to avoid playing that Miami team.
I tend to think it was pro-Ohio State rather than an anti-Big XII thing. The committee were totally impressed with the Wisconsin game outcome. Especially with a 3rd-string QB with a week to prepare. I would not expect FSU without Winston or Oregon without Mariota to slaughter a top-15 team 59-0.
Urban Meyer has done something special with those 21 players to step up like that. That people was awestruck by that should not be taken as a slam on the Big XII. They just thought Ohio State was better.
It felt like the 97 National Championship with Nebraska vs Michigan. Both sides had their arguments, but at the end of the day, the coaches pollsters were more impressed with NU beating #3 by 25 than UM beating #8 by 5. They just felt that Nebraska was the better team.
