Southern Cal has cancelled the Notre Dame rivalry until at least 2030. They are now an unserious football program. They claim they are worried that a late season loss is given too much weight by the playoff committee, and want to ensure favorable treatment.
That would be a fine argument if it didn’t assume you’re going to lose a late season game, lol! The way the rivalry has worked is that ND hosts the game in mid-October, and years that SC hosts, they do so the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So they don’t have any confidence that their team can win late in the season at home? That’s hilarious.
I saw a clip of Keyshawn Johnson just blasting the Trojan athletic department for this. I loved to hate Keyshawn, and he’s right on the money. Their whole program is unserious, and no one in that front office appears to have any idea what Southern Cal football should look like.
In years past, this was always one of the late-season non-conference marquee games, and it also was a game that gave Notre Dame a much-needed SOS boost. Now one has to wonder who Dame will find that wants to play them that isn’t just looking for a payday.
If nothing else, this might be another nudge to get Dame into a conference.
They’ve already backfilled it with BYU, who was in the Big 12 title game. I’ll bet Southern Cal replaces their opponent with a team like Sacramento St. or UC Davis.
How is that unserious? They are just playing by the rules, trying to get the best advantage they can out of a system that’s broken. It’s what every serious program should do. Texas has said that after they complete their commitment to play home and home games against Ohio Stare and Michigan, they are going back to playing a cupcake. Alabama is doing the same thing. What USC is doing is no different. My guess is that every serious P4 program is going to end up with a schedule of 8 or 9 conference games (depending on the rules of their particular conference) and 3 or 4 cupcake games, because that’s what the playoff committee is incentivizing. If beating Sam Houston or UC Davis or Louisiana Monroe counts the same as beating Notre Dame or Ohio State, why take the chance of scheduling one of the latter?
FWIW, I’m not advocating for a system where all the power programs play 3 or 4 cupcakes every year. I’d prefer a system where those games are eliminated and all the P4 schools play out of conference games only with other P4 schools for their out of conference schedule.
Because this is what the vast majority of the college football audience prefers:
Southern Cal knows this (or should know this). Texas knows this. Alabama knows this. Notre Dame knows this. But scheduling cupcakes is unserious, and killing a 100 year rivalry is even moreso.
What is unserious is that the rules incentivize playing cupcakes. Playing by the rules as best as one can, however, is the very definition of serious. The solution is to change the rules, not to play by the rules in an inefficient manner for the sake of tradition.
Not really. The CFP voters move the goalposts all the time. SC says late losses are unfairly punished. Alabama proves that’s incorrect all the time. ND was ranked high by the committee all season, up until the very last vote - “proving” that early losses are unfairly punished.
If the committee is going to do whatever they want, the serious thing to do is remain consistent with your century-long brand. Southern Cal abandoned that for a short-term win, and the AD and Lincoln Riley are still going to lose their jobs in the next 2 years.
I have a concept of a plan. Do what some states do at the high school level- no committees, no rankings, just points. Some numbers to demonstrate: You get 4 points for a win on the road, 2 points for a win on the road, 1 point for a loss on the road, 0 points for a loss at home. Then you get points for what your opponents do throughout the year: If you beat a team on the road, you get 2 points for every game THEY win on the road, and 1 point for every game THEY win at home. If you beat a team at home, you get 1 point for every team THEY beat on the road, and 1/2 point for every team THEY beat at home. Top 16 point getters at the end of the season go to the playoff. Want to schedule Little Sisters Of The Poor at home every year, you get very few points for that.
The key for doing something like that (and I agree that it’s a good idea) is that the point system needs to be set up such that a team that, say, schedules 4 difficult out of conference games and goes 2-2 gets more points than a team that goes 4-0 against 4 cupcakes.
I love the idea, but there are cupcakes and there are cupcakes. A team with a 3-3 record which isn’t very good but isn’t terrible either might be a minimal challenge for a top team, compared to a team with an 0-6 record which is a hapless pushover for any good team. I don’t think both teams should give equal weight. But that would suggest you’d need to rank every single team in college football somehow, which sounds like such a Herculean task that I have trouble seeing it done at all, let alone with any kind of objective precision.
This is all mostly done already with strength of schedule and strength of record rankings. My biggest issue with them is that schedules are made years down the line - can either Baylor or Auburn be penalized for scheduling each other when they likely scheduled the game when both teams were good (rather than mediocre like they were this year)?
I don’t expect the committee to watch all the games. I just want the committee to be consistent, and to watch most of the games involving the top teams, especially down the stretch. I also want them to say at the beginning of the year what their criteria are, so there aren’t any late-season baits-and-switches.
I generally like systems with objective criteria like the UEFA Champions League and high school points systems (which I haven’t heard many complaints about in my home state). In a 16-team playoff (heck, insert any number here), there will always be controversy about the last few in and I’d rather save the drama for the games and not argue about a committee’s decisions and biases.
One thing about a points system as described above (and that was a pretty good one, BobLibDem) is that it would really ratchet up the importance of qualifying for and winning your conference championship game. How huge conferences should devise fair schedules for qualifying for those games may be a discussion for another time.
Someone with a lot of time on their hands could tote up the season’s results in the suggested points system and find out what 12 teams would have qualified.
I say no points for a win over an FCS school. In 2024, FCS teams had a whopping total of six wins over FBS teams. Let’s make it just two tiers: P4 and all other FBS schools.
How should games played at neutral sites count, like Florida-Georgia in Jacksonville or Texas-okie in Dallas? Or conference championship games? Indiana played the B1G title game in Indianapolis, Georgia the SEC in Atlanta and Duke in Charlotte, how do I score those?