NCAA Football playoff thread

[That_Don_Guy]

@Univarsedivide

G’day Mate in OZ rules footy we have a final 8,the games are 1 V 4,2 V 3, 5 V 8, 6 V 7( V = VERSUS). The Higher ranked team host HOME games in the first week (BECAUSE THEY HAVE A BETTER RECORD), the winners of TOP 4 games have a week off. The losers play the winners of the the two other games ( lets say 5+6), AT HOME. The winners of these games play the winners of the TOP 4 games, to find out who goes into the championship GAME. The team that won the GRAND FINAL ( SUPERBOWL ) this year finished in 8th and won two elimination games to make it into the championship game. We tried a final 6 and it was a bit of a stuff up. Hey by the way does every team get a bowl game? It sure seems like it.

Up until about 1990, back when there were only 12 teams in the league, the finals only had five teams, and the way it worked out was, the Grand Final was almost always a rematch of a semi-final played two weeks earlier. (4 played 5, with the lower eliminated; 2 played 3, with the winner playing 1 in one semi-final and the loser playing the 4-5 winner in the other, but the first SF’s loser played the second SF’s winner to determine who would play the first SF’s winner in the Grand Final.) One problem with this is, if two teams play each other twice and split the two games, what makes the team that lost the first match any better than the other team?

Also keep in mind that, the more rounds you add to playoffs and conference tournaments, the more you have to worry that the season might be “too long” for some teams. After all, this is full-contact football and mostly men 23 and under we are talking about.

[DSYoungEsq]

@Univarsedivide

Hey by the way does every team get a bowl game? It sure seems like it.

There were 40 bowl games this year (this is the high-water mark). Thus, 80 teams in the top tier of NCAA football played in a bowl game.

There are 130 Div-I FBS teams, spread out through ten conferences (four teams are independent of any conference for football). Thus, 80/130 teams played bowl games, or 61.5%.

When I was growing up in the '60s and '70s, substantially fewer teams played bowl games. There were ten bowl games after the 1970 season (not counting the three all-star bowl games). So only 20 teams participated in bowl games. However, there were significantly fewer teams who were likely to participate in bowl games back then (in 1970 there was no split of the NCAA into divisions, yet, as we know them; there was the “University Division” for larger schools, and the “College Division” for smaller schools, but no differentiation among these divisions in football for purposes of bowls). Roughly speaking, there would have been about 75-80 teams playing in conferences which could have expected possible bowl bids. So 20/80ish would be about 25% playing in bowls.

Obviously, things have changed.

Interestingly, of the ten bowls played after the 1970 season (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Peach, Sun, Gator, Tangerine, Liberty and Bluebonnet), only one of them no longer is played in some form today. That would be the Bluebonnet Bowl, which was a Houston game. For those who do not know, the bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas. As a young person, I for some reason always thought it was referencing the margarine instead. :smack:

(For purposes of calculating “bowl-eligible” teams in 1970, I added up the membership of the following conferences: Pac-8, Big-8, Big-10, SWC, SEC, ACC (which were the “big” boys of the time), WAC, PCAA, plus independents (of which there were quite a few at the time). I may have managed to miss one or two conferences which occasionally sent members to bowl games back in the 60s and early 70s).

[HubZilla]

@DSYoungEsq

(For purposes of calculating “bowl-eligible” teams in 1970, I added up the membership of the following conferences: Pac-8, Big-8, Big-10, SWC, SEC, ACC (which were the “big” boys of the time), WAC, PCAA, plus independents (of which there were quite a few at the time). I may have managed to miss one or two conferences which occasionally sent members to bowl games back in the 60s and early 70s).

As a child of the 80s, it was pretty much the same. Of those conferences, it wasn’t 8-9 conference teams going bowling. Usually only 2-3 per conference would make a bowl:

Big 8’s Nebraska or Oklahoma in Orange
Pac-10’s USC or UCLA in Rose
Big Ten’s Michigan or Ohio State in Rose
SWC’s Texas or Arkansas in Cotton
SEC champ (usually Bama) in the Sugar
Notre Dame-Penn State (later Miami-Florida State) as Independents
The ACC wasn’t really a big player, nor was the Big East pre-Miami.

Usually, the big New Years bowls would pit combinations of those teams. The Big 8 champion went to the Orange, the runner-up would go to the Sugar/Cotton/Fiesta.

Those above teams would rarely fall to the Peach/Tangerine/Sun/Bluebonnet bowls, unless they had a bad year and were invited for marketing purposes (6-5 Michigan in the 84 Holiday Bowl). Those would be for the other conference champs or a third team in the above conferences.

Once in a while, a Colorado or Wisconsin would break into that New Years Day group, but that required a field-rush upset of a power (like 1993 Wisconsin over Michigan, for example). No one really got left out, there was just a smaller pool of bowl-worthy teams: Teams like Kansas State, Kentucky, Rice, Northwestern, Oregon State were all but guaranteed to have losing seasons.

[DSYoungEsq]

I should note that my list of conferences in 1970 failed to mention the MAC, which did have teams regularly go to bowls back then. Their number was, however, reflected in my count of “eligible” teams.

By the 1980s, the number of bowls had started to proliferate. By 1985, the Fiesta, Independence, Holiday, Aloha, California and Freedom bowls had been added, and survived for a while. The Cherry Bowl was in the second year of a two year run. And the Garden State Bowl had been and gone. The Rose Bowl, of course, was still Pac-10 champion v. Big-10 champion, the Orange Bowl was almost always Big-8 champion v. Best available opponent, the Sugar Bowl was SEC champion v Best Available, the Cotton Bowl was SWC champion v. Best Available (with an affinity for Notre Dame, if they could get them). The Fiesta Bowl, of course, was started in 1971 specifically to offer the WAC champion a bowl spot (undefeated Arizona St. played in the Peach Bowl the previous year, failing to get a New Year’s Day bowl invitation; the previous two years the WAC champion hadn’t gotten invited to ANY bowl). The number of available teams for bowls hadn’t really changed (although the NCAA finally went to the Div III, II, I-AA and I-A in the 70s), the Div-IA conferences were the ones I listed before, primarily. Not shockingly, Historically Black Colleges didn’t get bowl invites. :dubious:

The main change to all this came in the early '90s, as ESPN started offering money and exposure to other places wanting in on the bowl game experience. Not shockingly, this exposure started the eventual trend towards trying to select a “national champion” through some method other than the AP and UPI polls. The explosion of bowl games to the present bloated structure has not in my opinion benefitted the game.

[Zakalwe]

Here we go! Tide v Tigers. Should be a good game!

[Doctor_Who]

Did they just fly a War Eagle over this game???

[Snowboarder_Bo]

I win money!

[TonySinclair]

Geez, what a yawner.

[stillownedbysetters]

@TonySinclair

Geez, what a yawner.

The last quarter wasn’t bad. At least it was competitive. And not nearly as nap-inducing as last weekend’s NFL wild card offerings.

[Barkis_is_Willin]

I assume the yawner comment was sarcasm.

Hard to talk about that finish without asking whether that pick play was legal or not. Clemson ran a very similar pick play earlier that was legal because the receiver that was setting the pick did turn around and present himself as a target. But on that final play, the receiver pretty much just bowled into the defender. That said, there was grabbing and shoving on both sides, so maybe the no call was the correct call.

[Saint_Cad]

@Barkis_is_Willin

I assume the yawner comment was sarcasm.

Hard to talk about that finish without asking whether that pick play was legal or not. Clemson ran a very similar pick play earlier that was legal because the receiver that was setting the pick did turn around and present himself as a target. But on that final play, the receiver pretty much just bowled into the defender. That said, there was grabbing and shoving on both sides, so maybe the no call was the correct call.

Here is my take on the pick play: It doesn’t matter.

During the Washington game, an Alabama linebacker clapped his hands while Washington was in shotgun. This caused the center to hike the ball early and created a fumble. It was obvious and a blatant violation of the rules - in other words it was cheating and it didn’t get called. If that’s how you’re going to play, then you have no right to complain when someone blatantly violates the rules against you and gets away with it.

TL;DR version: Karma

[Gatopescado]

Got drunk last night and completely forgot about the game! :smack:

Oh well. At least Bama lost.

[Atamasama]

@Barkis_is_Willin

I assume the yawner comment was sarcasm.

Hard to talk about that finish without asking whether that pick play was legal or not. Clemson ran a very similar pick play earlier that was legal because the receiver that was setting the pick did turn around and present himself as a target. But on that final play, the receiver pretty much just bowled into the defender. That said, there was grabbing and shoving on both sides, so maybe the no call was the correct call.

It seems to be universally accepted that the play was fine, even the Bama coach interviewed said he didn’t think a flag was warranted. The defense slipped up (personally I think they had been worn out by that point) and allowed it to happen.

[Barkis_is_Willin]

'Bama really flubbed up the ensuing on-side kick, too. I mean, there was basically no hope anyway, but they just stood and looked at the ball. Nobody went after it to pick it up and lateral it or something. How many times does the kicker recover his own on-side kick?

[Vicsage]

Why didn’t Alabama just hold all the wide receivers on tha last play with 6 seconds left? The QB would have no one to throw to and the penalties would just put the ball on the one with one more play. Clemson would probably have kicked the Field goal and gone into OT.

[notfrommensa]

@Vicsage

Why didn’t Alabama just hold all the wide receivers on tha last play with 6 seconds left? The QB would have no one to throw to and the penalties would just put the ball on the one with one more play. Clemson would probably have kicked the Field goal and gone into OT.

IIRC, The game cannot end on a defensive penalty so a defensive holding penalty would have resulted in a field goal attempt and a probable tie

If there was no penalty, there was a chance that time would have expired and if that happens, 'Bama wins.

[Atamasama]

@Vicsage

Why didn’t Alabama just hold all the wide receivers on tha last play with 6 seconds left? The QB would have no one to throw to and the penalties would just put the ball on the one with one more play. Clemson would probably have kicked the Field goal and gone into OT.

With your defense tied up like that you’d be letting the QB practically walk those 2 yards into the end zone.

[borschevsky]

@Barkis_is_Willin

'Bama really flubbed up the ensuing on-side kick, too. I mean, there was basically no hope anyway, but they just stood and looked at the ball. Nobody went after it to pick it up and lateral it or something. How many times does the kicker recover his own on-side kick?

If an Alabama player had recovered the kick with his knee on the ground, would any time come off the clock?

I’ve heard a few people mention that an onside kick there is actually pretty risky, since if a Clemson player had touched it prior to it going 10 yards, Alabama would have taken possession with time for a play.

[jaycat]

I didn’t understand the onside kick either. As opposed to a down-the-field squib kick.

[Barkis_is_Willin]

A squib kick would have made more sense to me, yes. The on-side kick was riskier, but Clemson executed it perfectly.