Like the Evil League of Evil trophy. I agree with this idea.
Yeah, anyway, Alabama’s the national champion. Much deserved. They’re the best team in college football. And despite all the butthurt, Alabama and Georgia turned out to be one of the best college football games ever played.
I’d buy tickets to an Alabama - UCF game. To that end, I’ll take note of UCF’s national champion banner as much as Alabama’s.
I will point out that, even in the bad old days of national polls deciding this issue, it’s unlikely that UCF would have finished first. Ample examples can be pointed to.
I wonder if the NCAA will as well. I seem to recall that, back in 2003 or so, when Auburn’s players got “national champion” rings (really just SEC championship rings with “national champions” engraved on them), Auburn tried putting up a “National Champions” banner, but somebody (the NCAA?) gave them a Severe Glaring At and it was replaced with an “Undefeated Season” banner.
Note that only Alabama can give its players “national champion” rings separate from anything else they are entitled to. In fact, here’s a list, right out of the NCAA Bylaws:
[ul]
[li]Season ring (up to $425 for seniors, $225 for underclassmen)[/li][li]Sugar Bowl rings (up to $400 from the school; up to $550 from the bowl organizers)[/li][li]National Championship rings (up to $415 from the school; up to $415 from the SEC)[/li][li]One I am not quite sure of - they may also be allowed CFP Championship Game rings (up to $400 from the school; up to $400 from the CFP organizers), if it qualifies under “other established tournaments” (strictly speaking, the CFP Championship Game is not a “bowl game”)[/li][/ul]
The only counterexample I can think of - BYU 1984 - was when BYU went 13-0 (they got an extra game because of the “Hawaii rule”) and the only other team with a record better than 10-2 was Fullerton State, which was 11-1 at the time, but they were “only” in the PCAA (now Big West). (Fullerton’s only loss was to UNLV, which used ineligible players, but it is not clear if UNLV “forfeited” that game, which would make Fullerton’s record 12-0, or only “vacated” the win, in which case the 11-1 record is still official.)
You can - fine if you do. No different than what BYU could have done with respect to Florida in 2007. But when people look at their almanacs, when they look at Google & Wikipedia, they see only one champion. The fact is, most people from the Midwest or Left Coast don’t see real football. It’s played in the South.
I think the rule should be that only conference champions can be in the final four. If you lost your conference you are not the best team in the country.
The whole BCS/playoff system is an effort to match the two top teams in the country to play for the National Championship. It started because before the 1990s, you had all of the conference tie ins to the bowls such that the top teams would not play each other. The SEC champ went to the Sugar Bowl, the PAC10/BIG10 champs went to the Rose Bowl, etc.
The BCS solved that issue for the most part, but then you had years were there was an argument because there would be three (or more) teams in the discussion of who was the best. So we moved to a playoff system to help eliminate that.
But what I do not believe was intended by this system was to give the losers a do-over. A full season made Georgia the SEC winner over Alabama. That should exclude Alabama from any argument to be champions of the whole country.
I know, I know, the NFL has wild card teams, but the CFB playoffs had the intention outlined above, not to be like the Super Bowl.
Well, Alabama lost the conference and beat the team that won that same conference, so what does that make Georgia, then?
Alabama had one loss, and it wasn’t to Georgia. It was a road game at the end of the year against a division rival that routinely fields quality teams year-in and year-out. I don’t see how this game was any more of a do-over than it was for any of the other teams that had one loss. And I certainly don’t see how it was more of a do-over than it would have been for 2-loss teams like Ohio State or USC. Alabama was penalized for one loss because it happened to be in the same division as Auburn. It wasn’t a do-over. It was a chance to compete with three other teams for the national championship, which they deserved based on their season. And it looks like they made the committee smart for selecting them, based on the outcome of the playoffs.
Nonsense.
Sorry, but your arguments are not addressing the main issue: if you fail to win the conference, you fail to be the best team from your conference. Therefore, you shouldn’t be in the playoffs. The fact that Georgia and Alabama didn’t meet is irrelevant to that argument.
No, your logic doesn’t hold.
If you fail to win your conference, you might not actually get the opportunity to beat the best team in your conference.
Alabama defeated the “best” team in the ACC, and they also their conference…which Oklahoma could not do. So, your basic logic fails, completely and utterly. You clearly don’t understand how basic logic functions.
Uh, my logic functions just fine, and at least my post is grammatically correct. Unlike “and they also their conference”. :rolleyes:
Alabama lost to Auburn. Auburn lost to Georgia. If, during the regular season, Alabama had beaten Georgia, one could argue that Alabama, having failed to be champion, had not demonstrated being worse than the champion. But, as it turns out, they didn’t beat Georgia during the season. Therefore, they were not (during the season) the best team in the Conference.
All that they proved by winning the Championship is that being conference champion isn’t an indication that you cannot lose to others in the conference, and that arguably, the overall championship shouldn’t be limited to teams who were conference champions.
:rolleyes:
Define “best”.
Exactly.
The committee predicted that Alabama would go to their back up QB and suddenly be a whole lot better?
If we are going to give them credit for Alabama, they need to be dinged for their #1 team playing clearly worse than the other three teams in the playoffs. And what about their machinations during the season like moving Miami ahead of Clemson? Hitting on 20 and getting an Ace doesn’t make you a brilliant black jack player. It means you got lucky.
We also don’t get to see the alternative cases. OSU beat USC easily and UCF beat Auburn. Who’s to say that they couldn’t have had the same streak Alabama did in the playoffs?
I don’t think the playoffs showed anything that people didn’t already think, except perhaps Clemson being worse than thought.
I do think it should be noted that Alabama also had one fewer game to play late in the season. One less chance for injuries, one more week of preparation for a reasonably known set of opponents, and one more week of rest/recovery time. They lost their last game of the season and were rewarded with a bye week into the playoffs.
Alabama has twice proven that you can win the national championship without winning your conference. Why should losing one game eliminate you from the playoffs? Clemson, Georgia and Oklahoma all lost one game and they weren’t eliminated from the playoffs. (Ironically, it’s because their losses were to teams not good enough to vie for a divisional championship.) *
The bigger the playoff field, the less the regular season means, and the more likely that a lesser team can upset a better team.
I have lived in Kentucky, where I’ve heard U.K. basketball fans say “It doesn’t matter that we lost last night, as long as we make the playoffs.” I want the regular season to matter. Since the playoffs were expanded from 2 teams to 4 teams, every team essentially gets 1 mulligan. If the playoffs go to 8 teams, then every team will get 2 mulligans.
That being said, the playoffs had to be expanded from 2 to 4 because there are often 3 teams that can legitimately say “We are the best team in the country and we deserve a chance to prove it.” When was the last time that there were 5 teams that could say that? It is theoretically possible that you could end the season with 5 undefeated conference champions, but that won’t happen more than once in the next millennium.
With only 2 teams, you are often going to have a team like Southern Cal or Auburn that gets left out despite having a legitimate argument. That’s not going to happen with 4 teams.
4 is the right number to insure that no deserving team gets left out, while not including so many teams that the regular season no longer matters.
- [Not intending to get political here, but I don’t like any situation where bureaucrats preemptively take the decision making out of the hands of the proper judges, such as mandatory sentencing or outlawing a medical procedure.]
Auburn WAS good enough “to vie for a divisional championship.”
They won their division.
They were IN the Conference Championship.
If Auburn beats Georgia in the SEC Championship game, they are in the CFP.
Yes, I think a 2-loss Auburn team would have made the playoffs. I’m not sure if you’re agreeing with me or not, though.
He’s pointing out that Georgia’s loss wasn’t to a team that wasn’t “good enough to vie for a divisional championship” - their loss was to Auburn, a team that won their division.