College Football Playoff & Bowl Games Thread

#26      
Army-Navy game lines: Navy Midshipmen +7 -- Over/Under: 43

I would take Army -7 all day here. Navy has struggled this season mightily.
 
#27      

KBLEE

Montgomery, IL
This is a perfect point about ND. They don't play a cupcake schedule. They play Michigan, Stanford, USC every year and people are complaining? The SEC plays 2, that is right 2 FCS opponents every year. That equates to 3 bye weeks in their full regular season schedule. It is crap and I wonder when the SEC will start being penalized for it

Notre Dame's SOS this year is not great by any means (#61), which is below all of the B1G bowl teams except Iowa (#67) and much closer to UCF (#83) than Alabama (#17). The remaining playoff teams have SOS below Notre Dame, but at least they each won a conference championship.
 
#28      
So I see 3 wins, Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State. I don't see a good Bowl Season for the B1G
I think Iowa and Wisconsin have a great shot to win. NW game is a tossup, though I do think the PU and MSU games could get out of hand quickly.
 
#29      

Deleted member 654622

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Notre Dame's SOS this year is not great by any means (#61), which is below all of the B1G bowl teams except Iowa (#67) and much closer to UCF (#83) than Alabama (#17). The remaining playoff teams have SOS below Notre Dame, but at least they each won a conference championship.
SOS is based off people's opinions about how strong a team is. ND played FSU, Mich, USC, and Stanford. It is not NDs fault that USC and FSU are having a down year. Show me another team with the balls to make that schedule?

Alabama at 17 is a straight joke! They played LSU, and Texas AM in the regular season. Every other team, including their cupcakes, which allow them to get healthy, are having bad years. Anyone that tells me Alabama's schedule was harder than NDs is crazy.
 
#30      

Deleted member 654622

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I think Iowa and Wisconsin have a great shot to win. NW game is a tossup, though I do think the PU and MSU games could get out of hand quickly.
This is where I think Iowa and Wisconsin look good playing in the B1G, but vs other decent P5 teams, I think they are going to get rolled this year. I really hope I am wrong.
 
#31      

KBLEE

Montgomery, IL
Alabama at 17 is a straight joke! They played LSU, and Texas AM in the regular season. Every other team, including their cupcakes, which allow them to get healthy, are having bad years. Anyone that tells me Alabama's schedule was harder than NDs is crazy.

You conveniently left off Missouri and Mississippi State (both Top 25 teams) and the fact that they beat Georgia in the championship game. I don't like Alabama anymore than the next guy, but their schedule was easily harder than ND.
 
#32      

KrushCow31

Former Krush Cow
Chicago, IL
Why? I stated you’d force them to by making a conference championship part of the criteria but I guess they could skip the chance and keep cashing checks. Not sure others should schedule them at this point. I suppose it’s the only way to get a part of their cash cow.

I go to ND now. No way we join a conference. We tried that already and the B1G declined us. I believe Illinois voted against it haha. If we joined a conference now we would have to throw away so many rivalries. Semi-joining the ACC already did that enough. Michigan, USC, Navy and Stanford are huge rivalries and so are Pitt, Michigan State, and Northwestern. We already had partially lost Michigan. We don't play Michigan State every year anymore, and we don't play Purdue at all. If we join the ACC full time, we would probably only play Michigan(maybe), Navy, Stanford, and USC, plus the ACC? That is an INSANE schedule. Clemson has beaten almost nobody this year. Their best win is Syracuse, and for some reason everyone enshrines them at #2 when they've beaten less ranked teams than ND just cause they beat Pitt in the conference championship.

Notre Dame shouldn't have to join a conference and give up all their rivalries just because the current college playoff system is stupid at 4 teams.
 
#33      

KrushCow31

Former Krush Cow
Chicago, IL
You conveniently left off Missouri and Mississippi State (both Top 25 teams) and the fact that they beat Georgia in the championship game. I don't like Alabama anymore than the next guy, but their schedule was easily harder than ND.

ND Top 25:
#7 Michigan
#20 Syracuse
#22 Northwestern
Stanford receives votes

Alabama Top 25:
#6 Georgia
#11 LSU
#18 Mississippi State
#21 Texas A&M
#24 Missouri

Also:

Oklahoma Top 25:
#15 Texas(L/W)
#16 West Virginia
#24 Iowa State

Clemson Top 25:
#19 Texas A&M
#20 Syracuse

If anyone should be called out, it's Clemson, not ND.

Obviously Alabama has the most now, but I also think the SEC is overrated this year, especially Mississippi State and LSU.
 
#34      

mhuml32

Cincinnati, OH
8 teams. 5 conference champs and 3 at-large.

There would be no reason to ever complain again.


We have hours on content dedicated to the teams who were spurned from a 68-team tournament immediately after the March Madness bracket is revealed. Plenty of FCS, DII, and DIII teams complain about their football teams not making 16/24 team tournaments. No amount of teams being involved in a playoff is going to quelch the angst of sports fans.
 
#35      

KrushCow31

Former Krush Cow
Chicago, IL
We have hours on content dedicated to the teams who were spurned from a 68-team tournament immediately after the March Madness bracket is revealed. Plenty of FCS, DII, and DIII teams complain about their football teams not making 16/24 team tournaments. No amount of teams being involved in a playoff is going to quelch the angst of sports fans.

There are many very valid and logical complaints against the 4 team format. Especially from a G4 perspective.
 
#36      

DrewD007

Woodridge, IL
8 teams. 5 conference champs and 3 at-large.

There would be no reason to ever complain again.

I don't like the idea of giving auto bids to conference champs. Sure this year it'd work out great, but what if Northwestern or Pitt had pulled off an upset on Saturday?
 
#37      
I don't like the idea of giving auto bids to conference champs. Sure this year it'd work out great, but what if Northwestern or Pitt had pulled off an upset on Saturday?

Then they'd be in the playoff? I mean, one of the complaints about the current format is that not every conference gets represented and then come the questions surrounding SoS (as has happened in this thread). Giving the conference champion an auto bid removes that as each conference will have at least one team. And if your conference's "best team" doesn't win the conference championship (upset fashion, not like what could have happened between Georgia and Alabama), well then maybe they aren't that good.
 
#38      
Notre Dame's SOS this year is not great by any means (#61), which is below all of the B1G bowl teams except Iowa (#67) and much closer to UCF (#83) than Alabama (#17). The remaining playoff teams have SOS below Notre Dame, but at least they each won a conference championship.

Throwing out the SOS is misleading. Every year the CFPC has completely ignored the SOS (usually for the benefit of the teams they favour). The year OSU went to the CF playoffs without a conference championship, they had a middle of the road SOS.

Instead of a pure SOS, they look wins vs bowl teams as their version of SOS. ND had 8 wins against bowl bound teams; 3 in the top 25 (not to mention they beat two division winners/conference runner ups) They also only played 1 'mid-major' team this year (Ball State).

And, at the end of the day, an undefeated season is a good substitute for a conference championship.
 
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#39      
Throwing out the SOS is misleading. Every year the CFPC has completely ignored the SOS (usually for the benefit of the teams they favour). The year OSU went to the CF playoffs without a conference championship, they had a middle of the road SOS.

Instead of a pure SOS, they look wins vs bowl teams as their version of SOS. ND had 8 wins against bowl bound teams; 3 in the top 25 (not to mention they beat two division winners/conference runner ups) They also only played 1 'mid-major' team this year (Ball State).

And, at the end of the day, an undefeated season is a good substitute for a conference championship.
You're right. ND might not be one of the best 4 teams, but they have the resume of one. I would tab Georgia over them (and honestly OU and OSU). The playoff committee is better as the BCS system was, but not much. There's no such thing as a perfect system. Playing one-off games has been shown multiple times to be chaotic and not representative of who's actually the best team in the country, but example for this year, there's three (4, but thats a whole other argument) undefeated teams, sure Bama has looked the most dominant (and has the stats to mostly back that up), but its not clemson or ND's fault necessarily.

An 8 team playoff, 5 conference champs, best G5 team, and two wild cards is more appealable to fans, but I honestly can't say it fixes it competely, and the more one-off games you play, the more parity and chance you add to possibly getting the 2nd or 3rd or worse team be labelled champ. I guess to that end, that's how most sports work anyways.
 
#40      
If you think of the whole season as a playoff, four teams works very well. Take the undefeated P5 teams and fill in with the next best one-loss team(s), or an undefeated non-P5 team if you think it is deserving. The teams that are out had their chance during the season and really can't be complaining. And for the most part, they usually don't.

If conferences think ND has an advantage not playing a conference title game, then they could get rid of their conference title games. I think it's silly that the Big 12 plays a conference game after playing a round robin schedule, but they believe the additional game helps their playoff resume. I can think of several million reasons why the Big Ten and SEC won't get rid of their title games.
 
#41      

Deleted member 654622

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You conveniently left off Missouri and Mississippi State (both Top 25 teams) and the fact that they beat Georgia in the championship game. I don't like Alabama anymore than the next guy, but their schedule was easily harder than ND.
I'm sorry but if you think Missouri and Mississippi State are "tough" teams, then much watch a lot of ESPN. Georgia? They didn't get killed by Alabama, great. They must be a really good team. Except they got curb stomped by LSU. And struggled every other game.
 
#42      

Deleted member 746094

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Just scanned previous posts. I can’t stand Golden Domers, but saying they don’t play a quality schedule is ridiculous. Most years FSU and USC are Top 25 or even better teams. To me when P5 (ND football is a P5 level team) teams go undefeated, and there are less than 4 undefeated teams they automatically earn a spot. If there are 4 or more then SOS comes into the conversation. At the end of the day Alabama and Clemson are at the top of college football and the title goes through them as they simply have the most talent year in and year out.
 
#43      
We have hours on content dedicated to the teams who were spurned from a 68-team tournament immediately after the March Madness bracket is revealed. Plenty of FCS, DII, and DIII teams complain about their football teams not making 16/24 team tournaments. No amount of teams being involved in a playoff is going to quelch the angst of sports fans.

Yes, but generally that argument is made only by the fans of the schools that get left out. But this current format causes outrage for general sports fans. I hate OSU, but I want to see a heisman finalist get a shot at Bama. I don't care at all about Georgia, but Bama Georgia was a great game and I would want to see it again.
 
#44      

Deleted member 654622

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I think regardless of the 8 or 4 game playoff, their needs to be more consistency with scheduling amongst the conferences. All P5 teams should play at least 2 other out of conference P5 teams.
 
#45      
If you think of the whole season as a playoff, four teams works very well. Take the undefeated P5 teams and fill in with the next best one-loss team(s), or an undefeated non-P5 team if you think it is deserving. The teams that are out had their chance during the season and really can't be complaining. And for the most part, they usually don't.
This is just wrong. How does it "work"? OSU and OU are both one loss teams, the only difference is really OSU has a "bad" loss on their resume. They also have a much better win than OU does (scUM). Sure this year had 3 undefeated P5 teams, but thats happened exactly once since the CFP inception, so your reasoning doesn't work unless there happens to be exactly 3 undefeated teams. In theory, there could be 6 (ND and the 5 conference champs), what then? And you even bring up the possibility of putting in a G5 undefeated... "if deserving" is so vague and the CFP committee is already mired in vagueness.

I think the committee got it right from a resume standpoint, but I also think OSU and Georgia have almost equal chances of beating Clemson, Bama, and/or ND as OU does. If you're looking to crown the "best" team, record and final score does not always indicate that, nor does SOS (I think UCF would've had a shot with their QB).
 
#46      
This is just wrong. How does it "work"? OSU and OU are both one loss teams, the only difference is really OSU has a "bad" loss on their resume. They also have a much better win than OU does (scUM).
It works because the regular season matters. It works because the goal is to crown the best team, not find with exact certainty the top four. There is always going to be some doubt, or vagueness as you put it, for the last team in/first team out, whether the cutoff is at 4, 8, 16, 32, etc.
Sure this year had 3 undefeated P5 teams, but thats happened exactly once since the CFP inception, so your reasoning doesn't work unless there happens to be exactly 3 undefeated teams. In theory, there could be 6 (ND and the 5 conference champs), what then? And you even bring up the possibility of putting in a G5 undefeated... "if deserving" is so vague and the CFP committee is already mired in vagueness.
I'm not following why you think it only works with three undefeated teams. A four team playoff can work with no undefeated teams. And how many time since the number of games expanded to 12 (or even in the last 50 years?) were there more than 4 unbeaten teams at the end of the season?
I think the committee got it right from a resume standpoint, but I also think OSU and Georgia have almost equal chances of beating Clemson, Bama, and/or ND as OU does. If you're looking to crown the "best" team, record and final score does not always indicate that, nor does SOS (I think UCF would've had a shot with their QB).
I agree with this. But if you think this, then why have a playoff? We should go back to the polls.
 
#47      
I go to ND now. No way we join a conference. We tried that already and the B1G declined us. I believe Illinois voted against it haha.

This is not what I recall. In 1999, the B1G offered ND membership. ND said they were interested in joining, but they wanted to keep control over football scheduling (either no or partial B1G schedule). B1G said full membership with full football schedule or nothing. The ND community then strenuously objected to joining the B1G, and ND said no. I don't recall anything about a vote or Illinois voting against. At the time, IIRC some B1G members thought ND always intended to show up the B1G via the public courtship and refusal and vowed to never again offer membership.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/06/sports/college-football-just-say-no-notre-dame-shuns-big-ten.html
 
#49      

Deleted member 29907

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So I see 3 wins, Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State. I don't see a good Bowl Season for the B1G
Wisconsin can beat Miami - they are really not that good this year. Their D is good, offense - eck.