2018 NCAA Football Thread

[RemoveSnyder]

5 minutes ago, AlvinWaltonIsMyBoy said:

I did mean Kliff.  I'm all on board the Toub train, I seriously think it could happen.  Coordinators from KC have been doing well, maybe Snyder tries to follow the trend.    

 

I was high on Mel Tucker at UGA as well.  Was hoping we'd give him a long look, but I guess Mack checked all the boxes.

 

When is Julius Peppers coming back as D-Line coach? 

[AlvinWaltonIsMyBoy]

1 minute ago, Monk4thaHALL said:

When is Julius Peppers coming back as D-Line coach? 

Hopefully after we take the tie breaker away from the Panthers for the last wild card spot.

[Going Commando]

UCF has no path.  Tough to justify putting a two loss Michigan team ahead of them in the rankings.  There should be no way that Michigan gets in, but amazingly enough, they still have a path.

[Kilmer17]

As I’ve been saying, the time has come for all non power 5 schools to break off and form their own championship series.  

 

The biggest problem is listening to the ncaa say they want the 4 best teams.  If that’s the case, then games really don’t matter.  It’s just an excuse they use to justify making sure they maximize the tv ratings. 

 

If they really wanted the 4 best teams.  Then take the top four right now.   Can anyone honestly argue that Ohio St and Oklahoma are better than UGA?   Even if UGA loses to Bama?  

[Going Commando]

We don't need to see a rematch if Georgia loses to Alabama.  I'd rather see Oklahoma take a crack at Bama in that circumstance.

 

The playoff format is working as intended for the most part, Michigan is just being overrated.

[Going Commando]

Vilma is overrated as an analyst.  Heard him on Mike and Mike yesterday jerking off Ohio State.  Saying they should be ahead of Oklahoma based on "the eye test" because, look, we know Oklahoma's offense is great, but they don't play defense, and what if Ohio State can play defense?  Nevermind Ohio State's defense sucks too and Maryland just hung 50 on them the week before.

 

At the end of the segment, after Vilma had just finished shoveling a mountain of BS, Wingo closes with, "I still think Oklahoma will be ahead of them."

 

Wingo is the smart one.

[Kilmer17]

It's either the 4 best teams or its not.  And if it's not, then it really just comes down to whatever constantly morphing basis they use to justify putting the 4 teams in they think will make them the most money.

[Elessar78]

It's important to remember that ESPN is not journalism. MOst of the talking heads in the sports media are NOT journalists. They are there to make things interesting and elicit something from the viewer. When I still watched Game Day Mark May would take some ridiculous position and Lou Holtz would take the opposing position. They are just there as proxies for you and your buddies to argue. The truth, usually somewhere in the middle. Mike, Mike, and Wingo commentary—probably heavily scripted beforehand. I can guarantee you it's not extemporaneous.

 

Unless you put all the teams in one league and have them play as many of each other as possible—there will always be debate. It's okay—we'll never know. Ohio State could probably beat alabama in a one-off, because that's the nature of sports.

 

 

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

I'm happy they have some form of a playoff, even if it's about as minimum as it can be.  To me the best way to handle this (and I've posted this in the past - might be slightly different than what I said before too) is to expand to an 8 team playoff, with the winners of the power 5 conference championship games getting automatic bids.  Then when the final rankings come out, the next three highest ranked teams get the remaining 3 spots.

 

Also, scrap the ****ing committee and bring back the BCS ranking system so human bias is removed and the final three spots are determined by the formula.  No more than 8 teams.  And remove one or two regular season non-conference games against cream puff teams from lower divisions and do not allow any teams to schedule a cream puff team after weeks one or two (looking at you Bama) to help their rankings.  

[Yohan]

I like the idea of the 8 team playoff system, but not so much the emphasis on the Power 5. Under that scenario, there is potential to have Northwestern, Pitt, Utah or Washington this year. On top of that, a lot of the conferences have cream puffs built in (Cough...Big 10, ACC).

[Elessar78]

5 minutes ago, Yohan said:

I like the idea of the 8 team playoff system, but not so much the emphasis on the Power 5. Under that scenario, there is potential to have Northwestern, Pitt, Utah or Washington this year. On top of that, a lot of the conferences have cream puffs built in (Cough...Big 10, ACC).

But if those teams win their conference, which is decided by head to head competition—that's the way sports is supposed to be. It's not a beauty pageant. It'll make it interesting that in off years you get something like that.

[Yohan]

11 minutes ago, Elessar78 said:

But if those teams win their conference, which is decided by head to head competition—that's the way sports is supposed to be. It's not a beauty pageant. It'll make it interesting that in off years you get something like that.

I'm just not a fan of the automatic power 5 bid. How else could everyone complain about Notre Dame being in the playoffs if they beat two of the conference champions (NW & Pitt)? Just looking out for yous.

[Elessar78]

1 minute ago, Yohan said:

I'm just not a fan of the automatic power 5 bid. How else could everyone complain about Notre Dame being in the playoffs if they beat two of the conference champions (NW & Pitt)? Just looking out for yous.

I think the proposal on the table is power 5 autobid plus 3 at-large. ND this year, in this proposed system, would get an at large.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

1 hour ago, Dont Taze Me Bro said:

 

Also, scrap the ****ing committee and bring back the BCS ranking system so human bias is removed and the final three spots are determined by the formula.  No more than 8 teams. 

 

Oh, god, that was awful.

 

I'm now a believer that we should bring back The Big 8 and the SWC and have them all cheat openly again and play 15 bowl games on January 1 and then **** when BYU is national champs.

 

That was more fun than this.

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

5 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

Oh, god, that was awful.

 

I'm now a believer that we should bring back The Big 8 and the SWC and have them all cheat openly again and play 15 bowl games on January 1 and then **** when BYU is national champs.

 

That was more fun than this.

 

The BCS formula wasn't very good when just deciding the final two teams to play for the national championship.  But using it to determine the final three teams that would get in wouldn't be that bad.  I'd be fine with them tweaking it too, but I don't like a human committee, because there is bias.  And we have already seen over the past few years where they stress importance of conference championship games then ignore it when it doesn't play out the way they want it to.

 

I want all bias completely removed from the process.  The only way to do that is to have automatic bids for the power 5 and some sort of system/process that ranks all the remaining teams at the end of the year and the top 3 get spots.  Create a new formula/system if needed, whatever works.  

[Going Commando]

I want an 8 team playoff so Michigan and Ohio State can both lose and UCF won't have to throw their own parade and the Pac 12 can still be excluded.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

21 minutes ago, Dont Taze Me Bro said:

 

The BCS formula wasn't very good when just deciding the final two teams to play for the national championship.  But using it to determine the final three teams that would get in wouldn't be that bad.  I'd be fine with them tweaking it too, but I don't like a human committee, because there is bias.  And we have already seen over the past few years where they stress importance of conference championship games then ignore it when it doesn't play out the way they want it to.

 

I want all bias completely removed from the process.  The only way to do that is to have automatic bids for the power 5 and some sort of system/process that ranks all the remaining teams at the end of the year and the top 3 get spots.  Create a new formula/system if needed, whatever works.  

 

I don't think anyone actually wants to watch the first round of an 8-team playoff. It just sounds like boring bowl games to me.

 

Here's the problem I think everyone ignores in these endless demands for a perfect college football system. I don't think people watch college football that way. I think people watch their owns teams and maybe one big game a week. And I think they used to watch bowls the way they watch the basketball tourney. Just gamble on everything, get drunk, and let college football wash over you.

 

A four-game college football weekend in, like, December sounds like something I would never ever watch.

 

The debacle of putting the first round of the 4-team playoff on NYE reveals some of what I'm talking about here. If those were NFL games, people would have watched. But there has to be some kind of connection to a college football game.

 

I also don't think an 8-game playoff would ultimately prove anything, because playoffs are kind of dumb. It just increases the randomness which would allow a team like Michigan to somehow be national champion this year, which would be completely ludicrous.

 

That's really the gist of my argument. Look at 2018. Should Michigan be national champion? If the answer is no then you can't put them in a playoff. So if a playoff includes them and gives them a chance to win, the playoff is flawed.

 

Here's a question: does anyone ever really enjoy the basketball championship game? I feel like the Final Four is the absolute worst part of the tournament, because all the interesting stuff has already happened, and somehow a Michigan State team with eight losses might win the title, which is just always awful.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

One more thing. Football doesn't work like basketball. Boise State or UCF can win a bowl game against a college power following a six week layoff.

 

I don't think there is any chance that a team from a mid-major conference is going to win 3 games in 3 or 4 weeks against top ten schools. It would require a supernatural amount of luck to intervene.

 

I think you would see a UCF occasionally win a first round game and then lose by 40 in the Final Four. Again, this is not basketball where this sort of thing happens now because of the three point shot and the fact that every good team has an average age of 18 years and 7 months. I think you would need something to fundamentally alter college football to make putting a mid major school in an expanded playoff worthwhile.

 

 

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

50 minutes ago, Yohan said:

I'm just not a fan of the automatic power 5 bid. How else could everyone complain about Notre Dame being in the playoffs if they beat two of the conference champions (NW & Pitt)? Just looking out for yous.

 

Then Touchdown Jesus needs to join a ****ing conference.  And if they beat two conference champions along with other power 5 teams (since they do play an ACC heavy schedule) then they shouldn't have a problem being ranked in the top 3 of the remaining teams.  

 

Look at the current rankings, ND is #3 before the conference championship games.  Let's just assume that Clemson, OSU, OK, WA and Bama win their conference championship games and get automatic bids.  Only one team out of the five that lost (GA #4) would be worthy of one of the remaining top three spots in the final rankings.  

 

If you remove the five winning teams from the current rankings and look through the top 10 teams you are left with #3 ND, #4 GA, #7 UCF, #8 Mich, #9 TX.  Since three of the five were idle, it would probably get ranked something like #1 ND, #2 GA, #UCF, #4 Mich, etc.  So yeah UCF would get in over Michigan, but they are currently ranked higher than them now.  

 

And it wouldn't be a bad thing either imo.  Sure if there were upsets in some of the conference championship games, like NW or Pitt winning, then teams like OSU and Clemson would fall some, but still probably hang on to make the playoffs.  But if those teams did pull upsets they deserve to have a shot.

[TheDoyler23]

1 minute ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

I don't think anyone actually wants to watch the first round of an 8-team playoff. It just sounds like boring bowl games to me.

 

 

I agree that 8 teams is overkill. And even if they went to 8, then ESPN and the talking heads would just be screaming about the 7th and 8th spot instead of the 4th. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

One more thought that just occurred to me. You can't do an 8 team playoff without utterly destroying the regular season - especially September non-conference games. If you are going to expand, you need to expand to either 12 or a ludicrous 16.

 

An 8 team playoff creates a ton of perverse incentives. Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Michigan State are all in the same division. It would almost be better for any of them to have one-loss in conference and miss the title game than to a) play anyone decent in September and b) make a conference title game with loss.

 

The goal of every team with a dream of the playoffs would be an undefeated OOC schedule and a one-loss conference schedule. That keeps you very alive for the Final 8.

 

I want to live in a college football universe where say Notre Dame, Pitt, WVU, and Penn State all have an incentive to play each other occasionally in September. (I know Pitt and ND have a weird conference tie-in, but bear with me). All those teams would be out of their mind to risk a September loss in a world with an 8-team playoff. Currently, that game is a positive because the goal is either to be undefeated or a 1-loss team with an impressive resume. 8 teams takes the SOS argument almost completely out of it. You can make an argument with just a one-loss record.

 

Also, do you people realize that Florida is the #9 team in the rankings. If UCF's quarterback breaks his leg two weeks earlier, they are probably #8 and in your previous playoff.

 

I've seen some Florida games this year. Florida kinda stinks.

 

An 8-team playoff is trash.

 

(I still think a three-team playoff would be the most fascinating. Clemson and Notre Dame fight it out to take on Alabama. A three-team playoff rewards you for excellence and more or less eliminates the backdoor undeserving SEC team. I know. I'm a genius).

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

4 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

One more thought that just occurred to me. You can't do an 8 team playoff without utterly destroying the regular season - especially September non-conference games. If you are going to expand, you need to expand to either 12 or a ludicrous 16.

 

An 8 team playoff creates a ton of perverse incentives. Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Michigan State are all in the same division. It would almost be better for any of them to have one-loss in conference and miss the title game than to a) play anyone decent in September and b) make a conference title game with loss.

 

The goal of every team with a dream of the playoffs would be an undefeated OOC schedule and a one-loss conference schedule. That keeps you very alive for the Final 8.

 

I want to live in a college football universe where say Notre Dame, Pitt, WVU, and Penn State all have an incentive to play each other occasionally in September. (I know Pitt and ND have a weird conference tie-in, but bear with me). All those teams would be out of their mind to risk a September loss in a world with an 8-team playoff. Currently, that game is a positive because the goal is either to be undefeated or a 1-loss team with an impressive resume. 8 teams takes the SOS argument almost completely out of it. You can make an argument with just a one-loss record.

 

Was talking about removing cream puff games like Bama vs. Kenshaw State in Sept.  Instead maybe Bama plays ND or FSU (which they did 2017).  Same with the rest of the power 5 teams. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

41 minutes ago, Dont Taze Me Bro said:

 

Then Touchdown Jesus needs to join a ****ing conference. 

 

No they don't.

 

I hate Notre Dame, but I respect them for holding onto their quasi-Independent status. I miss Independents. I still think the worst thing that ever happened to college football was Penn State joining the Big Ten. It destroyed everything that made eastern football interesting. It forced the creation of the Big East. And it eliminated all the fun stuff that used to happen with the independents and the smaller (in number) conferences.

6 minutes ago, Dont Taze Me Bro said:

 

Was talking about removing cream puff games like Bama vs. Kenshaw State in Sept.  Instead maybe Bama plays ND or FSU (which they did 2017).  Same with the rest of the power 5 teams. 

 

1, What organization has the power to do that? Answer: no one.

2. What would be the incentive for Alabama to do that? Answer: none.

3. You would again be secretly be undermining college football in general. Those cream puff teams get enough money from those match-ups to fund their athletic departments for the year. 

 

In order to create an incentive for those good early season matchups, you need to create either a scarcity of playoff spots so you need to build a resume or a parcity so it doesn't matter. 8 seemsto fall into a weird no-man's land.

 

Also, all you jaga are prisoners of the moment and are trying to create a system based around Alabama's dominance. You want to make it harder for Alabama to win a title while simultaneously making it easier for them to get the opportunity. You're also all obsessed with Notre Dame, which Brian Kelly has now built into a program that can absolutely lose a first-round playoff game every four years. Neither program is likely to bet the same in ten years.

[Dont Taze Me Bro]

Just now, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

No they don't.

 

I hate Notre Dame, but I respect them for holding onto their quasi-Independent status. I miss Independents. I still think the worst thing that ever happened to college football was Penn State joining the Big Ten. It destroyed everything that made eastern football interesting. It forced the creation of the Big East. And it eliminated all the fun stuff that used to happen with the independents and the smaller (in number) conferences.

 

I've been an FSU fan since I was 12 years old (back in 1987) and they were independent too.  It wasn't until 1992 they joined the ACC, so I only got 5-6 years watching them being independent.  I had no problem with them joining the ACC.

[Elessar78]

Saban is 67. three more years and his mind starts going feeble.