2017-18 NCAA Football Thread

[TBGKon]

3 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

^^

That tells me that they might protect, say, #1 Clemson from playing #4 LSU in New Orleans (but the example it shows is just too obvious).  My guess is #1 goes the shorter distance barring having to essentially be the road team.  Though the other question is, do they protect #2?  Suppose this year's rankings were:

1. Arizona

2. Georgia

3. LSU

4. Wisconsin (because, that would be fun).

 

#1 Arizona clearly should go to the Rose Bowl (not to mention PAC/B1G), but maybe they move Georgia/LSU there to protect #2 from playing a road game?

Pretty much all situations are up for consideration, but yeah id say this makes sense.  We would know more once we get some more precedence. 

[dfwabel]

29 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

^^

That tells me that they might protect, say, #1 Clemson from playing #4 LSU in New Orleans (but the example it shows is just too obvious).  My guess is #1 goes the shorter distance barring having to essentially be the road team.  Though the other question is, do they protect #2?  Suppose this year's rankings were:

1. Arizona

2. Georgia

3. LSU

4. Wisconsin (because, that would be fun).

 

#1 Arizona clearly should go to the Rose Bowl (not to mention PAC/B1G), but maybe they move Georgia/LSU there to protect #2 from playing a road game?

Might want to use other teams. Arizona would go to the Rose for the sole fact that they've never been to the Rose Bowl.

 

A 2 v. 3 of intra-conference is very unlikely from the committee as one of those two would've lost in the conference championship. If you didn't win your conference, you will be the 4 seed.

[IceCap]

11 hours ago, McCarthy said:

but the rules are very flawed and they should change them.

Agreed. 

I’m in favour of an eight team playoff. Top five ranked Conference champions and three “wildcard” teams. IE the three highest ranked non-Conference champion teams. 

[OnWis97]

1 hour ago, Ice_Cap said:

Agreed. 

I’m in favour of an eight team playoff. Top five ranked Conference champions and three “wildcard” teams. IE the three highest ranked non-Conference champion teams. 

I like that with the requirement that one wildcard be from another conference.

[BBTV]

So basically you don't care if the best 8 teams are really in the playoff.

 

How do you feel about automatic bids to the NCAA Basketball Tourney, where the Ivy League or some other small-time league champ gets in over a team that maybe won 20 games in a decent conference just because they consume one of the spots?

 

It's a little different because it's 68 teams, which is a lot, but say it was fewer - do you still think that weak conference champs deserve automatic entry?

 

EDIT: keep in mind I know next to nothing about college sports - at least the teams and who is good and who isn't, other than what's discussed here and mentioned in the limited sports center that I watch, so I'm mostly talking philosophically and probably won't be able to back up my arguments by debating one team's resume vs another's.

[OnWis97]

35 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

So basically you don't care if the best 8 teams are really in the playoff.

 

How do you feel about automatic bids to the NCAA Basketball Tourney, where the Ivy League or some other small-time league champ gets in over a team that maybe won 20 games in a decent conference just because they consume one of the spots?

 

It's a little different because it's 68 teams, which is a lot, but say it was fewer - do you still think that weak conference champs deserve automatic entry?

 

EDIT: keep in mind I know next to nothing about college sports - at least the teams and who is good and who isn't, other than what's discussed here and mentioned in the limited sports center that I watch, so I'm mostly talking philosophically and probably won't be able to back up my arguments by debating one team's resume vs another's.

Not sure who this is addressed at, but if it's me...

 

I think with a 68-team tournament (should be 64, but that's another topic) you don't need the best 68 teams.  The 68th best team has no complaint.  I like that each conference gets a bid and that it gives excitement to each conference (how they choose their champions is terrible, but that's another topic).  College sports still (though not as much as it used to) allows for success for more than just one team...particularly in basketball where a bid to the tourney for a small-conference team is as exciting as the Final Four for most big-conference teams.  I like that.  Is the NCAA tourney the best way to decide a national champion?  Probably not, but with over 300 teams, it is a way to give every potentially deserving team a shot.  And I like that, say, Iona or Florida International can enjoy a first-round win as much as, say, Virginia could enjoy a Final Four birth.

 

In football, you don't have the luxury of being able to include all teams that are conceivably deserving.

 

So as I was saying "5 champs, 1 non-power champ, and two wild cards" I knew I was being a bit inconsistent with my "best four" stance.  For me the difference is that with four teams, you are automatically leaving at least one power-5 out and you therefore lose the luxury of getting to really rely on conference championships.  With eight teams, you get to choose all power-5 champs (unfair to other conference, but that's another topic) and then add a couple of 2016-OSU-caliber teams.  And while that non-power-5 team may not be one of the eight best, given the lacking schedule integrity we don't know that.  With eight teams, it becomes worth finding out with this year's Central Florida Team.  The only thing that gives me pause is that for a team like Penn State of 2016, we give them a pass on their non-conference games.  I don't love that, but since it's the Big Ten's automatic bid (as opposed to the current system, which is entirely at large), it bugs me less; the conference are choosing how to handle their automatic bids.  Plus with the two at-large teams, when the best team does not win it's conference on a fluky play, they probably get in.  Obviously, that third at-large candidate that just misses has a bigger gripe than that .500 in-conference ACC basketball team.  That's just the nature of the sports.  The more teams you have, the less the fringe teams really can complain.

 

What I would really like, is a 16-team tournament that includes all 11 conference champions and five at-large.  It makes the conference races fun, allowing for much more interest in the other six conferences and makes the non-conference games matter when it comes to competing for at-large bids.  Yeah, that 16 seed is usually going to play someone like Alabama and get smoked, but we seem OK with having that four times per year in basketball.

 

TL;DR; Choose the best teams unless there are enough teams to provide 5 automatic "Power 5" bids.

[BBTV]

The concept of a "power 5" is kinda dumb IMO, because conferences can manipulate themselves as they see fit by adding / expelling teams, changing the way they name their champ, and there's a barrier to entry for the other leagues.  What do you do if some new conference starts and cherry picks the best of the best of the non-P5 programs?  Since, as I stated above, NCAA football isn't a league, conference championships don't matter one bit, IMO.

 

Also (and possibly a bigger point) - the "one and done" nature of college tournaments - whether CFP or NCAA BB puts the best teams at an inherent disadvantage, since unlike pro sports (at least with basketball) they don't get multiple games to prove their dominance.  Anyone can get lucky and have a magic run, and I don't think anyone would argue that some of these NCAA champs were in no way the true champ.  There's a difference between "tourney champ" and "real champ", IMO.

 

With football, at least in the NFL there's set criteria (which as I've stated in another post, there can't be for college) and the best teams almost always have the advantage, whether it's a bye or home field.  In the NCAA, how could you allow for an obviously inferior conference champion (maybe a team that's really #15) to have a chance to get lucky and topple a top team, and then call them the National Champion when it's obvious that they'd lose 9 out of 10 times?  Everyone loves an underdog, but they're really the "CFP Champions", not the best team.

 

Does that situation happen in the pros?  Of course.  Nobody thinks the Giants team that beat the Patriots (either of them) are really the best teams, but at least they legitimately qualified for the playoffs in a league where everyone plays by the same rules, and fought through every advantage that the higher-ranked teams had, and came up big in the big game.  It happens so rarely in the pros that it's charming, and still nobody considers them the true best team, merely the SB champs.  (Don't get me wrong - as a fan, I'd gladly see my team win the SB even if they were 1-15 in the regular season and somehow qualified for the playoffs because the other teams in the conference all got some virus that prevented them from playing.)

[Sport]

Champion has never meant "best". It means winner of that season. That's an important distinction. If we're just interested in finding the "best" team then we could skip all the brain-damaging football and just hand the trophy to Alabama every August. 

 

If the top team loses to the 15th best team then good for the 15th best team for showing up and shame on the top team who shouldn't be national champion and isn't the best team if they couldn't beat the 15th best team. Who cares about the feelings of a team that should win 9 out of 10 times if they don't win when the game is actually contested? 

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

Champion has never meant "best". It means winner of that season. That's an important distinction. If we're just interested in finding the "best" team then we could skip all the brain-damaging football and just hand the trophy to Alabama every August. 

 

If the top team loses to the 15th best team then good for the 15th best team for showing up and shame on the top team who shouldn't be national champion and isn't the best team if they couldn't beat the 15th best team. Who cares about the feelings of a team that should win 9 out of 10 times if they don't win when the game is actually contested? 

 

"shame on the top team who shouldn't be national champion and isn't the best team if they couldn't beat the 15th best team" - so based on that, no non-undefeated team deserves to be national champion.

 

I guess I'm in the minority, but I just want to see who's best.  Upset stories are great, but they shouldn't happen very often, and very little should be left to chance.  That's why I never want to see a Super Bowl played in snow or any type of environment that neutralizes the strengths of any team or turns the game into a crap shoot.

[Sport]

23 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

"shame on the top team who shouldn't be national champion and isn't the best team if they couldn't beat the 15th best team" - so based on that, no non-undefeated team deserves to be national champion.

 

 

No. It doesn't matter how many losses they have. The team that wins the tournament, filled by teams who met the pre-determined and agreed upon requirements to be invited, deserves to be national champion. 

 

 

[BBTV]

I guess I just don't know how you make pre-determined requirements in a sport with potentially significantly disparate talent levels between leagues.  There really doesn't seem to be any fair way to do it.  Arbitrarily selecting that the champs of x of y conferences get in, while z of y might get a team but may not doesn't sound right.  Could lead to a lot of blowouts up until the finals.  I'd rather see the true best teams, with the caveat that if you're undefeated you get in.

 

My thing is just that the conferences are so different from each other, run differently, aligned differently, different in power, and very volatile that it is hard to make rules that apply to all, and to treat all of them fairly.  If it's defined / fair rules that are desired, then the NCAA should eliminate conferences and align into divisions, possibly booting out a lot of the smaller schools into some other division.  The current economic model makes that 100% impossible, but it's also why IMO some team that lost it's conference should absolutely get in over a team that won if it's better, even if I have no idea other than eye test (which SUCKS) how to decide that it's better.

 

[Sport]

3 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

I guess I just don't know how you make pre-determined requirements in a sport with potentially significantly disparate talent levels between leagues. 

 

If from the opening stretch of spring camp every coach and player knows you gotta win your conference to be considered for the playoff then that's your pre-determined requirement right there. The conferences are not that disparate. UCF just beat the team that beat the teams that played for the national title. 

 

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There really doesn't seem to be any fair way to do it. 

 

There isn't. The best thing we can do is use these alignments and structures that we have in place already. 

 

Quote

Arbitrarily selecting that the champs of x of y conferences get in, while z of y might get a team but may not doesn't sound right.

 

This happens already. OSU got picked over TCU in 2014. OSU got picked over Penn State. This year both the Big Ten and Pac 12 got left out. 

 

Quote

 Could lead to a lot of blowouts up until the finals. 

This is already happening. They've played 8 semi-final games in 4 years of this system and at least half have been "blowouts". Maybe 2 were great games. I'm not concerned about creating more blowouts.

 

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I'd rather see the true best teams, with the caveat that if you're undefeated you get in.

 

Most of the time under my plan the true best teams would find their way to the final 4 anyways and the matchups wouldn't be that different from how they already are. Maybe a 3 loss team would sneak into the field every once in a while, but most of the field would be the same as it would've been under the current system. My plan just insures you don't have any wildcards, which are inherently counter-intuitive to how college football has always operated and my entire problem with Alabama being in it this year.

 

Going back 4 years here's how the playoff would've shaken out under my plan

2014: Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Ohio State 

2015: Clemson, Alabama, Michigan State, Oklahoma

2016: Alabama, Clemson, Penn State*, Washington

2017: Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia, Ohio State or UCF*

 

The only differences are Penn State in 2016 (replacing OSU who got smacked by Clemson 31-0) and Alabama this year. 4 years, 14/16 teams are the same. 

 

And I'm saying that if you were the "true" best teams you'd find a way to win your conference.

 

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My thing is just that the conferences are so different from each other, run differently, aligned differently, different in power, and very volatile that it is hard to make rules that apply to all, and to treat all of them fairly. 

 

I don't see how this is an issue. It works in basketball and it already sort of works now in football. If the SEC truly is the best then their champion should have no problem winning two playoff games. 

 

Quote

If it's defined / fair rules that are desired, then the NCAA should eliminate conferences and align into divisions, possibly booting out a lot of the smaller schools into some other division.  The current economic model makes that 100% impossible, but it's also why IMO some team that lost it's conference should absolutely get in over a team that won if it's better, even if I have no idea other than eye test (which SUCKS) how to decide that it's better.

 

I'd have no issue with eliminating conferences and just going free-for-all, but there are benefits to schedules based on proximity.

[BBTV]

It works in basketball because there's 68 teams.  Nobody would ever claim that the 68 best teams are in the tournament.

 

"The best teams find a way to win their conference" - that's just wrong.  There's plenty of reasons why the "best" team may not win their conference.  There's also plenty of reasons why a not-great team does win their conference - mainly when their conference sucks.

 

You said that there isn't a big disparity between the talent levels of the conferences - then why is there a "power 5" and everyone else? 

[Sport]

10 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

It works in basketball because there's 68 teams.  Nobody would ever claim that the 68 best teams are in the tournament.

 

Your point was the conferences are too different to come together on a fair system and yet despite all these VASTLY WILD differences in conference structures, and teams, and talent they've already managed to come together on a playoff system. All I'm saying is take it a step further and remove the at-large bid.

 

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"The best teams find a way to win their conference" - that's just wrong. There's plenty of reasons why the "best" team may not win their conference. 

 

I'm not interested in those reasons. Didn't win your conference? Well you should've. Oh but we were the best and tiebreakers! Yeah well, evidently not good enough. If you didn't do all you could to win your little group of the country why should we let you compete to win the whole thing? Because voters and/or computers thought you looked good? That's stupid. 

 

You're still hung up on "best" versus "champion" and they're not the same thing. Most of the time the best team wins the championship, but sometimes they don't and that's why they actually play the games and if we play the games those games should carry weight.

 

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There's also plenty of reasons why a not-great team does win their conference - mainly when their conference sucks.

 

and in those years then that's the year they're the conference left out of the final four. Easy. 

 

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You said that there isn't a big disparity between the talent levels of the conferences - then why is there a "power 5" and everyone else? 

 

as an alumnus of a school that is "everyone else" that should be corrected. I don't think there should be a "power 5". I'm saying you take the 4 best conference champions and in my opinion this year that would've included UCF. UCF won all the games given to them on their schedule and they're a division 1 program. They should've had an opportunity to play for the Division 1 championship. "But they would've gotten killed!" 1. Irrelevant. . 2. people always say stuff like that as if upsets have never happened before. 3. they proved they probably would've made it a good game. 4. There's never been a good reason why those teams can't compete for the championship of the level they play in. It really makes no sense. 

 

If D1 teams aren't going to be allowed to play for the D1 championship because they're not in this upper caste of conferences then they're not really a D1 team and the NCAA should reclassify them as like a 1B tier. But back to the power 5 there really isn't that much talent disparity year to year and some years a team from outside the power 5 like a UCF can collect enough talent at the right time with the right coach to compete with anybody. 

[BBTV]

Fair enough, we just see things a little differently. There’s no right answers, just a lot of wrong ones and the best that can be done is to implement the one that’s least wrong. 

[stumpygremlin]

12 hours ago, McCarthy said:

If D1 teams aren't going to be allowed to play for the D1 championship because they're not in this upper caste of conferences then they're not really a D1 team and the NCAA should reclassify them as like a 1B tier. But back to the power 5 there really isn't that much talent disparity year to year and some years a team from outside the power 5 like a UCF can collect enough talent at the right time with the right coach to compete with anybody. 

This is why I'm in favor of a sixteen team tournament with the ten conference champs and six at-larges. Why have the "group of five" be a separate division if they're going to all compete under the "FBS" banner? If they all compete under that banner, they should all have access.

[dfwabel]

1 hour ago, stumpygremlin said:

This is why I'm in favor of a sixteen team tournament with the ten conference champs and six at-larges. Why have the "group of five" be a separate division if they're going to all compete under the "FBS" banner? If they all compete under that banner, they should all have access.

Division 1 athletic is NOT a collective business, but at least the Power 5 have much closer budgets to be such a business. The MWC and American is much in the middle, with the other three further behind and dependent on the "buy" games to budget their programs.

 

Plus, the playoffs is a TV show and as a show, it must gather an audience. That is why Notre Dame has a seat at the CFP table while BYU doesn't.  Your plan also forces those two and Army to join a conference.

 

And the larger you make the playoffs, the larger the clamor will be for the guys TO GET PAID!

[dfwabel]

Also...

 

Arizona is targeting Navy HC Ken Niumatalolo.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/ncaaf/ua/2018/01/12/ken-niumatalolo-arizona-wildcats-football-coach/1028617001/

 

 

And teams are starting to make their 10th Assistant Coach, who could be hired starting on Tuesday.

For those new to NCAA Bylaws, only those on staff with the official title of a "coach" can be on-field with players and can contact/recruit HS players.

[See Red]

Probably justifies its own thread, but legendary announcer Keith Jackson passed away last night.

 

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2018/1/13/16888002/keith-jackson-college-football-announcer

 

edit: His last game was the 2006 Rose Bowl and I think his call of Vince Young's TD was perfect.

 

 

[MJWalker45]

14 hours ago, dfwabel said:

Also...

 

Arizona is targeting Navy HC Ken Niumatalolo.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/ncaaf/ua/2018/01/12/ken-niumatalolo-arizona-wildcats-football-coach/1028617001/

 

 

And teams are starting to make their 10th Assistant Coach, who could be hired starting on Tuesday.

For those new to NCAA Bylaws, only those on staff with the official title of a "coach" can be on-field with players and can contact/recruit HS players.

Though it would make life easier for Army, I hope he stays at Navy. I also think the changes they would need to make on offense at Arizona to meet in the middle might lead to a long season in Tucson.