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College Football 2018-19: Santa Clara is that a way.


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4 minutes ago, dont care said:

Then don’t watch

 

I have not watched a single college football game from opening kickoff to final whistle this season.

 

I just check the scores when the game is over, crossing my fingers for a good outcome.

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The literal one thing Notre Dame couldn’t have happen was a Julian Love injury, because he’s both the team’s best player as a consensus All-American and plays at ND’s single position of least depth. Notre Dame never found a third corner all season (see the USC first half, for example), and when they had to play a full quarter without their CB1, Clemson got a truck load of unexpected mismatches and scored 20 points targeting said mismatches.

 

It likely doesn’t change the win probability much, and the offense was generally awful all day, but ND doesn’t get embarrassed with Love for four quarters. Maybe it ends up at 23-3 with a late Clemson touchdown to seal it, instead of 23-3 at the half, which is a very different story.

 

It’s dumb, because this will be held against Notre Dame for ages, when college football is at a spot where 2-3 teams, and occasionally a fourth, are simply head-and-shoulders better than everyone else. Nobody tries to perpetuate the idea that Washington or Michigan State or Florida State or Ohio State should never be taken seriously again because they got blown out in a playoff game, but we’re going to do it for eternity with Notre Dame.

 

The biggest problem with the playoff right now might be the four-week runway to the semifinal games. Part of what enables upsets during the year is that teams only have a short period of time to prep for each opponent, so a good scheme can enable an upset. When coaches have a full month to scout their playoff opponent, the advantage of a good scheme is seriously decreased, which means that talent rises to the top and will win more consistently than during the season. Everything that ND did well from a scheme perspective on offense didn’t work yesterday. Part of it is that I think the Clemson defense was an awful matchup for ND, but a good chunk probably is that Venables and staff had ages to figure everything out about it. The same thing happened with the ND defense six years ago.

 

Going to eight teams, and reducing the lead time to any one game to two weeks, may help encourage more upsets.

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3 hours ago, SabresRule7361 said:

 

I have not watched a single college football game from opening kickoff to final whistle this season.

 

I just check the scores when the game is over, crossing my fingers for a good outcome.

Then you have nothing to complain about, I bet even if UCF got into the playoff and sent Bama packing you’d still have a problem with it.

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3 hours ago, crashcarson15 said:

The biggest problem with the playoff right now might be the four-week runway to the semifinal games. ... Going to eight teams, and reducing the lead time to any one game to two weeks, may help encourage more upsets.

I’m coming to think that the biggest problem with the playoff is that it isn’t always necessary. There were years here and there in which the BCS had to shut out a deserving team because obviously only 2 teams could play in the title game. Adding a playoff round seemed an obvious solution, but we’ve ended up right back to arguing more about how got screwed by being left out than about who’s #1. 

 

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my likely unworkable idea is that every year should have a dynamic postseason in response to the regular season’s results. This year, 3 teams had a claim to #1. Give number one a bye and have a two versus three. Last year, I’d argue the same thing. I think, at most, we’ve had 6 teams with an argument to make the playoff at year’s end. It’s never been 8. The tournament should be confined to teams that have a claim to be national champions, not simply a reward for a nice season. And the automatic bids that people suggest giving to conference champions are insane. The inherent randomness of a football game could have had Northwestern and Pitt in the playoff this year if that was the system used. 

 

The fact that the playoff benefits more talented teams is a feature, not a bug. It’s supposed to crown a legitimate champion, not necessarily be entertaining in the process. The semifinals have sucked thus far. I’m sure expanding to 8 would produce exciting quarterfinals en route to semifinals that would now be even more greatly tilted towards teams with depth and talent since they’d only have a week’s recovery time before the game. 

 

There’s just no cookie cutter solution for college football. Every season is too different, every conference too disparate in talent, and every schedule too imbalanced to come up with a postseason template that could honestly be fair every year. Maybe that’s why 8 is a catch-all. It’d hardly ever be necessary, but it’d be damn near impossible to leave anyone out. 

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But you can’t have a system where you have more teams in one year than other years, then go back and forth between number of teams that get in. D3, D2, and FCS all figure out a way to get a proper playoff done. 

My thoughts would be play 8 conference games, two Out of conference to make it 10, then go to your tournament from there. You could still have bowl games for teams that won 6 games but didn’t get into the playoffs, and some of the playoff matchups of the later rounds could be held in bowl games, just like the semis now.

 

also... Miami is now looking for a new coach. Richt announced he is retiring from coaching.

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16 minutes ago, See Red said:

Feel bad for the kids who committed there on ESD.  Please don't hire Mario Cristobal...

 

Miami only had 13 signees none of which were at QB or RB.  It really isn't filled with 4* guys. 

 

He peaked with them last season and you could tell it was falling apart early.  Then his best assistant takes the Temple HC gig and he knew would have to demote or fire his son, who was the QB coach. 

 

 

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As much as we're all bitching (including me) about Alabama constantly being in the title game, at least the games they've played there have been awesome so far. Versus Clemson 1 was good, Clemson 2 was a classic, and so was last year against Georgia.

 

I've seen a lot of wacky hot takes elsewhere saying that Notre Dame won't get to be in the playoff now. If they go undefeated again and their closest competition for a spot is a team that got blown out by a 6-6 team, they'll get in again.

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2 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

As much as we're all bitching (including me) about Alabama constantly being in the title game, at least the games they've played there have been awesome so far. Versus Clemson 1 was good, Clemson 2 was a classic, and so was last year against Georgia.

 

I've seen a lot of wacky hot takes elsewhere saying that Notre Dame won't get to be in the playoff now. If they go undefeated again and their closest competition for a spot is a team that got blown out by a 6-6 team, they'll get in again.

The idea that Notre Dame could go 12-0 and be left out is laughable. Their opponents average record would have to be 4-8 for that to happen.

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1 minute ago, MJWalker45 said:

The idea that Notre Dame could go 12-0 and be left out is laughable. Their opponents average record would have to be 4-8 for that to happen.

If conference title game losses count against other teams, I don't see how Notre Dame gets away with purposefully never having a conference other than "... but they're Notre Dame!"

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2 hours ago, Cosmic said:

If conference title game losses count against other teams, I don't see how Notre Dame gets away with purposefully never having a conference other than "... but they're Notre Dame!"

The same way Alabama and Ohio State get in without winning their division.

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3 hours ago, Cosmic said:

If conference title game losses count against other teams, I don't see how Notre Dame gets away with purposefully never having a conference other than "... but they're Notre Dame!"

Not scheduling FCS teams ever should count for something.

No championship game > Playing an overmatch FCS team for a "Buy Game" with another game versus the bottom half of CUSA/Sun Belt/on your schedule.

 

Five ACC games + two PAC-12 games (USC and Stanford) + whatever B1G team they face is as competitive as whatever the SEC West typically gets outside of LSU since their crossover is Florida. 

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Not to mention that Notre Dame's schedule will normally be stronger even outside of the buy games. They tried by having USC, Virginia Tech, and Florida State all on the schedule. All three of those teams were preseason top 25 and 2/3 of them failed to make bowls and the other one had to play a make-up game to get to 6-6.

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17 minutes ago, Red Wolf said:

Not to mention that Notre Dame's schedule will normally be stronger even outside of the buy games. They tried by having USC, Virginia Tech, and Florida State all on the schedule. All three of those teams were preseason top 25 and 2/3 of them failed to make bowls and the other one had to play a make-up game to get to 6-6.

 

I don't think Virginia Tech and Florida State were a choice since they play five ACC teams each year as part of their agreement with the conference.  Next year it's at Louisville, at Virginia, vs Virginia Tech, at Duke, and vs Boston College.

 

Next year they play at Georgia and at Michigan, which is more than enough to get them in should they go undefeated.  The following year they play Wisconsin and Clemson, which probably is too.  I still wish the committee would hold no conference against them.

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