See Red

5 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

People seem to think that the rookie was going to be the one handling the play calling when Rodaberger would be good to go by January 1st. And even if the freshman had to start, let's see what he looks like with 15 practices as the starter instead of 3-4 practices that he got at a minute's notice. 

Again, Florida State had 224 total yards against a Florida defense that gave up 215 to Kentucky's RUNNING BACK (singular... one guy... Ray Davis) in JUST THE FIRST HALF.

That was with Tate Rodemaker at QB.

I'm starting to wonder if you people have even watched Florida State play.

55 minutes ago, MJWalker45 said:

At least computers don't worry about bias like humans do. That the FPI (ESPN's own computer) had the top three teams being from the Big Ten was amazingly insane.  People keep saying FSU would have guaranteed Michigan a national title, but wouldn't you keep them in front of Texas? Those would still be compelling games, especially when you see how tough that Seminole defense played on Saturday. 

FPI and SP+ are meant to be predictive, they're not resume tools.

Florida State has a good defense but they're not world beaters.  We literally just saw Michigan play a team with a great defense but an inept offense in the Big Ten Championship Game and it was unwatchable as you would expect it to be.  Except Florida State's defense isn't on the same planet as Iowa's and without Jordan Travis, their offense might actually be worse.  This is a Florida State team that had 224 total yards against a Florida defense that gave up 215 to Kentucky's RUNNING BACK (singular... one guy... Ray Davis) in JUST THE FIRST HALF.

None of you are anywhere near grateful enough that the merciful committee spared us another Georgia/TCU or, more appropriately, the last time a middling FSU team stumbled through a weak ACC into the CFP and we got this gem.

1 hour ago, Unocal said:

 

An SEC team would be a touchdown favorite over the Chiefs/Eagles. Vegas treats SEC teams like god.

 

The Smug Ego Conference basically gets so much preferential treatment it's sickening.

Would’ve taken you ten seconds look it up and find out Alabama isn’t even favored over Michigan. 

13 minutes ago, Cujo said:

So much BS at the end of that game, I totally forgot about the clock stoppage when MVS's fwd progress was stopped/he going backwards out of bounds!

 

When you get the rules expert saying the call was wrong, you know it’s a terrible call. I was fairly certain those guys existed just to gaslight the viewer into thinking the officiating isn’t that bad. 

17 minutes ago, raysox said:

Alabama nearly lost to Arkansas and Auburn with their full starters btw

Florida State almost lost to Boston College with their full starters.  Florida State would've lost to a Duke team with a hobbled Riley Leonard until they took him out of the game on a dirty play.  Florida State would've lost to Clemson but Clemson missed a 29 yard field goal to win it because their kicker that game wasn't even with the team until that week and was a damn financial advisor in NYC the week prior.

Florida State should've lost to Florida if Florida didn't have the tendency to punch themselves in the nuts every week (and that was with Florida starting a kid at QB for the first time).

It's pretty telling that the team Alabama just made relatively light work of is opening as a two touchdown favorite over FSU.

It's wild that the conference that's won 13 of the last 17 national championships gets the benefit of the doubt over the conference that is consistently the worst P5.  Isn't it?

I mean, it's pretty telling that Florida State's best win this season is over an LSU team that's good but wasn't really a serious contender in the SEC.

17 minutes ago, raysox said:

Still frustrated in this decision, but I think the worst part is accelerating the death of another regional p5 conference

The ACC's death has long been a foregone conclusion.  They responded to the SEC's  (Texas and Oklahoma) and Big Ten's (USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon) expansion by adding Cal, Stanford, and SMU, which probably makes sense from a money perspective but as it relates to actual football, is subtraction by addition and probably makes it more likely that a middling program like Louisville slinks through to the CCG without playing any of the conference's best teams.

No matter what the committee decided here, we were very much heading towards a P2 with the Big XII and ACC being closer to the Mountain West than it is to either the Big Ten or SEC.

1 hour ago, Unocal said:

Nick Saban without 5 star recruiting class talent

 

"Nick Saban would suck if he wasn't the best to ever do it at the most important part of his job" is an even dumber take than your March Madness posts.

Even beyond that, his approach to running a program is damn near unparalleled and it's not particularly surprising that, other than Urban, the only other coach to even touch him in modern times (Kirby) spent ten years under Saban.  He's remained successful despite having his position coaches poached more than any other coach and has been wildly successful at three different schools, winning national championships at two of them.  

He's also one of the best defensive minds the game has seen and is widely credited with inventing and popularizing pattern matching schemes, which completely changed how defense is played and is prevalent in both college and the NFL.

39 minutes ago, Unocal said:

The SEC has ruined CFB as we know it.

Just a friendly reminder that the ACC, Big Ten, and Pac 12 formed an "alliance" the offseason before last and voted to prevent the playoff from expanding in 2023.

And then on top of that, FSU and their fanbase has spent the last two offseasons acting like the ACC is beneath them and exploring how they can get out of the conference as soon as possible.  But now the conference is better than the SEC.  Sure, okay.

These arguments would be so much more convincing if people weren't completely ignoring the existence of 13-0 Liberty but all that tells me is that who you play and how you look when you win does matter.

Bobby Bowden's words are as true today as they ever were.

Just now, Germanshepherd said:

Boo hoo. How about win all your games. 

Why doesn't Alabama just play in a weaker conference.  Are they stupid?

3 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

I don't know college football all that well and I know I always show that ignorance by expecting logical outcomes based on performance on the field.

 

Actual wins counting less than good losses is the craziest thing about the sport.

The problem is you have 128 teams, 13 games, and 4 playoff spots.  It's impossible to rank teams without rolling out hypotheticals with the biggest one being "would Florida State beat Alabama if they played tomorrow?" or even "would Florida State be undefeated if they played Alabama's schedule?" and the answer to both is a resounding no.

FSU will only have a "legitimate" claim if they finish #1 in one of the recognized selector polls, iirc.  UFC was #1 in the Colley Matrix the year they claimed a national championship even though that poll has a history of being screwy.  But even the Colley Matrix doesn't have FSU above Alabama.

1 minute ago, oldschoolvikings said:

I gotta admit my entire focus this whole weekend is trying to figure out what throws the most obstacles up in the way of Michigan.  

That's been me for the last two years but with Georgia (and now FSU).

I thought the funniest outcome would be Michigan winning the NC and having it vacated but honestly, this might be funnier.

1 minute ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I wonder what would have happened had Oregon beat Washington Friday night.

 

You probably get to Michigan, FSU, Alabama and Georgia that way.

Oregon would be in over FSU.  There's no chance this FSU team that's played these last two weeks would beat Oregon which is the criteria they're going by.

3 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

Florida State got punished for doing absolutely nothing wrong. 

Florida State got punished for choosing to play in a basketball conference three decades ago because it was an easier path to national championships.

3 minutes ago, infrared41 said:

The committee is going to screw Florida State.

 

 

That's always been the case, though.  Ohio State was up against that as well when they were down to their QB3 the year they won it all.  The difference is they went out and beat a 10-win Wisconsin team by a million points in the Big Ten championship game and left no doubt while Florida State came out and did whatever they did last night against Louisville following them coming out and looking terrible against a bad Florida team's backup QB.

The criteria has always been vague enough to allow the committee to do whatever they want to do (within reason) and have some cover for it.

52 minutes ago, Unocal said:

if you don't let in a 13-0 conference champion, then what's the point of the power 5?

The point of the Power 5 is that it’s five conferences that have autonomy with regards to certain rules as it relates to the well-being of student athletes. It does not mean and has never meant that the five conferences are equals or seen as equals as it relates to how good their football teams are or how difficult they are to win. 
 

I shared the Vegas odds because I think they’re relevant to how Vegas may see the selection committee’s decision playing out.

1 minute ago, Cujo said:

 

FSU, going undefeated in a Power 5 conference, is a lock to get in. They are #3. There is no debate with them.

 

If there's a debate, it should be between Texas and Bama. Texas lost to a worse team, so you could argue that I guess.

Uh, no?  It's between FSU and Alabama.

2 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

Alabama needed a last second miracle to beat Auburn -- who a week before.. 

 

 

FSU got taken to the wire by an injury depleted 5-win Florida team that was playing their own backup QB and would probably lose to Auburn.

13 minutes ago, burgundy said:

 

No, they're punished for losing to a non-conference playoff team. While Texas is rewarded for beating a non-conference, one-loss conference champion. The scheduling goes both ways.

 

I mean in regards to Alabama-FSU.  Texas is in, no doubt, in my opinion.

This comes down to if Alabama should be punished for scheduling and losing to the #3 team while FSU didn't play a comparable opponent.  There's not really a good answer there's no precedent to either getting left out.  And the one that makes the most sense on paper (FSU) means putting in the team that would be a heavy underdog between the two.  The key here is that the one win FSU can hang their hat on (LSU), Alabama can match.  Without that, there's no conversation, imo.  I'm indifferent.  To me it's the difference between watching FSU get throttled in a playoff game vs having to listen to FSU fans complain about how they were screwed before their team sits out a bowl game and they got throttled by, like, Georgia.

1 hour ago, Seadragon76 said:

At this point, it's simple:

 

Michigan, Washington, Florida State, Texas.

 

Anything other then those four in the playoff is a failure.

It's a failure either way.  Omitting Alabama means leaving out a team that just beat the #1 team in the country and only loss was against the #3 team in the country.  Not to mention they can match FSU's best win and would likely be a heavy favorite if they played FSU next week.  They're effectively being punished for scheduling a playoff team non-conference.  It's easier for the committee to just point to the obvious and say FSU isn't as good as the other four teams than to say strength of schedule doesn't matter and omit Alabama, or H2H doesn't matter and omit Texas.  This wouldn't even be a conversation if FSU managed to look even decent, let alone good, vs Florida or Louisville.

For what it's worth, BetMGM has Alabama as the second best odds to win the NC right now.

I mean... if you think that's one of the four best teams in the country, I don't know what to tell you.  Even with some sketchy officiating, that was ugly.

Plummer for Louisville really challenges my belief that having a fifth or sixth year QB is a cheat code.  That guy is terrible.

48 minutes ago, Germanshepherd said:

I get why people think the committee will bend over backwards to put Bama/SEC in over more deserving teams but that’s just never been the case. 
 

Two times an SEC team has made it without winning its conference. 
 

One was 2017, where Alabama was the only one-loss option, every other P5 champion/good team had two losses. 
 

If you’re a UCF homer who thinks they should have made it instead, in that case mad respect welcome to the club, but its an unpopular cause the committee never takes seriously. 

For 2021, it was a very similar scenario. Georgia was one of two one-loss teams, with the other being a conference-less Notre Dame, who the committee didn’t reward for not playing an extra game. 
 

A Texas with a head to head road win over Bama is easily the strongest resume of the group, so it will be ranked ahead of them in the playoff poll. 
 

Alabama needs Michigan or Florida State to lose. The committee snubbing an unbeaten P5 team or a one-loss team with a massive head-to-head win over another one-loss team is beyond unprecedented. 

Seems completely plausible to me that FSU gets left out with the way this game has gone so far.  I don't know why we're still pretending all of the P5 conferences are built equally.  This FSU team wouldn't be undefeated in any other conference.  I know we're expanding to 12 and it will matter less, but the committee needs to recognize this as it's only going to get worse when the SEC and Big Ten get significantly better while the ACC somehow managed to expand and get worse.

There's been some questionable calls going FSU's way so far.  Seems insane to me these conferences are left to handle their own officiating when there's so much money at stake depending on who wins and loses.

Decades ago, FSU chose to join the ACC over the SEC in part because it was easier for them to compete for National Championships and that decision is still paying dividends.

edit to add that the Playoff Committee rules specifically say they pick the four BEST teams and I don't see how anybody can argue that FSU is one of the four best teams at this point.