Deadpool

[Young Drachma]

I did this last year (http://operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=69326), but let way too many teams into the tournament. It's fun to see if someone can upset a big juggernaut, but it also makes for dull competition.

Still, I'm always curious to see if we can get an upset.

So I'm going to run two tournaments. A 16-team tournament that's the actual tournament and a fantasy tournament with all of the bowl eligible teams like the NCAA tournament.

The Omnivore tournament will be the 64-team (or bowl eligible) tournament, the FOFC (Front Office Fake Championship) will be the 16-team tournament, where the 5-12 seeds will play each other for the right to enter the 8-team bracket.

I'm going to start with the 64-team tournament first. I'll probably sim through most of those games to start, because it's such a long list, except for the particularly compelling matchups. So anyway, let's get started.

[Young Drachma]

I'm going to use the flawed BCS standings for the seeding for the FOFC playoff and use the Omnivore rankings for the 64-team tournament.

I changed my mind about the FOFC tournament settings. I'll explain in a minute.

[Young Drachma]

For the 64-team Omnivore bracket, I took all of the bowl eligible teams (71) and put them on a list. Then, I removed all of the bowl eligible teams that only have 5 FBS wins, which leaves us with 62 teams for the tournament. Those nine teams that aren't eligible automatically will play an elimination series to get into the main bracket of 64.

(Omnivore rank)
Florida State (42)
South Florida (50)
Minnesota (61)
Michigan State (65)
Marshall (64)
Wyoming (72)
UL-Lafeyette (74)
UL-Monroe (75)
Iowa State (69)

[Young Drachma]

All games are simmed at 8 minutes and CPU v. CPU (I super sim them, otherwise, it takes too long.)

ELIMINATION ROUND 1
UL-Lafayette @ UL-Monroe
(51-20, UL-Monroe)

ELIMINATION ROUND 2
UL-Monroe @ South Florida
(41-24, UL-Monroe)

Wyoming @ Minnesota
(41-35, Minnesota)

Iowa State @ Michigan State
(41-14, Michigan State)

Marshall @ Florida State
(34-28, Florida State)

ELIMINATION ROUND 3
Michigan State @ UL-Monroe
(31-10, Michigan State)

Minnesota @ Florida State
(42-21, Minnesota)

Michigan State & Minnesota enter the bracket of 64

[Young Drachma]

The Bracket of 64 is set!

Minnesota @ Alabama
Clemson @ Texas Tech
UConn @ LSU
Bowling Green @ West Virginia
Notre Dame @ Iowa
Boston College @ North Carolina
Auburn @ Houston
Rutgers @ Florida
Texas A&M @ Boise State
Missouri @ Central Michigan
UCLA @ BYU
Fresno State @ USC
Temple @ Arizona
MTSU @ Pittsburgh
Ole Miss @ Wisconsin
Air Force @ TCU
NIU @ Cincinnati
Georgia @ Northwestern
South Carolina @ Miami
Arkansas @ Stanford
Kentucky @ Georgia Tech
Nevada @ Oklahoma State
Tennessee @ Utah
Idaho @ Oregon
Southern Miss @ Ohio State
Troy @ Nebraska
SMU @ Virginia Tech
UCF @ Cal
Ohio @ Penn State
Navy @ Oregon State
Oklahoma @ East Carolina
Michigan State @ Texas

I didn't end up changing the brackets for teams that are from the same conference. Just figured it'd increase the Q factor. There are only a few instances of it anyway in the 1st round. (Like 2 or 3 tops.

You can view the bracket from the PDF I attached.

[Young Drachma]

I'm done for the night. Here are the games I've simmed in total:

Texas 40, Michigan State 14
Oklahoma 45, East Carolina 7
Oregon State 20, Navy 10
Cal 43, Central Florida 18
Virginia Tech 20, SMU 14
Nebraska 27, Troy 17
Oregon 27, Idaho 17
Utah 17, Tennesse 14
Georgia 48, Northwestern 10
Cincinnati 45, Northern Illinois 3
TCU 30, Air Force 10
Arizona 35, Temple 30
USC 24, Fresno State 3
Central Michigan 41, Missouri 38
Texas A&M 32, Boise State 30
Florida 35, Rutgers 9
Houston 52, Auburn 48
North Carolina 27, Boston College 24
Notre Dame 35, Iowa 18
West Virginia 41, Bowling Green 7
LSU 52, UConn 0
Texas Tech 45, Clemson 35
Alabama 42, Minnesota 14

[hoopsguy]

Neither the Mizzou nor Rutgers contingents are going to be very happy with your results. Although Rutgers obviously would not expect to win against Florida. But Mizzou losing to Central Michigan???

Boise State goes down!

Tarcone will not accept that his Hawkeye defense would surrender five touchdowns against Notre Dame.

[Young Drachma]

Yeah, it's clear NCAA10 is rigged towards the bigger programs/big names. I didn't really have a way to offset that and I'm using the rosters of a guy from OS who has been raved about and has updated his ratings all seasons. Nothing seems out of the ordinary and way better than whatever the out of the box rosters came looking like.

The Notre Dame/Iowa game wasn't really even a contest. Boise completely fucking choked on their home turf, Rutgers actually kept it close for a while before getting spanked and I didn't expect Missouri to win that one, even though it was supposed to look like a slam dunk to the untrained eye. But CMU almost choked on it.

It's all pretty pedestrian stuff so far, but it'll get more interesting in the later rounds I'm betting.

[Young Drachma]

Here is the rest of the first round matchups:

UCLA @ BYU (52-24, BYU)
MTSU @ Pitt (10-7, Pittsburgh)
Ole Miss @ Wisconsin (41-38, Wisconsin)
South Carolina @ Miami (55-41, Miami)
Arkansas @ Stanford (14-0, Arkansas)
Kentucky @ Georgia Tech (40-14, Georgia Tech)
Nevada @ Oklahoma State (31-0, Oklahoma State)
Southern Miss @ Ohio State (41-20, Ohio State)
Ohio @ Penn State (14-0, Penn State)

[Young Drachma]

Here's the 2nd round playoff bracket:

Texas Tech @ Alabama
West Virginia @ LSU
Notre Dame @ North Carolina
Houston @ Florida
Texas A&M @ Central Michigan
USC @ BYU
Pittsburgh @ Arizona
Wisconsin @ TCU
Georgia @ Cincinnati
Arkansas @ Miami
Oklahoma State @ Georgia Tech
Utah @ Oregon
Nebraska @ Ohio State
California @ Virginia Tech
Oregon State @ Penn State
Oklahoma @ Texas

[Young Drachma]

Ok, now that we've got the Omnivore tournament going, I'm going to go ahead and start the FOFC tourney. In part because it's more interesting since there are fewer games for me to run and I can get a winner faster. Yay results.

I've decided I like Dan Wetzel's plan from SI.com today, so we're gonna use that rather than my original 12-team bracket. We'll just lift it straight from Dan's article:

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/sp/tools/med/2009/12/ipt/1260176065.jpg

16-teams.

All of our games will be at neutral sites and I'll give accounts of these games in more detail than I'm doing with the other tournament.

Because I'm a northern snob, we'll have some of the earlier games at cold weather locales, as well as warm ones. Sucks to be you if you have to play in Philly, but hey...thems the breaks.

ROUND OF 16
PHILADELPHIA
BIRMINGHAM
GLENDALE
SAN FRANCISCO

ROUND OF 8
ST. PETERSBURG
SAN ANTONIO

FINAL FOUR
DETROIT

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
PASADENA

[Young Drachma]

ROUND OF 16 (FOFC TOURNEY)

Alabama 52, Troy 31
The Tide didn't let the venue deter them from putting up a ton of points on their in-state compatriots. At halftime, they led 31-10 and despite a third quarter push from Troy, the Crimson Tide combined for 533 yards of total offense in the victory.

Greg McElroy went 24 of 40 for 310 yards passing, with 2 TDs and a pick. Confident, seemingly, in their chance to win, the tide started freshman Trent Richardson and had 40 carries for 168 yards and 2 TDs in the win.

Troy's QB Levi Brown was impressive. He threw for 287 yards and 3 TDs with no interceptions on 28 of 54 attempts.

Bama gets the winner of Georgia Tech and Ohio State next week in St. Petersburg.

ROUND OF 16

Ohio State 27, Georgia Tech 24

Aaron Pettrey was the difference maker, kicking two field goals including the one that proved to be the game winner in the 4th quarter with about 3 minutes to go to give the Bucks the win and a date with Alabama next week.

Josh Nesbitt went 10-17 for 151 yards passing and 2 TDs for Tech, but was outgunned by the fantastic Terrelle Pryor and his 255 yards passing and 2 TDs on 15 of 23 passing on the day, along with 19 yards on the ground. Brandon Saine was the difference maker for OSU, with 132 yards rushing on 36 carries and a TD.

[Young Drachma]

Meh, this is a mess. I think I'm gonna start over with a smaller field, even smaller than the 16-team playoff. Too many games, it's not interesting enough for me to keep it up.. Maybe there's an argument right there against a playoff. I can't even make a virtual one interesting. :)