It's definitely not every day the O/U is missed by 100.

Welcome to the 7 OT club!

I bet the under.

Sums up my day yesterday

For fun. Let’s say:

- Alabama beats Georgia
- Clemson beats Pitt
- Texas beats Oklahoma
- Northweatern beats Ohio St

Everyone probably agrees on Alabama, Clemson, and Notre Dame. Who do you have as #4? Does it change if Alabama / UGA is close vs a blowout? I’d say no because if you take UGA, they would play Alabama again.

I don’t think UCF is #4 but the committee would have a hard time saying a non-power 5 other than ND really has a chance if they don’t take UCF. Would Texas get in with 3 losses?

Unnoticed play at the end of regulation of that LSU game - AFTER the overturned INT, A&M had 4th and 18 and hit a sliding receiver short of the 1st down line. It was close, but he slid sideways/feet first and the ball was no better than 17.5 yards, short of the 1st down. No review, no measurement, no comment from the announcers - I assume because there were only 13 seconds or so and they didn't want to stop the game. But to my eyes, that was a bad spot.

I also thought the dude caught that pass and fumbled in the 2nd or 3rd OT. Again close, but he had control and 2 steps. I still don't get the "football move" stuff. There is no requirement that a runner tuck the ball. I could run Deion Sanders style down the sideline and never tuck the ball. Once you establish possession with 2 feet, everything after that should be a fumble.

LSU won that game 4 different times and still lost.

IF this were to happen I think Georgia would get in unless they got destroyed by Alabama in which the committee would probably feel perfectly fine with their reasoning of putting Central Florida in as the 4th team. It would just be super confusing at this point. Hard to take Michigan after getting beat by 20+ to an Ohio State team that you cant take for losing to Northwestern. Oklahoma is borderline as is with that defense. LSU with 3 losses doesnt seem to fit the criteria as well. It would probably make the committee quite happy however as it would give them a good enough reason to put UCF in as they could easily make the case no other team earned it.

One of my friends took and under mid-40s on a multiple OT game from 15+ years ago between Arkansas and Mississippi that ended up 58-56. He still hasnt forgotten it and talks about it. :lol:

They were at 48 at the end of regulation so its not like you completely whiffed on it if that makes you feel any better.

yeah, just one of those days.

Notre Dame letting USC march down the field was far more painful as I had a lot more on that one.

I think your scenario is pretty clearly UCF.

More interesting to me is who is #4 if Oklahoma and Ohio State both win. This feels a lot like 2014 to me.

Welcome back Clay!

Per reports: Kingsbury out at TT, Fedora out at UNC ... and a 2 yr extension for Lovie Smith at Illinois.

And I thought retaining CPJ was bad.

Yes, I think UCF also. I would welcome that to see how UCF would really do against the big boys.

OK vs OSU, assuming their wins are comparable, I'd go with OK. But I am rooting for a GA win which will put 2 SEC teams competing for the NC again.

UCF would still have almost no chance in the committee, but given that their QB is toast, I would think the committee would use that excuse to bypass them. Kinda like when Cincinnati lost Kenyon Martin and they got dropped a full seed from the overall #1. And given that we're talking about 4 teams, not 64, that would likely mean no UCF, even in an armageddon scenario.

Next to Bama on Saturday, I don't know if I could root harder for anyone than I'll be pulling for Memphis.

#FuckUCF

Obviously I don't particularly agree with the criteria, but isn't "they earned it because they lost fewer games" a big piece of it? (As opposed to "who can give Bama a good game?") So in that scenario, I'm thinking they would give it to UCF, QB or no, right call or not.

Now time to have some fun with this impossible scenario...



UGA beats Bama
Pitt beats Clemson
Northwestern beats Ohio State
Texas beats Oklahoma


1. Notre Dame
2. UGA
3. UCF
4. probably Bama, but doesn't really matter for the punch line...



In this scenario, Jon has to root for UGA or UCF. :D

Nope. Georgia vs LSU has prepared me for this scenario.

I root for a giant sinkhole to swallow the stadium (in the absence of a handy meteor).

Mack Brown back to UNC, supposedly.

Sources: Mack Brown Returning to UNC

hahahahahaha

I assume we are talking here about Syracuse? Is that the same game that Clemson played 2 1/2 quarters with their 3rd string QB entering the week? And the ND game where Syracuse's starting QB left the game before the end of the first quarter? Are we really putting these games on a level playing field?

The numbers I've seen have Clemson and Notre Dame with similar SOS and SOR numbers. Most computer rankings have Notre Dame lower than 3rd, while Clemson is a pretty consistent 2.

The preliminary spreads I saw had Notre Dame as a 12 point underdog to Clemson on a neutral field.

Since Clemson switched QBs, they haven't had an opponent come within 20 points of them. Granted, the best opponent they have played has probably been Boston College, who played almost the entire game without their starting QB.

If you want to go another comparison route, Clemson beat Florida State in Tallahassee by 49 while Notre Dame beat them in South Bend by 29.

Notre Dame beat Wake by 29 in Winston-Salem, while Clemson won by 60. There are actually plenty of comparison points between the two teams, and there will be another after Saturday. I'll be surprised if Pitt stays within 5 of Clemson.

Notre Dame deserves a lot of credit for beating Michigan, but that win just lost a lot of its luster.

I think like others in this thread that there is a ton of mediocrity in college football this year, and the ratings beyond the top 6 or so are pretty meaningless.

True armageddon scenario seems like it would be Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and UCF all losing. Who backdoors in then? Georgia to play Alabama a second straight time?

Michigan?

A 3-loss Texas???

I feel like even if Alabama or Clemson lose this weekend, they are still both in. Unless they BOTH lose, then Bama is in over Clemson, while Oklahoma would probably be 3 or 4.

My goal isn't Anybody But Bama, it's crown a deserving champion. 14-0 UCF that beat Alabama & Clemson/ND back to back would be a deserving champion, 12-3 Texas that did the same would not be in my mind. Doesn't mean I want every undefeated non-P5 team in - I thought the committee got it right putting 1 loss Alabama that "didn't even win it's division" in over undefeated UCF last year, and one loss Oklahoma should definitely be in line ahead of them - but in the scenario where there is no one loss P5 team for spot #4 I'd prefer UCF.

I don't have any strong feelings on Georgia - like most I think they can get in and the committee would take them with a close loss if Oklahoma & Ohio State both lose... but I'd still prefer undefeated UCF in that scenario even though they have a worse chance of upsetting Bama.

Fixed.

Yeah...a couple of days or so ago I posted that I thought in Bob's scenario that UCF gets in, but I've seen several pundits suggest that it would be UGA. *shurg*

How to fix the CFP? Scrap Conference Championship Weekend

Right there is where the hard fail comes in on this: There aren't 8 teams with a legitimate claim for a playoff spot.

There's nothing legitimate about at least two of those.

There was also never a need for the whole playoff silliness either, aside from the casual fan masses & the opportunity to make money from it.

The other major problem with the idea is that conference championship games are often the most fair way to determine the "winner" of that conference. With so many of the conferences at 12 (or more) teams and only 8-9 conference games, they are all set up with unbalanced schedules in terms of who plays who. I mean, they're already kind of messed-up anyway with teams not playing every other conference opponent, but at least with division winners and a conference championship game there's some level of addressing that imbalance.

If George, Oklahoma and Ohio st all lost old UCF get in?

I don't understand why you can't have both conference championships and the 8-team playoff model. Whether or not the bottom few of those eight teams are worthy seems a moot point; if they're that much not worthy, they lose anyway. Is adding one game to the schedule that crazy?

Ohio State at 6 and Michigan at 7. That's logical.

I would be in favor of a 6 team with 1 and 2 getting a bye and pigtailing in.
Beyond that, no expansion.

The challenge with a round 1 in a college town is how much advance notice you need to get police, traffic and crowd control..

SC can't exactly make 1/4 of their state troopers on mandatory overtime with 5 days notice...given vacation rules etc.

All these cool solutions lack logistic feasibility

You wanna start the season even earlier?
End it even later (and run into the NFL as more competition)?

Granted, the answer to both those is to go back to 11 regular season games but you're talking about a helluva lot of lost revenue to 100+ teams so, yeah, good luck with that.

My questions regarding logistics:

1. How do NFL cities deal with this? There can be wildcard teams that don't know they're hosting a game more than six days in advance, but they figure it out.

2. Why in the world do you need 1/4 of a state's troopers to host one football game? And even if you need that much staff, why does it have to be troopers?

(Caveat: I've not been to very many college football games. But the two that I've been to at Maryland and at Purdue...well, I don't recall seeing ANY troopers. Yeah, not exactly 100k crowds in football hotbeds, but there's a big gap between "handful of hired security" and "1/4 of a state's force")

3. Neutral site? I'm sure Jerry World has this shit figured out and would love to host another date.


I still don't buy this. Just play further into December or start back up again earlier. As for the NFL, you don't think a college playoff game could beat a Redskins/Titans game? Texans/Jets? Browns/Broncos? Those games are ass, I'd chose a playoff game in a heartbeat.

SEC Championship game is Dec 1. The semifinals aren't until Dec 29th. No need to change a damn thing, round of 8 on Dec 15th, done.

+1 to all of the above.

I agree that taking a game away from 100+ teams is a complete non-starter...but what's the actual stumbling block to just adding the game? It's four total additional games per year.

Guarantee we can find every one of those questions being asked back under the BCS system when people eked a true 4 team playoff.

The answer, as always, is that if the money is worth it, they'll make it work.

Unless you are an alumnus or die hard fan from your home state, I really don’t understand why people even follow this garbage. College football games are not good products, most games are blow outs and rarely do top seeds produce a competitive game. It’s basketball on grass for about 90% of the teams. The other 10 % either have all the defensive talent stockpiled (e.g. Alabama) or stubbornly adhere to tradition (Iowa, Wisconsin, etc). It saddens me because I used to love watching college football. I can’t even figure out what logic goes into conference alignment.

My solution

A. Reduce football scholarships (spread talent around)
B. Figure out who is in charge of this mess. NCAA, power 5 conferences, ESPN? Whoever it is need to take control or there won’t be casual fans in 20 + years. The on the field product is getting worse at an alarming rate.

My God, that's already done more damage to the product than anything in history.

There's barely enough talent depth to adequately stock half the teams as it is

Clearly you're not thinking about the size difference of a typical "college town" vs an NFL city.

The city of Athens has 125,00 people, the county population is 127k. Every home game attracts roughly doubles the population of the town for a day. (estimates are that an additional 1/4th to 1/2 of the stadium capacity comes into Athens on game days regardless of having tickets ... crazy to me but it happens). And there's basically one way into town for the majority of the attendees.

Atlanta has a population roughly 4x that, just in the city limits proper. Closer to 20x metro area vs metro area. And an NFL game draws roughly half the crowd.

This is not entirely unique to college football however. NASCAR events (track is south of Atlanta) have long been one of the busiest days for troopers here. Similar sized crowds (in years past at least), same overwhelming numbers.



Go back to size. What other agency has that much certified manpower? It's either troopers or mobilize the national guard.

edit to add: Remember now, this is part of the discussion because the quoted article that sent us into this silliness specifically mentioned using campus sites, that was one of its (alleged) selling points. It was also one of the key pieces of evidence that the writer is completely out of touch with reality.

I feel like most of these major schools could handle an on-site playoff game with 2-3 weeks notice. They handle basketball games on a day or two when the NIT comes out (I know it's a smaller scale). They handle moving games when there is a hurricane or other emergency on short notice. Plus the schools involved will likely know they're in contention for a home game and can probably plan sooner.

And it's not like money is an issue. Whoever puts the playoff together could provide money to the host school for the security and such.

Because for many it's more about the spectacle than the competition. It's about the bands, traditions, tailgating, and attachment to something in their past. Bowl games are the equivalent of people who watch an awards show to see what everyone is wearing and not who won.

I'd love to see an 8-game playoff but that's just because I think it's fun to watch the best teams play each other. As opposed to watching the best teams beat up on vastly inferior competition. But people watch sports for different reasons.


Superconferences suck and defeat what was fun about conferences. Now they all feel empty and dilute the rivalries. Does anyone in the old Big 10 give a shit about their games against Rutgers and Maryland? Were USC fans yearning to battle Utah every year?

Yeeeah, you could say that lol.

Sticking with the UGA example, one home football game is roughly the same number of people as an entire season (15 games last year) of men's basketball.

Are you saying this because it damaged the top teams, or did it have some negative affect to all of college football that I'm not understanding?

I think that's the root of a lot of the problems. There is no one entity in charge. There are big schools. And small schools. And the NCAA. And the network partners. And the conferences. And they all have slightly different, and often competing, interests. And that's not even thinking about the fans and the players--who don't really have a say in what happens but are certainly part of the process.

The best thing for CFB would be for God to come down and appoint someone Czar for 3 years. That person would have a vision and the power to implement it. I don't even care so much what the vision is, as long as it is coherent and not this weird mish-mash of slightly different goals all smushed together. It's impossible, I know, but short of that, I'm not sure what to do. There's too much money involved for any entity to voluntarily give up its power over the situation.

Jon hit on much of it, but let me give you some even more crazy numbers.
I'll use Clemson because its what I know, but it isnt unique lots of small colleges fit this mold.
1- The city of Clemson has a population of 16,000 when school is in. 1,250 when its out. On Gamedays the city swells to 150,000-175,000. The stadium only holds 85k but tons of folks come just to tailgate, local businesses bring in increased staff and tv support personnel etc.


To put the infrastructure into perspective for folks that havent been there. The nearest interstate is 20 miles away and a single 4 lane highway takes you from Clemson to Anderson on this 4 lane highway. On game nights traffic is reversed in both directions, like a Hurricane evacuation plan where literally it is impossible to get into the city for 2-4 hours. All roads are reversed out of town. Its is total road saturation just to move the volume of people necessary.



This traffic pattern crosses 2-3 counties on state highways. So by law, only a state trooper regiment can alter traffic flow on state highways.


SC is a small state already with a population of just 5 Million. There are only like 650 State troopers and of those only around 500 are field employees. So when you take 1/4 of them you are only talking about 125 people for traffic control.


The smallest NFL market is Green Bay as far as I know. That's a city with 350,000. or 20x the size. The NFL comparison doesnt work.


Neutral sites work because they are in major cities which have infrastructure in place. But the article in question specifically mentions college town hosts.

If those teams are reasonably competitive, and the games mean something, of course. These are schools with big alumni bases in damn near every major city, which means fans of those teams know fans of the other teams. It means getting relatively large groups of visiting fans at the games which adds to the whole experience.

I'm willing to wager the average PSU fan would get more excitement for a matchup against a top 40 Rutgers team than they would a top 40 Illinois team or top 40 Purdue team.

I didn't even know Clemson was an actual town. I just thought it was the name of a university.

dola

Green Bay is actually around 100,000 people. But the point is still there.

In the city proper. The Green Bay Metro is 350k.


Put another way,

WI has a population of 5.8 Million.
SC has a population of 5.0 Million.


Green Bay is the 3rd largest city in WI.
Clemson is the 32 largest city in SC.