College Football Off Topic

[TripleCrown9]

Re: College Football Off Topic

If we expand to 8 teams then you can just kiss the sport goodbye.

College football has lasted 150 years. Giving 4 more teams a fair chance at the title isn't going to end it.

[coogrfan]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Thoughts from Houston Cougar fans bringing in Kendall Briles and Randy Clements?

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Operation Sports mobile app

[LambertandHam]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Starting in 2022, the rivalry returns.

[TracerBullet]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski found dead of apparent suicide.

Dude just played for them in the Holiday Bowl. RIP.

[SPTO]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski found dead of apparent suicide.

Dude just played for them in the Holiday Bowl. RIP.

Yeah I just saw that a while ago on my FB feed. That's just horrible. R.I.P.

[superjames1992]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski found dead of apparent suicide.

Dude just played for them in the Holiday Bowl. RIP.

Wow. Same, man.

[LambertandHam]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Washington State quarterback Tyler Hilinski found dead of apparent suicide.

Dude just played for them in the Holiday Bowl. RIP.

Only 21, QB on a Division 1 school, sad. While the facts will come out, depression is very real. If you or you know anyone suffering, please get help or help them if they need it.

[countryboy]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Absolutely heartbreaking.

[legendkiller5]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Only 21, QB on a Division 1 school, sad. While the facts will come out, depression is very real. If you or you know anyone suffering, please get help or help them if they need it.

The scariest part of these situations is when the symptoms and signs aren't overt, and people may absolutely have no idea that their loved ones need help.

[GoToledo]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Well actually the Iron Bowl did matter. The winner went on to play Georgia in the SEC championship game for what would have been a guaranteed spot in the playoff.

Oklahoma vs. Iowa State did matter. I won't go into the unlikely scenario of 4 other undefeated teams that would have been in front of them, but I will go into how when Oklahoma lost that game at the beginning of October they had to play 8 more games knowing that if they lost again then they were likely out.


I actually had a really difficult time with this post because the assertion that every game doesn't count (or hasn't counted in the past) is just so false that it's impossible to pick just 1 counter. I'll go with this though.

10 years ago when we had the BCS Alabama would not have been in the 2 team playoff. Why? Because they lost the Iron Bowl (1 loss and they are out. Clearly every game is pretty important) and finished #4.
Fast forward to 2017 where the playoff has expanded to 4 teams instead of the BCS 2. Now a loss that would have knocked them out 10 years ago isn't a surefire death sentence since it's a little easier to make it to the dance.

The 2nd part of that statement doesn't mean the Iron Bowl was a useless game, it just meant that it held less significance when 4 teams make the playoffs instead of 2, and it will hold even less significance when there are 8 teams. (Again this is only in relative terms. Being relatively less important in 2017 does not make it a useless game, but what happens when you extend it to a point where any team with 2 or even 3 losses has a legitimate shot? It's just math).

I must admit that you pounced on my poorly worded point that those games were meaningless. I think I used that to counter the "every game matters" narrative to try to demonstrate that it is simply not true. You are correct, though, none of the games are meaningless.

My counterpoint to the above point is that all games don't decrease in importance the same way when the playoff is extended to 8 teams. This may make the SEC championship or the Iron Bowl less meaningful, it makes so many more games MORE meaningful. OSU/Michigan for example matters more (along with any games with teams in the top 15 or so, as a loss among the top 8 could shift them up). It would make UCFs games matter a lot more as well.

In my opinion, that would be good for college football. Any scenario where the champion is crowned on the field instead of in a beauty pageant sounds better to me.

[nofx94]

Re: College Football Off Topic

Honestly, the fear of bracket creep is so strange to me. I'm generally opposed to traditionalist arguments, but with college football it's particularly peculiar. The *other* profitable college sport, the one that dominates a month on the calendar, does so because of its huge playoff.

I think the diminishing importance of the regular season is just such an odd thing to worry about. Like, college basketball is currently having a great season with a ton of upsets. If a big, traditional power wins the championship, does that mean the regular season didn't matter? If a Cinderella makes it to the final, does that mean the regular season didn't matter?

How are we determining the value, and the devaluing, of the regular season?

The common contrast is with the NFL, but I think it's a facile argument. On the one hand, NFL ball's most exciting component is that parity means dominance really has to be earned *and* anyone can lose on any given Sunday because there's not a huge gap in the talent levels. On the other hand, as long as 130+ schools keep fielding teams at the same level, and they're all technically, relatively free to play each other in the regular season, it'll be the most exciting regular season in sports. Troy beat LSU this year, and everyone thought it was some indictment of LSU because they didn't realize that Troy won ten games last season and were on their way to winning ten more this year.

I remember in 2008 watching USC lose to Oregon State and vowing I wouldn't watch another one of their games. I watched every game that season, and I got over missing the national title because we (lol. We. I never played for the team) won our third consecutive Rose Bowl at the end of that season. This year, when our offense rolled over against Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, I'm sure it meant something to the Buckeyes. They were proving themselves after being left out of the playoff, and breaking a seven game losing streak against the Trojans. When we went 9-4 in 2009, it meant a lot to me that we beat Ohio State in Columbus, even as I was watching them in the Rose Bowl against Oregon. My personal consolation this year (besides no second half points in the Cotton Bowl) was that we won our regular season conference championship for the first time in a decade.

TLDR: there are too few games each regular season and too many teams with too many different definitions of success to ever say that playoff expansion equates to games not mattering.

[KSUowls]

Re: College Football Off Topic

I must admit that you pounced on my poorly worded point that those games were meaningless. I think I used that to counter the "every game matters" narrative to try to demonstrate that it is simply not true. You are correct, though, none of the games are meaningless.

My counterpoint to the above point is that all games don't decrease in importance the same way when the playoff is extended to 8 teams. This may make the SEC championship or the Iron Bowl less meaningful, it makes so many more games MORE meaningful. OSU/Michigan for example matters more (along with any games with teams in the top 15 or so, as a loss among the top 8 could shift them up). It would make UCFs games matter a lot more as well.

In my opinion, that would be good for college football. Any scenario where the champion is crowned on the field instead of in a beauty pageant sounds better to me.

But it actually doesn't make those games more meaningful. I wasn't trying to pin you to the literal definition of "every game matters" or anything like that. What I've been showing is that you don't make regular season games more meaningful by loosening the the restriction on the postseason. The argument for an expanded playoff is to define the 1 true champion with an expanded field. There just isn't any way to argue that loosening playoff restrictions makes regular season games more meaningful. It's just math.

For instance, take a look at the average number of losses by each rank since the beginning of the playoff (similar data holds true from the BCS era if you care to go back that far).

Rank / average Losses
#1 - 2 - 0.75 Losses
#3 - 4 - 0.875 Losses

Pretty close right? What happens when you get beyond the top 4?

Ranks #5-6 average losses through 4 years of data are 1.5 (nearly 100% increase from the top 4)
Ranks #7-8 averages losses through 4 years of data are 2.1 (an additional 40% on top of ranks 5-6).

In fact the #8 team (2 average losses) through 4 years of data has more in common with the #16 team (2.5 average losses) than than they would with even the #4 team (1 loss on average)...and it's not like it's a long season. Each game is 8% of your total regular season schedule. So, each one of those losses start adding up quick.

One final point on the above. In 2017 the top 4 teams went a combined 13-2 against ranked teams in the regular season (with 2 losses to UNR teams). An 87% win rate against ranked teams.
#5 through #8 went a combined 8-7 against ranked teams (with 1 loss to UNR teams). A 53% win rate against ranked teams

What does that mean? It means right now the big games count, because only Ohio State had a winning record against ranked opponents in the 5-8 field while the top 4 teams had a combined win rate of nearly 90% in those big games.

edit - The only place where it creates more meaningful games is in that there are technically more teams playing for a spot (since there are more spots to give), so there is a bigger pool of games that matter. But they only matter because you've dumbed down the requirements. In a sport where you may only play 3 ranked teams in a single regular season, going 1-2 or 0-3 in an expanded playoff would put you on equal footing as the team that went 3-0.

*All above rankings used the final regular season (after conference championships) CFP Poll.

tldr
CFB is just a different animal than any other sport. You have a very short season which is played mostly against inferior competition with the exception of a handful of games in the best of cases. Right now you have to be damn near perfect in the regular season if you want one of the 4 playoffs spots (if the regular season requires perfection then it's hard to argue that the regular season isn't already a pseudo playoff). As you expand the playoff system though that perfection goes out the door real quick. Suddenly losing to Iowa who you're a 4 touchdown favorite to isn't a big deal. You can take that loss and then still take another loss to one of the maybe 3 or 4 truly legitimate opponents on your schedule and still be ok in even just an 8 team playoff. Again, it's just math.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Re: College Football Off Topic

I don't think comparing college football with college basketball holds any water at all. There's no way to do a football tournament like March Madness in a reasonable time frame. You can play more basketball games, 3 or 4 times as many basketball games, in a week compared with football games. In college football, you play a team once and that's the only opportunity that entire season. No rematches (unless there is a conference championship rematch).

Scarcity is a big reason that each college football regular season game is more of a spectacle than any other regular season games in any other major American sport I'm aware of. In some ways, the way people consume college football and college basketball are completely opposite. Most people, I'd reason, don't even follow college basketball until tournament time unless they are UNC/Duke/MSU/KU/UK...etc fans. That's different than college football where there's more consumption of the regular season for the regular season's sake. Again, it's not until losing a single game really matters (the tournament) that people really lock into college basketball. Winning or losing a single game in college football is way, way more impactful with the way the current system works. Yeah, you can lose once. But, that's pretty much it. And who you lose to and how you lose matters etc etc. You can lose 10 or 11 times in college basketball and still make March Madness and run amok there.

Factually, adding more playoff spots to NCAA football would by definition water down the playoff field. Expanding from 4 teams to 8 or whatever number by definition means you are letting in at least 4 more teams with more dubious résumés than the first four teams. It means that a 1-loss team will have no problem getting in. Ditto for 2-loss teams like Ohio State and USC this year. 3 loss teams? Possibly? Certainly there might be years where an 8-seed would win the playoff and some might consider that validation of an expanded system, but forcing teams to play more playoff games to decide a champion by definition decreases the weight of the regular season. If you have a 13-0 team and make them win 3 or 4 playoff games instead of 2, then their success is more heavily dependent on the postseason than their regular season accomplishments. It would change the weighting for sure. That's not a direction that I want to see the sport go in.

The NBA is sort of the polar opposite where half of the league gets into the playoffs and every year we have a sub-.500 team make it in the Eastern Conference. I think a more exclusive model suits college football moreso than a more inclusive model like the NBA or March Madness etc. I think fear of "bracket creep" in college football is a justifiable concern. And one I happen to share.

[countryboy]

Re: College Football Off Topic

UofL and South Florida agree to a 3 game series starting in 2022.

2022 at Louisville

2024 at South Florida

2026 at Louisville

Local media is running with it saying that it will pit Charlie Strong vs his old team of Louisville, and I'm sitting here thinking that he may not even be the coach at USF come 2022...

[nofx94]

Re: College Football Off Topic

I'm not advocating a basketball-style tournament, I just think it's funny to try to objectively determine something arbitrary. I agree that more exclusivity is better, and I prefer the NFL playoff model to the NBA playoff model.

I don't think there's a way to end this argument besides us all walking away and saying "fair enough." I enjoy the conversation nonetheless, so I'll go on, but we don't all have the same end goal or same criteria so we're just spinning our wheels.

From what I can tell, there are essentially two entrenched sides. There's the "games for major powers will matter less" group concerned about the possibility of a multi-loss champion, I guess, which just neglects the G5 schools off top. This group doesn't care about UCF/Boise/Houston/WMU/Utah&TCU-before-expansion getting a shot at a championship.

From what we have seen thus far, there is nothing those programs can do to be considered for a national title. There is no controlling their own destiny, because when they trash their schedules we consider weak and then beat a major power in the bowl game, we consider it an anomaly. This despite the fact that non-AQ/P5 schools were 4-2 as BCS busters and are 3-1 in the NY6 consolation prize games. UCF blew out almost everyone on their schedule this year. WMU did the same thing last year. We can speculate what *might* get them there, but we have no way of knowing because the committee criteria changes week to week.

There are those of us that would like to see these teams get a shot at a title, since that's the essential end-all, be-all of competition; a chance to legitimately claim superiority. But, I guess we're hard-pressed to say UCF should have been there instead of Alabama, when Alabama won the title.

I understand the basic mathematics of the fact that the farther down the rankings you go, the more losses you're going to find, but regardless of the size of the playoff (which I'd be fine at capping at 6 or 8) half the teams are locked-out despite ostensibly being part of the same subdivision, and *that* is a problem. It's already silly that there are two division 1's. It's nuts to me that within the higher subdivision there's a glass ceiling for so many programs.

I think one way we could solve it is getting rid of official use of preseason polls (can't outright ban them). The playoff is supposed to engender a similar fix by not posting a poll until halfway through the season, but their polls closely reflect those of the media and the coaches.

Idk. What do y'all think? How do we improve fairness? Or is the system perfect as is? Or did you prefer when it was BCS bowls plus a championship game? Or did you prefer when the BCS bowls included the championship game? Or was it best when it was all completely arbitrarily done through polls?

Edit/kinda unrelated...
A thing I wrote: College Football is Over (For Now) http://vulpesjournal.blogspot.com/20...r-for-now.html