It's Official: College Football Going to a Seeded 4 Team Playoff

Dallas4Bama said:

But to pretend playing Ole Siss or Vandy is better for your SOS than playing OU, Nebraska, USC or TX is just ridiculous.

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Agreed. Playing bad teams from major conferences (e.g. Kansas) is also better for your SOS than playing a lower division school like Georgia Southern - even if GSU may have been better.

If we play more in-conference games, how can SEC teams have a decent out of conference SOS, if 9 games are within the SEC? That only leaves room for 1 home-home series and 2 home-only payday games that are so profitable.

It is breaking now that the committee will indeed select the teams that will play in all of the big 6 bowl games. This is of course, the two semi-final bowls and the other four that rotate each year. The new BCS, if you will. And those teams must come from the top 12 of the committee's rankings.

Edit: Existing contracts will be honored though (SEC/Big 12 in Champions Bowl, Big Ten/Pac 12 in Rose, and ACC in Orange). Everything else will come from the top 12 of the standings.

TideEngineer08 said:

And quite frankly... I'd rather us not schedule a 1-AA opponent ever. My ideal schedule would be 8 SEC games, 1 big time game (Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio State, USC, Texas), 1 semi big game (Texas Tech, UCLA, Washington, Purdue, etc) and then 2 games vs teams like Louisiana Tech or North Texas.

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That pretty much mirrors what I'd like to see.

Does anyone know it's possible to schedule teams from major conferences that could take the place of the payday games (Louisiana Tech, North Texas) and won't require a home-home series? I think we tried to to that with Duke, but not sure how it turned out.

Dallas4Bama said:

I love the SEC, I believe its undoubtedly the best conference, we rule the world, etc... But to pretend playing Ole Siss or Vandy is better for your SOS than playing OU, Nebraska, USC or TX is just ridiculous.

It's ok to be a homer, but come on.

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You, obviously, did not read all of our posts. He was advocating a 7 game conference schedule with the SEC dictating that the schools play 2 OOC games against major conferences. Even if the SEC had that power(they don't) it is my contention that there are not 28 schools out there with better teams than other SEC teams that are willing to play SEC teams. The 4 schools you mentioned would each have to play 7 different SEC schools to cover the 28 games. Not going to happen, is it?

ALA2262 said:

Even if the SEC had that power(they don't) it is my contention that there are not 28 schools out there with better teams than other SEC teams that are willing to play SEC teams.

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You've completely ignored the fact that out of conference SOS is now a consideration.

Insulating SEC teams to pretty much only play each other would destroy the out of conference SOS and is not guaranteed to even impress the overall SOS calculations.

All it would take to destroy the entire conference's SOS would be a few bad losses by Vandy, MSU, OM or Kentucky to out of conference teams.

ALA2262 said:

You, obviously, did not read all of our posts. He was advocating a 7 game conference schedule with the SEC dictating that the schools play 2 OOC games against major conferences. Even if the SEC had that power(they don't) it is my contention that there are not 28 schools out there with better teams than other SEC teams that are willing to play SEC teams.

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You are obviously worried about someone other than Alabama's strength of schedule. There doesn't have to be 28 teams better than Ole Miss out there to help our SOS, just a couple each year.

Where did Ole Miss and Kentucky end up in the polls last year?

JeffAtlanta said:

That pretty much mirrors what I'd like to see.

Does anyone know it's possible to schedule teams from major conferences that could take the place of the payday games (Louisiana Tech, North Texas) and won't require a home-home series? I think we tried to to that with Duke, but not sure how it turned out.

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I believe you are beginning to see the light. There are not 28 quality teams that would do it with a home and home series. There are not any that would do it without it.

ALA2262 said:

I believe you are beginning to see the light.

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You're still not getting it. If we play more SEC games then either the cupcake games have to end (profits suffer) or the games against good OOC teams have to end (out of conference SOS suffers). Which do you want?

There are essentially 3 criteria for the selection (as of now):
1) Overall record (1 loss probably the max)
2) Overall SOS
3) Out of conference SOS

Playing more SEC games hurts #1 & #3 and isn't guaranteed to help #2.

If SEC teams are reliant on keeping 3 payday games, then more than 8 conference games would absolutely cripple the out of conference SOS and probably even the overall SOS.

Dallas4Bama said:

You are obviously worried about someone other than Alabama's strength of schedule. There doesn't have to be 28 teams better than Ole Miss out there to help our SOS, just a couple each year.

Where did Ole Miss and Kentucky end up in the polls last year?

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OUR discussion pertained to CONFERENCE and CONFERENCES SOS. If you are going to join in, please go back and read what has been said so you will know what we are talking about.

ALA2262 said:

OUR discussion pertained to CONFERENCE and CONFERENCES SOS.

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I wasn't talking about conference SOS - you were. I couldn't care less about that.

I was talking about steps that the SEC could take to improve the chances of it's individual members being selected for the final 4.

JeffAtlanta said:

You're still not getting it. If we play more SEC games then either the cupcake games have to end (profits suffer) or the games against good OOC teams have to end (out of conference SOS suffers). Which do you want?

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I get it perfectly. I know that the conference can not dictate what teams a member plays OOC. I know if they are given two more open dates in which to schedule two more OOC games you are going to wind up with more of the same. More of the same will weaken SOS, not raise it.

JeffAtlanta said:

I wasn't talking about conference SOS - you were. I couldn't care less about that.

I was talking about steps that the SEC could take to improve the chances of it's individual members.

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You have got to be kidding!


Selah

ALA2262 said:

You have got to be kidding!

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Why would I care about calculated conference SOS when that's not a factor in the selection and never has been. That's just trivia.

JeffAtlanta said:

Why would I care about calculated conference SOS when that's not a factor in the selection and never has been. That's just trivia.

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Well....if you play the majority of your games in conference....I would think you would want your conference's overall SOS to be high.

colbysullivan said:

Well....if you play the majority of your games in conference....I would think you would want your conference's overall SOS to be high.

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You only care about the conference schools that you play. The SOS of an out of conference opponent is much more important than the SOS of an SEC team that you don't play.

ALA2262 said:

OUR discussion pertained to CONFERENCE and CONFERENCES SOS. If you are going to join in, please go back and read what has been said so you will know what we are talking about.

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Ole Miss ended up at 110 last year and Kentucky ended up at 84 according to a top 100 poll I found. Vanderbilt and TN ended up at 74 and 75. We played TN, ole miss and vandy last year? You believe playing those three games helped our SOS? LA Tech, Western Kentucky, Florida International, South Florida and other schools people complain we schedule finished ahead of those threw teams on our schedule. Even North Texas ranked ahead of ole siss by seasons end.

Also, there is no reason to try and be insulting here. You get no extra points for that.

I'd really like to see the SOS calculation that the committee plans to use and see it ran against last year.

TideEngineer08 said:

Why didn't they just keep the BCS standings?

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Because it weeds out the best teams rather than allowing the committee to pick the ones they want.

Listening to the Pres of the CFA bowl this afternoon on Finebaum, he put great stock in the conference champion business.

CrimsonProf said:

Listening to the Pres of the CFA bowl this afternoon on Finebaum, he put great stock in the conference champion business.

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Several quotes have. It's a horrible, horrible thing to have poisoning this.

You can't regard all conference champs equally. Winning the Big East is nothing at all like winning the SEC. They have different numbers of teams, different levels of competition, and different methods of deciding champions. Let's not even get into how Notre Dame is going to be treated. Simple put, it's terrible and even though I've been told I'm putting too much weight on this one issue, as soon as I heard it was going to be part of the process I knew the process was irreversibly harmed.

This isn't even about what SEC team gets in, or if Alabama does or doesn't go, this is just about a crooked, ridiculous way of deciding a national champion. You thought a poll was bad? Imagine a small poll of hand picked people told to prefer conference champions. Then you might near how bad this is.