The playoff committee is about to get tested

CrimsonNagus

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If OOC games aren't going to matter then let's just stop playing them. Guys! Penn St. has 2 losses. Yes, they beat OSU but they decided to go lose 2 other games. Sorry, next time don't lose to a mediocre Pitt team.

How many losses does it take to eliminate a conference champ? Obviously, based on this thread, it's not 2 for many of you. Say Penn St. had another OOC loss, would that eliminate them even though they still beat OSU head to head? How many losses should a head to head victory forgive? 1, 2, 3? Why should head to head forgive any loss? I just can't get past the 2 losses vs. OSU's 1.

If all things were equal then head to head should be the difference but, things are not equal, Penn St. has 2 losses.

I love how guys discount head to head.

I love how guys discount a second loss.

Head to head should only play a roll when the records are the same, IMO.
 
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KrAzY3

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I love how guys discount head to head.
I think it should matter. In fact I'd probably consider it more important than conference championships. However, Pitt beat Penn State. Why shouldn't they be in over Penn State? Either head to head is really really really important, so much so you can just ignore the other games or it takes on far less significance, as well it should.
 
I think it should matter. In fact I'd probably consider it more important than conference championships. However, Pitt beat Penn State. Why shouldn't they be in over Penn State? Either head to head is really really really important, so much so you can just ignore the other games or it takes on far less significance, as well it should.
In that case Pitt should be in over Clemson too. Head to head is part of it. If it is between two teams head to head should be looked at, then you have a little thing called conference championships too. Maybe Wisconsin should be in there too. B1G is just jumbled up.


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KrAzY3

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In that case Pitt should be in over Clemson too. Head to head is part of it. If it is between two teams head to head should be looked at, then you have a little thing called conference championships too. Maybe Wisconsin should be in there too. B1G is just jumbled up.
I actually thought of mentioning that to. If you think head to head is magical, Pitt actually has a decent case. I don't think head to head is magical, and I think conference championships should be even less magical.

Ohio State has only one loss, and a really strong OOC win. They're clearly ahead of Wisconsin and Penn State by objective measures. The only thing that puts Ohio State behind is highly arbitrary criteria which honestly doesn't hold up to close examination. Sagarin has Ohio State at #2 with a 15 SoS. Wisconsin is 7th with a 20 SoS (they have a better case than Penn State but since they lost to Ohio State people can't give them magical bonus points), and Penn State is 14th with a 39 SoS. Now, that's an objective evaluation. Penn State's case comes down to one game pretty much, and you have to ignore a few others to make it.
 
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GrayTide

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If the goal is to have the conference champions then you have to expand the playoff to at least 5 teams to accommodate all P5 conference champions. Or change the rules to exclude any team with more than 1 loss whether that team is a conference champion or not. I know all of this is unreasonable, just like the CFPC.
 

selmaborntidefan

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This is an argument that would never even exist in the BCS era. People did argue that conference champions mattered, but elevating a two loss power 5 team over a 1 loss power 5 team? C'mon...

BCS Standings 25 November 2007


1) Missouri 10-1
2) WVA 10-1
3) Ohio St 10-1
4) Georgia 10-2
5) Kansas 11-1
6) Va Tech 10-2
7) LSU 10-2

BCS Standings 2 December 2007
1) Ohio State 11-1
2) LSU 11-2
3) Va Tech 11-2
4) Oklahoma 11-2
5) Georgia 10-2
6) Missouri 11-2
7) USC 10-2
8) Kansas 11-1


Now....what was that you were saying????????

And btw, in this scenario, the two-loss conference champion got the bump and the one-loss NON-conference champion got dropped.

Just like folks are arguing right now.
 

rgw

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To follow on Krazy's post:

The big difference between the professional game and collegiate game is schedule standardization. It's not 100% standard in the NFL but every team will play home & away with their intradivisional opponents and each division is locked to cross-conference division. The metrics for determining the divisional champs and seeding is standardized for the whole league. The AFC South doesn't play a championship game while the NFC North plays round robin. As the terms for competition become more uniform, dictating terms for playoff participation is much easier to "automate" so to speak.

College is an eclectic mix of rules and agreements. Most schools are conference affiliated but each conference has slightly different scheduling rules. Some play 9 games for a full round-robin. Some play 8 games with two divisions and a championship game. Some of these divisional conferences have locked rivalry games in the cross divisional matchups, some don't. Some schools are not aligned with a conference and make their own 12-game schedule. Some conference require all out of conference games to be played in the first 3 or 4 games while others do not have this requirement. To simplify it to one sentence: college football was a regional sport that organically grew into a national sport and many of the vestiges of regionalism still exist today.

With that said, I don't think an emphasis on conference championships in the national criteria for determining the college football playoff is a wise decision. If the Big Ten could play a round-robin who do you think would come out on top? My reckon is Ohio State. That isn't the system they used for determining their regional champion, so it ain't happening in 2016. Also, since the conference schedules are so limited by the number of games played I think one game has more meaning than it probably ought to in evaluating a team. Do you really think Penn State would beat OSU again? I don't. If it was a home & away series like the NFL, I imagine it would be a season split.

And there is a way to fix this and it is by basically making the college game into an NFL-like entity. Small divisions, standardized schedules, bigger playoff bracket. But what do we lose? We lose the regionalism that has built college football. I think the overall quality of play would go down as many teams would be fully out of winning anything by mid-October. I think the SEC means something but it just shouldn't mean something when choosing the best four teams.
 

Tide1986

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Nov 22, 2008
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Said the Ok St fan back in 2011.

Why are so many folks on this board using Ok St. arguments to keep OSU out this year?

I thought the switch to a playoffs was to allow a team like OSU to still have a chance. That is, a team who will have a better winning percentage than the conference champion.

If 2 teams have equal resumes then a conference title should be the deciding factor. When one team has more losses, a conference championship shouldn't be used to ignore those losses, IMO.

IMO, divisions should be eliminated across college football and conferences should put the best 2 teams in there championship games. If that's how it worked, OSU vs Penn St. would be the B1G championship game.
The new 4-team playoff format was intended to benefit conference champions. People are using the Okie Lite argument to throw it back in the faces of the likes of the Big 10 who didn't like the SEC having two teams in the playoff. It's called malicious compliance in order to prove a point.
 

rgw

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Too long, didn't read for my post: Stop thinking of conferences like NFL divisions. They aren't the same but it is a cherished part of the cfb's regional draw. Look at resumes for the national playoff criteria and just let the regional competitions go how they may by their set of rules.
 

Tide1986

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If OOC games aren't going to matter then let's just stop playing them. Guys! Penn St. has 2 losses. Yes, they beat OSU but they decided to go lose 2 other games. Sorry, next time don't lose to a mediocre Pitt team.

How many losses does it take to eliminate a conference champ? Obviously, based on this thread, it's not 2 for many of you. Say Penn St. had another OOC loss, would that eliminate them even though they still beat OSU head to head? How many losses should a head to head victory forgive? 1, 2, 3? Why should head to head forgive any loss? I just can't get past the 2 losses vs. OSU's 1.

If all things were equal then head to head should be the difference but, things are not equal, Penn St. has 2 losses.



I love how guys discount a second loss.

Head to head should only play a roll when the records are the same, IMO.
Yet you're happy to forgive OSU for playing fewer games? We'll never know if the records would be the same (assuming PSU wins next week) because OSU will be sitting at home.
 

teamplayer

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Simply put: If the goal is to have the 4 best conference champions then the winner of the B1G will be in the playoff. If the goal is to get the 4 best teams, period, then OSU will be there regardless.
Michigan might argue with that because they thought OSU was stopped short on 4th down in OT. The point being that the more people use "the eye test" instead of on field results, the more subjective the selections become. I do think the whole season should come into play, but some seem to think it only matters how teams are playing at the end of the season. For example, some think that a three loss USC should be considered over one and two loss teams. It all boils down to a bunch of opinions, and only the opinions of the committee members matter.
 

Tideflyer

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Michigan might argue with that because they thought OSU was stopped short on 4th down in OT. The point being that the more people use "the eye test" instead of on field results, the more subjective the selections become. I do think the whole season should come into play, but some seem to think it only matters how teams are playing at the end of the season. For example, some think that a three loss USC should be considered over one and two loss teams. It all boils down to a bunch of opinions, and only the opinions of the committee members matter.
Sigh. I don`t know. Personally, I`ll never understand what was wrong with the old BCS mechanism that could have been coupled with a playoff of the top 4. Or 6. Or 8, whatever.
 

KrAzY3

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Now....what was that you were saying????????
I knew it was a mistake not directly alluding to SoS. I do periodically make the point that conferences are not created equal, and even if one ignores the fact that college football was a train wreck that year, Kansas had a SoS of 74 and LSU has a SoS of 11. You have a great memory, so you know full well that I also place emphasis on SoS, as did the BCS. In this case, Penn State's SoS is far worse. I think we'd all agree there is a threshold at which an SoS can be so high or so low (think Boise State) that losses or conversely the wins mean less. But that sort of gap is not the norm in the power 5. If Kansas had the higher SoS that year, does anyone think LSU would have gone instead of them?

Edit: I would add that Sagarin had LSU #1 and Kansas #2. The gap couldn't and shouldn't have been too far, even with that SoS gap. I personally find it very difficult to presume losses on teams, I understand it, in some cases I agree with it, but I think it should be done with great reservation. In that case, Kansas played a much easier schedule so one could easily assume they would have lost more games had they played LSU's schedule.
 
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teamplayer

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Sigh. I don`t know. Personally, I`ll never understand what was wrong with the old BCS mechanism that could have been coupled with a playoff of the top 4. Or 6. Or 8, whatever.
I also thought it would be better to just use the BCS formula to select the top four or take the five conference winners with three at large teams who play in the four major bowls and have the winners play a final four.
 

rgw

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Another thing, it would be a failure of the CFP system for Ohio State to be left home each of the last two seasons. They were very clearly - by the halftime of the Cotton Bowl - the best team in the Big Ten in 2015. It was so clear that Michigan State didn't deserve to be on the field with Alabama nor likely the other two playoff teams either. If Penn State or Wisconsin make it in over Ohio State, they'll also get their face caved in like Sparty before them. Will that make people reassess the criterion? Not because it is what ought to happen but because it benefitted Alabama's title runs for two years. Because we all know figuring out a way to regress the champ to the mean is a bigger motivator to the college football world than doing what is right.
 

Matt0424

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If head to head trumps everything else, why weren't we clamoring for Ole Miss in 14, and 15?

Oh yeah, they lost other games, thus pushing them out of the picture.

For argument sake, had Mississippi beat Arkansas and won the SEC last year (with a loss to Memphis) who would have put them in over Alabama?

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Alasippi

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Personally, I think it should be the best four teams, period. The conferences nor conference championships should have anything to do with it.
If the committee selects four teams they truly believe are the four best teams, I'm all for it.
To me, this playoff was designed to make sure the best four teams in college football were competing for the championship, not to protect the conferences from "potential outsiders interfering with the revenue stream".
 

2003TIDE

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People who want it to be like the NFL need to just go and watch the NFL and stop trying to ruin the fun of CFB.
 

rgw

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You know, everyone complains "why Alabama got it so easy" then they trumpet for Big Ten champ over Ohio State the last two years...when it was clear each season that there are two teams roster complete, schematically sound, and dynamic enough at QB to beat Alabama: Ohio State and Clemson.

I mean, don't complain about us winning titles when you offer up some Big Ten team that Bad Weather Bowl'd their way into the conference title who will clearly get their face caved in by Alabama. It's like a free win.
 

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