Do we benefit if Tennessee makes the championship game?

[teamplayer]

Agree, Bama gets in SEC CG, unless we lose by 52, we are in win, lose, or draw. Off topic but Heather Dinich knows as much football as my Doberman Pinscher.

Haha, it is funny how they have deemed her to be an expert. It reminds me of how they have all of these draft experts who rarely get anything right. It is comical.

 

[cdub55]

Haha, it is funny how they have deemed her to be an expert. It reminds me of how they have all of these draft experts who rarely get anything right. It is comical.

Mel Kiper can't get his hair style right but you think he can predict who the next great QB is going to be...

 

[teamplayer]

Mel Kiper can't get his hair style right but you think he can predict who the next great QB is going to be...

He is certainly one who has made a very nice career out of being wrong more than the weatherman.

 

[TideEngineer08]

The top 4 teams must be conference champions so winning the SECCG still means a great deal. And it's the "top 4" conference champions at that which in the current climate means the SEC champion will always be one of those top 4 teams.

What we can't know is if losing that game would end our playoff hopes. But I'm Herm Edwards when it comes to these things so if we have a chance to win the SEC title I hope we take it.

I do think we would win the game, no matter who we play, IF we maintain the attitude we had last weekend.

 

[crimsonaudio]

It’s weird though. Now they are saying Niko is “fine” and no concussion issues. Others are speculating that the “upper body injury” may not have been a concussion but a shoulder injury.

I have a hard time betting against Bear - that guy wouldn't put it out there without being almost certain it's accurate.

IOW, I'd guess either Tennessee is bluffing or they're going to play Niko regardless as to whether he should play or not.

 

[cdub55]

Heupel will probably list him ass either "probable" or "questionable" in today's update just to keep bowl-cut guessing...

He definitely was in the 1st half against us

 

[Bama1971Stan!]

At first I wanted to skip the SEC championship just to ensure we made the playoffs. The more I think about it so long as there is an SEC championship game i want to be in it. And I would love for Bama to be the team that stops first year in the league texas from winning it. ROLL TIDE!

 

[BamaInBham]

Texas has played one ranked team this year (thanks Greg Sankey) and was dominated by the current number 11 team at home and yet are ranked number 3. Alabama is 4-1 vs ranked teams, including beating the team to whom Texas lost and is number 9. (Yes, I realize they lost to a solid though unranked team and have 2 losses.) So, they are doing like always, ranking primarily by number of losses. That seemed to usually work out for a 4 team field but won’t work as well for a 12 team field with preferences given to conf champs.

I hesitate to be critical of the Committee since, IMO, they almost always have gotten it right and have always given Alabama the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, we are seeing the folly of considering a 9 game SEC schedule. We see this year that there is great imbalance within a 16 team conference in terms of SOS, how much more a 130 team nation. OTOH, as ca has already pointed out, the Committee has great incentive to treat the SEC and B10 right. (But the Texas “situation” is galling: They get the benefit of being associated with the SEC without the assumed risk.)

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Texas has played one ranked team this year (thanks Greg Sankey) and was dominated by the current number 11 team at home and yet are ranked number 3. Alabama is 4-1 vs ranked teams, including beating the team to whom Texas lost and is number 9. (Yes, I realize they lost to a solid though unranked team and have 2 losses.) So, they are doing like always, ranking primarily by number of losses. That seemed to usually work out for a 4 team field but won’t work as well for a 12 team field with preferences given to conf champs.

I hesitate to be critical of the Committee since, IMO, they almost always have gotten it right and have always given Alabama the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, we are seeing the folly of considering a 9 game SEC schedule. We see this year that there is great imbalance within a 16 team conference in terms of SOS, how much more a 130 team nation. OTOH, as ca has already pointed out, the Committee has great incentive to treat the SEC and B10 right. (But the Texas “situation” is galling: They get the benefit of being associated with the SEC without the assumed risk.)

I have heard (based on comments) that their SEC basketball schedule is equally light for them...

 

[KrAzY3]

this stupid committee still has miami ranked ahead of smu and 3 teams in the same conference ranked in the top 4. They're aren't even following their own rules.

Their rotating membership and ultimately political nature makes them very prone to being unreliable. I keep trying to make their rankings logical, but they do what ever those group of people feeling like doing. What they get wrong, the BCS tends to get right. For instance the BCS still has Miami ahead of SMU but it's #12 and #13 instead of #9 and #14. I don't find missing by that much to be all that forgivable.

Comparing the decisions made for 4 vs 12 teams isn't valid, imo.

Before this year, they've never gone on record saying conference runner-ups wouldn't be unduly punished. That's new as before, it was a de facto elimination game due to limited spaces.

I can just look at their rankings and judge them accordingly. If the notion is that previously their rankings after #4 have always been meaningless, well I'd buy that because sometimes they've been garbage (like last year when they had Oregon, a one loss team whose best win was an 8 win team over one loss Texas, Ohio State and Alabama).

I was following this until that last statement. For a team to "rocket up" in the rankings, someone would have to come down.

I believe he's referring to byes conference champs earn, which automatically seed them higher. This would happen no matter the rankings, meaning you are going to go from for instance 10 to at least 4 if you win a power conference title.

 

[Power Eye]

I understand the concern that losing in the SECCG would knock us out of the playoffs, but I do believe most of that fear is based on how the committee picked a 4 team playoff field, and not a 12 team field. In a 4 team field, a conference championship game should be an elimination game, and it has been, with the exception being 2021. In a 12 team field, the loser should not be punished, and I don't think the committee will punish them.

What I can see them doing, and I don't consider this punishment, is if the team that loses the SECCG was ranked behind other two loss SEC teams going into the game and they don't get in. For instance, let's assume UT loses to UGA and has two losses at the end of the year, is ranked behind Alabama and Georgia heading into the SECCG but wins the tie-breaker to play in the SECCG, and then loses the SECCG to Texas. The committee then leaves them out of the playoff but includes Alabama and Georgia. I wouldn't see that as punishment to UT, because the committee going into that game ranked Alabama and Georgia higher. Conversely, if UT were to beat Texas in the SECCG, then neither Texas or UT should be bumped out of the playoff if they were higher rated going into the game than the other two loss SEC teams.

 

[bamajas]

Agree, Bama gets in SEC CG, unless we lose by 52, we are in win, lose, or draw. Off topic but Heather Dinich knows as much football as my Doberman Pinscher.

RIP Cecil Hurt

 

[KrAzY3]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1856719847851524298

 

[tusks_n_raider]

Georgia won the national championship in 2022. They were undefeated in the regular season in 2023. They came into the conference championship game ranked #1. They lost by three points (to the #4 team) and proceeded to fall all the way to #6, below two other one loss teams. That sure looks like being unduly penalized to me.

Edit: Just to provide a little more context, FSU played #14 Louisville and won 16-6, capping off a fairly soft schedule. Even though the committee supposedly took their starting QB's injury into account, they still ranked FSU ahead of Georgia, despite Georgia obviously being a better team (who would go on to beat FSU 63-3).

So, I think we have some insight into what they'll do to a team that loses a conference championship game, even if the loss is to a high ranked team and are clearly one of the best teams. They even put one loss Texas ahead of Georgia.

I agree with your overall point.

There is no way they put us in at 10-3 without absolute chaos happening around us to where the committee has to look at 3 loss teams to fill out the CFP Bracket.

They also have a history of saying something matters until it doesn’t or that something doesn’t matter until it does.

You can never 100% believe what their spokesperson says in the weeks leading up to final selection.

 

[Power Eye]

I agree with your overall point.

There is no way they put us in at 10-3 without absolute chaos happening around us to where the committee has to look at 3 loss teams to fill out the CFP Bracket.

They also have a history of saying something matters until it doesn’t or that something doesn’t matter until it does.

You can never 100% believe what their spokesperson says in the weeks leading up to final selection.

No one knows what they'll do, but the one thing I've learned over the last 10 years of CFP rankings is that none of the rankings leading up to the final one matter. I also believe the committee has gotten it right every year, so I tend to think that if we finish 10-3, which the only way to do that is to lose in the SECCG, then we'll get in because the committee has a track record of making the right decisions, even when they are not necessarily popular ones.

 

[Slowpoke Catracho]

The whole Nico situation:

 

[B1GTide]

I was following this until that last statement. For a team to "rocket up" in the rankings, someone would have to come down.

Teams that unexpectedly win get an auto bid and bye, and other teams have to slide down to make room for them. But no team that loses that game would get dropped in the rankings.

 

[Tideflyer]

The problem is if we win out and play Texas in the SEC Championship Game and lose, we will get knocked out of the playoffs with 3 losses.

With this new 12 team playoff, conferences need to stop playing championship games. JMHO.

If losing a conference championship game actually knocks out a team that would have gone to the play offs if it hadn’t played in the championship game, conferences may drop the championship game so fast it will make your head spin. If that were to happen, I suppose that the conferences would just award conference championships based on conference records (?). Would have to have some sort of tie breaker system.

 

[Tideflyer]

I still called them stupid after that as well (and for years before that as well) . Their rankings were still stupid, just they put Alabama in but Alabama did not belong at #4, that was too low, and obviously Georgia at #6 was too low. They got more wrong than right.

Just so we all remember how dumb those guys were, they had one loss Oregon at #5 and one loss Alabama at #8 based on what exactly the week prior? Just sheer stupidity...

By the way, I can't recall saying they wouldn't put Alabama ahead of FSU either. But the committee is a joke and has been a joke, but in this case we're talking about a very specific scenario and we can see in the recent past how they've handled the issue.

Besides making one’s head hurt trying to deduce all the different possible courses of actions of the now infamous “Committee “, does anyone else long for the “ bad old days “ of the computer and the BCS? It seems the current system has devolved into yet another of the myriad examples of “ Be careful what you ask for “.

 

[crimsonaudio]

IF tennessee wins out and makes the SECCG (giving Bama a bye the week of the SECCG) Bama might be able to meet them again in the CFP, which I would relish...

Regardless, Bama needs to win out for anything to happen post-season, but I'd LOVE to see Bama knock tennessee out of the playoffs.