2024 NCAA football thread

[DoubleK]

I asked myself why I was watching this early in the 3rd.

Switched over to the Avs @ Ducks.

The FCS games tomorrow will be better than whatever the F that was.

[Sainters7]

I watched the entire game, the Irish smashed them on both lines. Rourke had a really shaky game, seems the environment got to him. He kept battling though, and at least briefly made it interesting with a couple garbage time TDs.

Love seem to be good for a highlight reel TD per game, he's fun to watch.

[KelVarnsen]

SMU QB is terrible

[Senator Clay Davis]

The expanded playoff is terrible. Gonna be really grim when it's 24 teams.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

The expanded playoff is terrible. Gonna be really grim when it's 24 teams.

Here’s an idea. Put in the best teams.

[Senator Clay Davis]

The bigger takeaway is there was never a need to expand past six teams, eight the absolute max. But now that Pandora's box is open, #### it, 128 team playoff.

[Kasi]

It’s fine the other college football divisions have had 16 team playoffs for decades. High school football also has tournaments Nothing wrong with that. Once they made the championship all important and killed the idea of random bowl games (a quaint idea that was an outlier but also made zero sense) the cat was out of the bag and this is the logical result. Similar to the NFL they’ll have their 12-16 team playoff.

But yes these results are really going to spark a renewed emphasis on strength of schedule and record. Indiana and SMU were bad inclusions as they beat no one. Ole Miss and South Carolina are likely pissed now not to mention Bama. Does this mean we probably get five SEC teams and 3-4 Big Ten teams every year? Likely does but it’s kinda hard to argue right now that that isn’t merited. Now maybe the NIL will bring more parity and drag down the quality of those teams but it’s not happened yet.

But I think we can say with certainty that these playoffs would be far more interesting and competitive if we had 2 three loss SEC teams in instead of a mediocre SMU and Indiana. Everyone complained about Bama losing to OU and yes it was a bad loss. But OU had 6 losses but they also played Texas, LSU, Missouri, South Carolina, Bama, Tennessee and Ole Miss. The only top team they missed was Georgia. Put SMU into OUs spot and they’re getting six losses or more there too.

[Strange Brew]

Agree with you Kasi. Far too much emphasis on losses IMO and not enough on wins when comparing teams. SMU hasn’t beaten a good team.

[Kasi]

And argue all you want against big tent playoffs but that’s how all sports are going. Yes it devalues regular season somewhat but it’s what all sports want. The NBA has their playin, NFL recently expanded, champions league keeps getting bigger, NCAA hoops is always adding more teams, baseball has expanded and so on. It seems the powers that be want at minimum a 12 team playoff for any sport and this just aligns college football with them.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Agree with you Kasi. Far too much emphasis on losses IMO and not enough on wins when comparing teams. SMU hasn’t beaten a good team.

We really just need a system in place that basically gives you an actual boost for close loss to a good team and only penalizes you if you get blown out by a good team. But a 1-2 TD loss to a better team shouldn’t change you in the rankings. You do this and teams will look OOC and actually schedule solid teams. If SMU like ND had a A&M on their schedule or Boise State like Oregon we would have a better idea of how good they actually are. But they’re in this huge mega conference and managed to miss all the good schools. No Miami, no Clemson til the title game, no GT, no Syracuse. They beat no one good and now we see the paper tiger they are.

[ResAlien]

Personally I'm shocked the lower seeds are losing to the higher seeds. The vols/buckeyes game feels like the only one that has a chance of an upset

[Kasi]

If those lower seeds were South Carolina and Ole Miss instead these games would be a lot more competitive. Which I think is what fans want for the games to be fun. No one likes blowouts where the game is done by the end of the first quarter or half.

[Senator Clay Davis]

But Ole Miss lost to Kentucky at home. South Carolina I got a bit more sympathy for. But as I will bang on until the end of time get defined paths so at least if a team gets crushed it's not a "what if". If Clemson gets destroyed no one will say anything cause at least they won their conference.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

But Ole Miss lost to Kentucky at home. South Carolina I got a bit more sympathy for. But as I will bang on until the end of time get defined paths so at least if a team gets crushed it's not a "what if". If Clemson gets destroyed no one will say anything cause at least they won their conference.

Yeah and ND lost to NIU. Ohio State lost to Michigan. But Ole Miss beat Georgia and South Carolina. Better wins by far than anyone else who got left out. I think a system that says “it’s okay for you to have a bad loss but only if you’re in a bad conference” is just a bad system. SEC arguably has ten of the top 20-25 teams in the sport. They are going to inevitably cannibalize themselves.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

Here’s an idea. Put in the best teams.

A lot of college football purists don’t want this. The committee has received a ton of flack even when it proved the right choice when they’ve done it in the past, like leaving FSU out. They want every loss to matter, making your CCG to be an accomplishment and for the eye test to be the last tiebreaker all things being equal.

Yes this punishes the super conferences but that’s their problem. If they wanted to finish 11-1, they shouldn’t have stolen all the best teams from other conferences.

College football is damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Every choice is controversial.

But this has always been the way. The pendulum swings every year based on previous choices. FSU “deserved” to be in but got left out and that influenced this years choices. Next year we may see it swing back where they’ll take SEC or B10 teams and put them in with more losses than an ACC or B12 team.

Except ND. Everyone hates ND and regardless of record or SOS wants them left out. I hope they beat Georgia and finally get that monkey off their back. I want a ND/Oregon NC. Then everyone is pissed off no matter what happens.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Kasi

Yeah and ND lost to NIU. Ohio State lost to Michigan. But Ole Miss beat Georgia and South Carolina. Better wins by far than anyone else who got left out. I think a system that says “it’s okay for you to have a bad loss but only if you’re in a bad conference” is just a bad system. SEC arguably has ten of the top 20-25 teams in the sport. They are going to inevitably cannibalize themselves.

And I said at the time that ND loss should have been disqualifying...except, when everyone else is mediocre as ####, you still need 12 teams. There are 7-10 mediocre teams in the playoff. Maybe the SEC teams would have done better, maybe just as bad, but as I've also said I'm not crying for the 13th seed when there aren't more than six teams max who should be in a hypothetical playoff this year.

[Kasi]

Well Georgia is likely going to be missing their QB and even with him their offense has been spotty. They have an all world defence but that doesn’t matter if your O goes nowhere. I think it will be a good game as ND has enough talent to make it competitive.

I have no issue with top five conference winners getting it. But the auto byes on that have to (and will) go. And for the at large teams they have to take SoS as the top most metric.

[ResAlien]

The idea that one could predict better games with SEC 3 loss teams is laughable. It's why they play the games. As was said before 12 is clearly too many so we should expect a lot of this in the future, save for a rare upset, but there's a reason every line today was at least -6.5. This is no different that your 16 seed getting the doors blown off in March.

You want to be a part of the top 12 teams don't have 3 losses, simple as that.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

And I said at the time that ND loss should have been disqualifying...except, when everyone else is mediocre as ####, you still need 12 teams. There are 7-10 mediocre teams in the playoff. Maybe the SEC teams would have done better, maybe just as bad, but as I've also said I'm not crying for the 13th seed when there aren't more than six teams max who should be in a hypothetical playoff this year.

As an Oregon fan I’m not crying for Alabama. Huskies are our most hated rivals and they have their coach. I was laughing when they got left out. But the committees selection criteria is flawed and the format is too. People called that the one and two seeds would get screwed back in October. Obv the new system will fix the major flaw the old system out is that sometimes the third team was as deserving as the 2nd or the 5th as the 4th. That’s gone so it’s just a matter of filling out the rest of the field with the best teams, records be damned.

[Kasi]

Originally Posted by ResAlien

The idea that one could predict better games with SEC 3 loss teams is laughable. It's why they play the games. As was said before 12 is clearly too many so we should expect a lot of this in the future, save for a rare upset, but there's a reason every line today was at least -6.5. This is no different that your 16 seed getting the doors blown off in March.

You want to be a part of the top 12 teams don't have 3 losses, simple as that.

Oh come on you can’t be serious. It was clear as day to look at who SMU, Indiana, Bama, South Carolina and Ole Miss played and see very obviously who would give competitive games. The lines like you said clearly knew who was favored. Go check what the lines would have been with the SEC schools who missed out. Teams who beat no one should not be gifted playoff spots.