That’s fair, Michigan’s recruiting is great this year but takes awhile to fully load up. I could see USC competing on the offensive side quickly.
Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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Sure. But that team with 4 losses has already proven that they shouldn’t be national champions if they’ve lost to 4 other teams in the playoffs already. This isn’t about who had a better season. This is about picking a national champion. So really it should be conference champs with a couple at large to account for close losses and uneven scheduling. But money is going to make this all about the names on the front of the jerseys rather than giving all teams a chance to win a national title.
KidSilverhair
Well-Known Member
You tell a 4-loss Auburn, “you chose to play in the SEC, you chose to take losses from some of the best teams in the nation, but you couldn’t even win your division so what makes you think you earned the right to play for a national title?”
No, I’m not entirely serious, I don’t want to encourage the SEC to go to a 5-game conference schedule so they can all get 7 guaranteed wins against the Sun Belt, but … yeah. I say make the playoff a Tournament of Champions. You gotta win your conference to get your ticket. No at-large picks because “they just had that one tough loss” or “they lost 3 games but their schedule was so haaaarrrrd!” You want in, prove it by being the top team in your conference.
Maybe then when teams realize how hard it is to win an 18/24/32 team conference we’ll get back to some sanity. Let’s have a dozen 10-team conferences, all regionally/rivalry based, with our 12-team playoff being those champions (sure, define a “Power 4” that gets a bye, I can live with that).
Thank you for coming to my fantasy-based TED Talk about “things that should happen but never, ever will.”
No, I’m not entirely serious, I don’t want to encourage the SEC to go to a 5-game conference schedule so they can all get 7 guaranteed wins against the Sun Belt, but … yeah. I say make the playoff a Tournament of Champions. You gotta win your conference to get your ticket. No at-large picks because “they just had that one tough loss” or “they lost 3 games but their schedule was so haaaarrrrd!” You want in, prove it by being the top team in your conference.
Maybe then when teams realize how hard it is to win an 18/24/32 team conference we’ll get back to some sanity. Let’s have a dozen 10-team conferences, all regionally/rivalry based, with our 12-team playoff being those champions (sure, define a “Power 4” that gets a bye, I can live with that).
Thank you for coming to my fantasy-based TED Talk about “things that should happen but never, ever will.”
Still trying to imagine the massive travel $'s it is going to cost Stanford and Cal to simply compete in the ACC. I also get why SMU would forego TV $'s if they have deep pockets, but you are talking about $30M a year plus all the travel costs...times 7 years. That's a crapton of money. And then, no promise after that on actually getting into the league, whatever that looks like, at that point. There is no way that the ACC gets a deal at or above their current numbers without culling at least half of the schools in the league.
I'd include a broad based voter poll (no preseason, first poll after week 4) just because computer algorhythms sometimes spit out absurd results.
Not intended as offensive, but why not incorporate Vegas odds as a piece of the selection criteria while you're at it? There's nothing like putting your money where your mouth is.
I honestly don't hate that idea, despite how it would look on the surface. Their knowledge, accuracy and precision when dealing with it is enforced by the money riding on it, rather than bias.
We are already looking at the name on the front of the jersey, and have been for some time. Alabama and Ohio State both won national championships in years when they had losses during the season, and Alabama did not even win its half of the conference.
Look at last season, KSU wins the title game and they are in, do you want to see TCU get that second spot or an 11-1 Air Force team that got it wins in the MWC in a twelve team playoff? No, I do not see 4 lose teams making a 12 team playoff, but I sure as heck do not want AAC or MWC conference schools getting in over 2 or 3 loss P5 schools unless those AAC or MWC are undefeated.
No. There needs to be a cap on at large bids for conferences, regardless of who they are.
The reason conference champions only is dumb is teams get players for 4 years max, road games (and which teams you play) play a larger factor in outcomes than possibly any popularized sport in the US (if not the world), and imbalanced schedules (Big Ten says hi).
The ******** of the SEC loading up on football brands and trying to stack the deck in their favor needs to stop. They already benefit from the ESPN hype train boosting it's teams and 'winning' the ranking/SOS game. Don't want to have 'good football teams' and brands on the sidelines? Maybe you should have thought twice about bringing TAMU, Texas, and OU on board.
Due to young teams having tough early season games or a good team having the misfortune of playing their toughest games on the road, I don't like the conference champ only format. With that said, there shouldn't be more than 2 schools from a conference in an 8 team format or 3 in a 16 team format. If you aren't good enough to be top 3 in your conference you shouldn't be playing for a title. This also isn't CBB where there is a large enough sample size of OOC games to rightfully determine which conference is the best based on on-the-field play for that season. As is, the majority of the SEC plays 4 BS OOC games and gets credit for beating teams that are supposedly good.
That's what SOS and all those advanced metrics are supposed to account for. Does your 1 or 2 or even 3 more wins make you better than vs someone with a tougher schedule? And how tougher was it really?
And lets face it, part of the appeal (fun?) of CFB is the debates about this; it's kind of a feature, not a bug. Arguing if 9-3 LSU is better than 11-1 UCF is absolutely part of what drives engagement in CFB. People back their team, or their conference, and blather away about something that is in reality, not really determinable.
The SEC and Big Easy will do everything in their power to make sure that SOS is not included in determining the schools that make the playoff. It's not in their benefit to do so, so they will oppose the other conferences wanting to include it. They care less about which schools get in from their conference, than the amount of money the conference will receive by getting multiple schools into the championship.
Let's make it easy and just say that you have to play 10 P5 games during the regular season to qualify for the playoff if you are a P5 school. Any system that allows and rewards a school like Alabama for playing less P5 opponents a year than ISU or TT is screwed up and needs to be replaced.
I disagree I think they will be a strong proponent of strength of schedule. Keeps G5 out and strength is based of rankings which the SEC and BIG teams get over ranked more then the other conferences
I'm not sure SOS will be the lynchpin, but the smart TV execs will come up with a way to make sure 6 to 8 SEC and B1G are in a 12 team playoff every year.
I agree on your premise that it will be biased somehow, but SOS seems unlikely to be a key factor to me.
It was this BS that really made/makes me want to see the PAC and the ACC implode.
I see it as just the opposite. It makes me want to see the B10 implode and the PAC and ACC survive. The B10 was the hypocrite here by agreeing to this and then 1 year later raiding the PAC. The B10 just wanted this alliance so other conferences would not strengthen themselves further, then after things settled down a bit, they started picking teams off.
Pretty sure the real driver behind it was to slow down CFP expansion talks at the time so the media rights would eventually go to market for bid instead of allowing ESPN to retain all the media rights.
While hilarious and self-satisfying it is to see this rubbed in the P12’s face, this still dicked the B12 over. ESPN, the SEC, and the B12 were all aboard to extend the 12 team CFP WITH 6 autobids past 2026! The stability that would bring would be so valuable!
These 3 conferences blocked that. The B10 did it because they wanted the rights to go out to bid so Fox could get a piece, while the P12 and ACC blocked it cause they thought they were big dogs (on par with the B10, lol) standing up to the SEC. This, despite the fact that the B12 was the conference actually hurt by the SEC. The ACC and P12 (RIP) are going to begging for those autobids (along with the B12) past 2026 now. The idiocy of Kliavkoff and Philips is almost unbelievable
Not going to lie, I am very much looking forward to this aspect of the playoff.
So like basically everything else in the last 13 years (at least), the decisions are driven by what FOX or ESPN want.
A person could understand CFB a lot better by realizing whatever happens is because at least one of those networks wants it to.
