College football 2018 championship week thread

Exactly right. Expansion will only enable more SECessionist teams. It just means more college football as proxy for states rights and Trumpism.

 

Richmond player dies by suicide. It's not in the story but that's how he passed.

Sophomore and football player Augustus "Gus" Lee dies

 

Which explains the editor's note on top of the story, but the Times-Dispatch called the ME, who is listing it as suicide.

 

There is absolutely no doubt that when the playoff expands to 8 teams, the Power 5 conference champions get automatic bids with the three other slots to the next best team based on whatever committee is in place. There is no way that it expands to 8 and is just based on the CFP rankings to get manipulated for the SEC, or any conference.

 

If the other conferences are concerned about having to face too many SEC teams, they might also put a limit of two teams per conference. That change, along with having to win two playoff games against very good teams to get to the final, would make it much less likely that two teams from the same conference would meet in the championship game. Even if a conference's 3rd best team might objectively be thought to be the 8th best in the country (maybe Auburn last year, at least before the bowls?), this would be partly about entertainment and not just an effort to objectively identify & reward the eight best teams. There's not that much difference between 8th best and 9th best, and it's a reasonable argument that a team that doesn't finish first or second in its conference in a 12- or 13-game season shouldn't have an opportunity to become national champion.

I'd rather see a six-game playoff with the top two teams getting byes to provide some sort of reward for having a great regular season. Otherwise, who cares if Ohio State loses a midyear game to Purdue? It probably would have to include the P5 champions and one at-large team, so we could argue both about which team should get the at-large bid (this year Notre Dame would be obvious, but if Georgia had held on against Alabama, it would've been an interesting argument) and which teams get the byes (Alabama & Clemson this year, I imagine).

 

Ig Georgia had held on against Alabama, the argument would be one-loss Alabama or undefeated Notre Dame. No way a one-loss power team gets in ahead of an undefeated one, even if it is the "better" team. That's why eight works better than six. There is some flexibility to deal with unexpected results leading to knotty problems.

 

Absolutely right.
There's no reason to expand it to 8 if you don't do that.

 

Hope they expand it to eight . . . and a four-loss P5 conference champion ranked 24th gets into the playoff.

 

The original RTD story did not mention suicide.

UR mourning the loss of football player Augustus Lee

 

You ain't from 'round here, are yuh?

 

A good crack, but the committee playoff system is all about politics, and the idea that the playoff is an SEC plaything would destroy it very rapidly. It was the Alabama-LSU rematch that did the BCS in.