NCAA Week 13

For those who love chaos and insane levels of tiebreakers, root for a UAB-Southern Miss-Louisiana Tech trifecta on Saturday. If all three win, the West Division ends with a three-way tie that is broken by the eighth and final tiebreaker -- the team that has gone the longest without playing in the conference championship game. That would be Southern Miss, whose last appearance was in 2015. Louisiana Tech made it in 2016 and UAB last year.
There's also a chance for a three-way tie in the East Division, with Florida Atlantic, Western Kentucky and Marshall. Western Kentucky loses all of the tiebreakers and just gets to claim a lousy co-championship, though. Marshall has all of the tiebreakers.
Adding to the fun is that Southern Miss and FAU are the only ones among those six teams that play each other on Saturday.

 

After an outcry, C-USA has changed the tiebreaker rule. That eighth tiebreaker - giving it to the team who has gone longest without a championship - is being replaced after a near universal (outside of SoMiss anyhow) outcry. Per the C-USA website now:

"If Louisiana Tech, Southern Miss and UAB each win their final regular season game and finish 6-2, the tie would not be broken through the first seven tie-breakers and it would go down to average computer ranking (Anderson and Hester, Billingsley, Colley Matrix, Massey, Sagarin and Wolfe), with the highest ranked team earning a spot in the Championship."

We're all on the Lane Train, for this weekend anyhow.

 

Rock-paper-scissors was not considered?

 

Changing rules during the season is wrong

 

Did they change the rule this afternoon? I was looking on the C-USA website around noon and it had the "last time" tiebreaker spelled out as the last one on the scenarios.

 

The G5 battle for that NY6 spot is kind of fun to follow this year.

Memphis needs to beat Cincinnati in consecutive weeks to probably get the spot. But if they lose to Cincinnati this week and Navy beats Houston, they won't even play for the American Conference title. If they split the games with Memphis winning this week and Cincy wins next week they would likely eliminate the Conference all together.

Boise State is waiting in the wings, likely to crush Colorado State this week and then host Hawai'i on that cold blue turf next week.

App State is also an interested party. Assuming they win and Louisiana wins, it'll be 11-1 App State vs. 10-2 Louisiana for the Sun Belt.

Honestly I'd be all in on a G5 8-12 team playoff if they really just wanted to tell the CFP to fuck off. The American would never go for it though since they fancy themselves as a power conference.

 

FB: C-USA Football Scenarios

 

Rock-paper-scissors would have been better than "You haven't been in a while, you get the conference tournament participation prize".

Throw this in, just for the info on how the bowls fall out:

"As far as bowl eligibility is concerned:

There are six teams with at least seven wins and bowl eligibility – Florida Atlantic (8-3), Louisiana Tech (8-3), UAB (8-3), Marshall (7-4), Southern Miss (7-4) and WKU (7-4).

There are two teams with six wins and bowl eligibility – Charlotte (6-5) and FIU (6-5).

Conference USA will have eight bowl-eligible teams this season.

C-USA has six guaranteed bowl selections in 2019: Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl (Tampa Bay, Fla.) the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl (Nassau, Bahamas), New Mexico Bowl (Albuquerque, N.M.), R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl and SERVPRO First Responder Bowl (Dallas, Texas), along with either the SoFi Hawai’i Bowl (Honolulu, Hawai’i), or the Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl (Frisco, Texas) . The league has a secondary agreement with the Walk-On’s Independence Bowl (Shreveport, La.), should the ACC or SEC not be able to fill its spot in that game, and a secondary agreement with the Cheribundi Boca Raton Bowl."

We're happy with pretty much any of them, but if UAB gets sent to the New Mexico Bowl they'll be lucky if 200 UAB fans show up. The problem is that none of the Texas schools are bowl eligible, so it will be that way pretty much whoever gets put in that bowl.

There is also some talk about the Birmingham Bowl, vs (most likely) Cincinnati. That would be a great match-up and would add to the strength of schedule, but personally I think that rewarding this season with another trip to Lesion Field borders on cruel and unusual punishment - but tickets would sell.

 

Yeah, the Southern Miss fans are saying so, loudly. Can't say I blame them.

 

So you like complexity? Here, let make it simple for you. Not! (MARSH = Marshall for those not up on CUSA)

 

I did like that the C-USA press release explaining the various scenarios had "simple" in quotation marks.

 

Shoot I forgot about the other computer rankings. Okay - uncle. I give. Ohio State is a deserving number 1. I realized that by looking backward at the season and not doing the usual narrative week by week assessment. The win vs. Cincinnati looks better all the time. LSU's "big" win over Texas looks less so. Too many pollsters don't downgrade a team if a "big win" turns less remarkable as the season progresses. Also further calls into question Alabama's ranking - they are in the teens in almost all of the computer models.