Running CFB Playoff Debate Thread

You can do it. If you're a Clemson guy, surely you can muster the motivation to tweak that other conference, in which the fans use football as a proxy for re-litigation of the Civil War.

 

I don’t think you realize that Thomas Green Clemson, whose last will and testament remains a part of Clemson’s charter, and upon whose estate a tremendous portion of the university rests ... was the son-in-law of John Fucking C. Calhoun.

 

Oh, I know that. I also know they've got a shrine of a building on the campus to Strom Fucking Thurmond. But ACC fans don't view football as a collective endeavor in which they all must root for conference brethren in a "South Will Rise Again" immorality play.

 

I think every team has their shot at the playoffs. If the program wants to schedule some softer teams and it isn't a major conference power, it's leaving their chances up to the committee. Figure there are enough teams criticized for weak schedules already this year that they could pair up for a non-con next year. Wisconsin, Washington, UCF. Baylor and Okie State are teams that talk like they want to be a big-time, but then schedule crud. Hearing talk of conferences going back to eight conference games to ensure they fill all their spots (which is ridiculous) the last two or three bowl tie-ins are always net losers with conferences making less than the cost of sending a team. And an extra conference game is big-time money winner.

 

To be fair, Wisconsin played at BYU, a team that has won at least 8 games each of the previous six years. When the game was scheduled five years ago, BYU was coming off a 10-3 season. How were the Badgers supposed to know BUY was on its way to its worst season since 1970? Is it Wisconsin's fault that this cycle of Big 10 schedule put Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State on last year's schedule and the latter two with Indiana and Maryland?

 

BYU has never been a P5 school and hasn't finished in the top 20 since 2009. Nobody forces schools to schedule five years out, and even then, if they think they have a decent shot a conference title and playoff bid they could easily push one of their creampuffs off a few years by finding another team looking to add some protein to its schedule and hoping to dump a creampuff. Conferences could adopt the "challenge" model of hoops, where teams match-up with a team with a similar finish from a designated conference the year before on a particular Saturday.
Seems I hear a lot more about teams bailing out of good match-ups a year or two out than jumping into good match-ups. I wonder why that is?

 

Did your dad beat you with a University of Alabama belt or something?

 

Edited for brevity.

It doesn't matter whether it's their "fault". People out of school looking for jobs don't have experience. It's not their fault, either, and they may be great employees . . . but employers by and large still want proven talent. So do people ranking teams.

 

Wut?

 

A few weeks after we were kicking around the idea of an unbeaten P5 champion being left out (an idea that was never realistic but was being discussed nonetheless), we are now looking at the possibility that we will run out of one-loss teams and have to dip into the two-loss pool.

If Alabama (or Auburn) wins out, and if Wisconsin loses to Minnesota (not likely) or Ohio State (likely), we have:

SEC champ
Oklahoma
ACC champ
????

What’s the answer then — Miami if it’s the 12-1 also-ran in the ACC? Two-loss B10 champ Ohio State? 12-0 UCF?

It gets even more complicated if Oklahoma loses one of its final two games, against West Virginia or in the B12 rematch against TCU.

 

If Oklahoma loses to TCU, it's out. If West Virginia, it's really out. And I am not sure if it's likely that Wisconsin loses to Ohio State.

 

I think Ohio State will be favored by something between three and five points.