(12-03-2017 02:15 AM)Jericho Wrote:  

(12-03-2017 01:35 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(12-03-2017 01:24 AM)Jericho Wrote:  

(12-03-2017 01:06 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(12-03-2017 12:51 AM)Jericho Wrote:  My difficulty with putting Alabama in, is that it rewards them for essentially not playing good teams. Not intentionally mind you. But everyone seemed fine ranking Auburn ahead of Alabama last week. And then Auburn lost to a good Georgia team. So if you're going to take two from the SEC, shouldn't Auburn be the second choice? But no one's advocating that with three losses (albeit loses to good teams). Still, how can I reconcile taking Alabama instead? Simply because they weren't even good enough to even play Georgia and possibly lose?

Had Auburn won the SEC, you could plausibly argue Auburn is #1 and Alabama is #2 in the conference. And then take two SEC teams. But that didn't happen. Alabama has a good overall record, but couldn't even win its division and has no real signature wins. If you can't even win your own division, its doubtful you belong in the playoffs. And if the team that did win your division doesn't make it in, then you really don't deserve to be in.

I hate how teams that lose conference championship are penalized at the expense of teams that weren't good enough to play in them. The vast majority of the college season is littered with games against mediocre to bad schools. The conference championships normally pit two good teams against each other. and we constantly punish the loser, despite the fact most teams don't play schedules as tough.

I guess the main problem is, if you don't take Alabama, who do you take? Ohio State has a flawed resume. Wisconsin's resume is about as good as Alabams's, but no one seems to really care. Central Florida is an extreme wild card. USC is really not that different from Ohio State. There are options, but all have concerns. In the end, picking between a slew of flawed options, I'd at least take a conference champion. So for me, that means either USC or Ohio State. And for better or worse, I'd side with taking Ohio State (which sucks, since they got gifted a birth in 2016 that they didn't deserve and seemingly got a questionable invite in 2014 too when the committee punted on choosing between two higher ranking Big 12 options. So this would be a third controversial invite for the same school)

Ohio St. didn't play good teams either.

That's somewhat true. But pretty much every objective metric says Ohio St played a tougher schedule than Alabama. And Ohio State did beat Penn State and did beat Wisconsin. And one loss was to Oklahoma. All likely teams in the top dozen or so in the rankings. That's at least something.

The difficulty the committee will have is it has stated certain criteria matter. Like winning conference championships. And playing well at the end of the season. And it likes to reward teams for playing tough schedules. But pretty much all those criteria work against Alabama here. Alabama couldn't win its own division, let alone its conference. Alabama lost its last game, which was also against its toughest opponent to date. And it's strength of schedule ranks last among the playoff contenders. So if we base it off the stated criteria, you pretty much can't pick Alabama. Unless you want to throw it all out the window and just pick teams you want based on nebulous criteria (which the committee kind of did already after taking Ohio St over Penn State last year). Though that makes the system even more chaotic then it already is.

Though if you want to argue USC over Ohio State, that's perfectly fine and pretty much a pick 'em in my mind

I can imagine Alabama beating Wisconsin and Penn State. Not with 100% certainty but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

I can't imagine Alabama losing by 30 to Iowa. Not if they played it 100 times.

That may or may not be true, but it's pure conjecture based on feelings as much as anything. The difficulty with football is that there's so few games and so few common opponents, that rankings are largely based off conference perception. Last year is a great example. A lot of people though the Big 10 was strong and the ACC was weak. But then the bowls rolled around and the Big 10 was bad and the ACC looked great. And all of sudden the perception did a 180. And we really don't know which was "accurate". Likely neither as I hesitate to put much stock in bowl performance outside of the top teams, since there's often so little to play for (and varying levels of opponent strength).

Yes, the OSU loss to Iowa is bad. Of course, back in 2014, Ohio State lost at home to a bad Virginia Tech team (which eventually finished 6-6, though was only 3-5 in conference play in what was widely considered a bad ACC). You could argue which loss was worse. Iowa seems to be a step up quality wise from that Virginia Tech team and Ohio State lost on the road to Iowa (compared to losing at home to Virginia Tech). But the score was closer against Virginia Tech. The VT loss was widely considered to be enough to keep OSU out of the playoffs. There was one undefeated team (defending champion Florida St) and 4 other one loss teams (Alabama, Oregon, TCU, and Baylor). All had "better" loses that OSU and all laid some claim to a conference title (though the two Big 12 teams has no official tiebreaker or conference championship). However, in the end, OSU was not only chosen for the playoffs, it won the whole thing by beating both Alabama and Oregon. Point being, one bad loss does not define a team.

If you're asking personal opinion, I'd generally err on the side of choosing diverse teams form different conferences unless there's compelling evidence to the contrary. The SEC clearly deserves a team, and that team is Georgia. But it doesn't have a second team head and shoulders above what the Big 10 and Pac 10 offer. Alabama may be better than Ohio State or USC, or they might not be. No one really knows, it's basically guesswork based off imperfect data points. Even if I believe Alabama is a better team that OSU or USC, I wouldn't choose them over such schools unless the difference was significant. And it's not here