(05-12-2019 11:54 AM)Bull Wrote:  Given we don't have a real playoff, leading to a situation where an undefeated UCF could beat Auburn in a NY6 bowl, and Auburn beat BOTH 'playoff' teams... yeah, you have a real strong argument that UCF was the best team in the country.

No, that's a very weak argument. Which is why basically nobody made it. The CFP didn't, the coaches didn't (heck, there were six AAC coaches in the coach's poll, and all of them voted Alabama #1, none of them had UCF higher than #4), the AP reporters didn't, and the Massey Composite of 100 computers didn't, they had UCF at #7 in the final tally.

And it's pretty simple why - beating Auburn didn't prove much, as Auburn was a 3-loss team that didn't even win their conference - and that was before UCF made them a 4-loss team. Auburn beat Georgia and Alabama? So what. Georgia also beat Auburn (UCF fans seem to forget that part). Also, LSU beat Auburn (who beat Georgia and Alabama!), and that doesn't make LSU the national champion either. Clemson beat Auburn (who beat Georgia and Alabama!), but that doesn't make them national champs either.

In fact, Alabama played THREE teams that year who beat Auburn (who beat Georgia and Alabama!) and guess what? Alabama beat all three of them! They beat Georgia, LSU, and Clemson.

Dumbest argument ever.

As for your philosophical point about the nature of playoffs, I guess you would agree that Virginia isn't the real NCAA basketball champion, because they were selected for the NCAA tournament playoffs, they didn't win their way in automatically?

Remember, "automatic" isn't really "objective". It just means people have pre-selected criteria for choosing the playoff teams. It doesn't mean that pre-selected criteria makes any sense. In fact, all sports leagues have, at the bottom of all the arbitrary tie-breakers they have for picking playoff teams, a coin flip, which is purely random and hence nonsensical.

We can think of a lot of post-season selection methods for playoffs that are much more rational than pre-selection criteria are. College football is particularly ill-suited for the use of pre-selection criteria, like winning your conference, because the conferences themselves are poorly structured to pick a valid champ, and OOC games are, and must be, ignored.