(08-15-2019 10:50 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-15-2019 08:57 AM)1845 Bear Wrote:  

(08-15-2019 06:46 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-14-2019 06:31 PM)1845 Bear Wrote:  

(08-14-2019 05:58 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Straight 8 will simply exclude ... teams that aren't ranked in the top 8, whether they are P5 or G5, and since there are 130 teams, that means a whole lot from both.

Going unbeaten versus a soft schedule absolutely does not mean you have earned/deserve a playoff spot. It should be obvious that going 9-3 vs a tough schedule can be much more of an achievement than 12-0 vs a soft one.

Is it a tougher SOS? Yes. But one team did everything hey could and the other lost more than 20% of their games. Only one earned a right to be there and only subjective criteria could elevate the other one.

First, the problem of 2014 isn't a problem with the method used to select the teams - a committee - it was a problem of the number of teams in the playoffs, four. Even a totally objective "must be a conference champ to make the playoffs" method with no human committee involvement would have left out two of the six teams you think were worthy of playing for the title, because you can't put six teams in a four team playoff. So 2014 is an argument for expanding to 8 teams, but it isn't an argument for using conference champ criteria over a committee.

Second, I don't think your thinking on criteria is very clear. My Alabama/Citadel example was extreme, but it made the point - SOS isn't just a little thing, its *everything*. A record is meaningless unless we look at who was played.

Going 12-0 vs a soft schedule is not necessarily deserving of a playoff berth in a system where there is just 8 spots for 130 teams. Doing "everything you can" doesn't cut it, when "everything you can" was just not very much because the games were soft. It's like me solving 12 straight easy addition problems and thinking I deserve to advance in a math tournament over someone who solved 10 out of 12 far tougher calculus problems. That's just dumb, IMO.

Sigh... there you go again throwing out the only objective criteria we have here.

At the end of the day the way the playoff is settled isn’t “who could win more if they played 10 times?”- it’s who ACTUALLY WON.

You are arguing strength of record.
I am arguing who played their way in.

Quote:IMO, the problem with advocating "objective" criteria for college football playoffs is that there is no objective criteria that are any good. Winning your conference isn't, because conferences vary in strength, and also conference champs are chosen based just on conference games, throwing out OOC games.

Better to have a human element that can adjust for those obvious factors, and so far, based on comparisons with independent sources like the AP poll and computers, the CFP has done a great job.

Completely disagree. If you play your way in by winning every time out you should be in if your schedule is even close to mediocre.

Losing three times against the #1 SOS is an impressive season but it’s obvious you didn’t earn the right to be national champs since 20% of your year was spent losing. You had your shot and blew it three times. Most years a national champ can’t lose once and rarely can lose twice.

At the end of the day you are arguing that actually winning should only selectively matter to qualify for a playoff where you have to win or go home. All that means is if enough people subjectively like you or your league/brand you get a get out of jail free card and the team that took care of business gets the shaft and arbitrarily denied.

IMO, it is just silly to argue that someone "played their way in" by winning all their games without looking at who they played. As I've explained, a record means nothing, literally nothing, absent an evaluation of who was played.

The only time you can reasonably say that say a 12-0 record is better than a 9-3 record is if the schedules are reasonably similar. Not exactly so, but reasonably. In the NFL, straight record decides the division title and advancement to the playoffs, because even though teams do not play identical schedules, the schedules are pretty darn close, there isn't much of a gap between the #1 schedule and the #32 schedule.

But college football isn't like that. Schedules vary tremendously, so 12-0 just cannot be reasonably regarded as a basis for automatic playoff inclusion.

Bottom line is: P5 and G5 often play *categorically* different schedules, so comparing 12-0 G5 to a 9-3 P5 is an apples/oranges comparison. It's like saying an FCS team that goes 12-0 deserves to be in a playoff over a G5 team that goes 10-2, when the FCS team played a categorically weaker schedule.

Heck, according to Sagarin, last year, UCF's schedule was *closer* in strength to FCS champ North Dakota State's than it was to Stanford's. So NDS had as much right to claim to be in a playoff vs UCF as UCF did vs a Stanford.

IMO, makes no sense.

The problem you simply refuse to acknowledge is that the division of FBS has 5 conferences with no access to the playoff regardless of what they do. These conferences have absolutely no control over 75% of their schedule and on are a tiny minority of votes on the Committee (thus they have no real voice in the selection process). At best, any G5 is going to have no better than the 65th best SOS simply as a result of having 8 G5's on their schedule. SOS will always be an issue. Still---any system that routinely allows schools to go undefeated and be left out is essentially a flawed system for the get go.

You're going to have to figure out a system that allows everyone a legitimate path to the post season. Yes--schedules differ---welcome to the reality of the college football. Every division of the NFL is not equal nor is every conference in D1 basketball equal---yet we have figured out a way to make it work in a manner that gives reasonable access to all while providing a system that insures we see the best teams and crown a legit champion. My guess is a 2 path system like I describe in my previous post is the only real viable answer.