(08-15-2019 03:28 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(08-15-2019 11:25 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(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:  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.

Actually, I've addressed that head-on numerous times: I note that FBS was never, ever, not from day one, intended to be a unified competitive league, such that all FBS members have some kind of inherent claim on being able to compete for a title versus all other FBS teams.

FBS is and since 1978 has been just a catch-all category for the schools and conferences that *did not want* to participate in .... formal NCAA sponsored football playoffs! So not only was FBS never intended to be a single competitive league, if it does have any unifying basis, it's the idea that we do *not want playoffs*.

So insisting that there is something wrong with FBS if we don't have a playoff that guarantees everyone a path to a FBS title is just wrong on two counts, not just one.

That said, I'm not against more playoffs. I favor an 8-team playoff, but with straight 8. I'm not against a G5 team competing, they just have to earn it by being compared to P5 teams. UCF did just that last year and under my system they would have played Alabama in the first round of the playoffs.

But the G5 can't have a guilded path that allows them to do nothing but beat G5 teams, shielded from competition with and comparison to P5 teams, then claim *automatically* a coveted one-in-eight spot versus the very best P5 teams. That makes no sense to me, just as it makes no sense to me that P5 teams should be able to do the same by winning their conferences.

The last two graphs of Quo's post are spot-on. Now I might differ a bit with him regarding how teams qualify for the eight-team playoff, but the general point of his last two paragraphs ... perfectly put.