(05-05-2021 03:54 PM)Jared7 Wrote:  

(05-05-2021 07:38 AM)CoastalJuan Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 07:34 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 01:48 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-04-2021 12:28 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  About the bolded parts - I'd go beyond that and say that the CFP has picked the best four teams in as close to an "objective" sense as we can get, as their four picks have also uniformly been the four teams chosen by computer composites as well.

As for Ohio State vs Penn State in 2016, as a B1G "outsider" with no horse in that race, I was very comfortable with the CFP choosing Ohio State. Yes, Penn State beat Ohio State, but H2H is typically not a determining factor, it's a tie-breaker when records are the same. But records weren't the same, Penn State lost two games whereas Ohio State lost only one. The conference title is also, IMO, an "internal" thing to the B1G that Penn State was rewarded for at that proper internal level - they got the B1G championship trophy and the celebration with the confetti and all that. But from a national POV, a conference title doesn't mean anything. Winning the B1G doesn't mean you did anything to deserve a spot over an SEC team, a PAC team, etc. So I don't mind that being disregarded either.

And comparing conference title auto-bids with pro sports like the NFL misses one critical factor - in CFB, OOC games are ignored for determining a conference champ whereas they are not in the pros. So in CFB you can have an absurd situation where team X wins their conference and gets an autobid despite losing 3-4 OOC games, while a one-loss team from another conference that doesn't win its conference is left out. IMO, the latter team is much more deserving than the conference champ, because if anything, OOC games tell us more about merit for a national playoff than do conference games.

Now true, in other college sports, such as hoops and baseball, OOC games do not count towards the conference title either. But the damage of a lousy conference champ getting in to the playoffs automatically is mitigated because there are enough at-large spots such that more deserving teams that won more OOC games can still get in. But CFB will not be like that. So I am not a fan of conference autobids from a merit POV, though I admit that seems to be where things are heading.

Just my 3 cents.

And the results in the actual on the field games show they have done a bad job in seeding and not necessarily a good job in picking the best 4. TCU was clearly one of the best 4 in 2014 and possibly the best team. Yet they were #6.

In fairness to the committee, TCU was also outside the top 4 in the human polls as well, though the Massey computers did have them at #3.

TCU faced a problem of their own making - Baylor. You couldn't put Baylor in the playoffs because their SOS was so weak. But you couldn't put TCU in ahead of Baylor because Baylor beat them.

Plus, we had a unique situation with FSU. FSU had played an even softer schedule than TCU or Baylor and was the playoff team that was outside of the computer top four. But as the defending national champs with the Heisman Trophy winner and the only undefeated team in FBS, FSU simply *had* to be in the playoffs. There was no two ways about that. So TCU was out.

Beyond that, let's not get carried away about the TCU myth. Yes, TCU routed a lot of teams, but they also played a pretty soft schedule. The only really good team they played was Baylor, and Baylor beat them. The next best team they beat, Ole Miss, finished #19 in the polls and lost four games. They never proved themselves against top-flight competition. Texas was a 6-7 team that year, and Oklahoma had arguably their worst team of the millennium.

Nor did they have overwhelming talent. Looking at their draft picks the next couple years, we see that in 2015 and 2016 drafts, the years from which the 2014 talent was largely drawn from, TCU produced picks that went in rounds 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6. That's respectable, but none of those guys has done anything worth mentioning in the NFL. The guy who went in the first round, WR Josh Doctson, has a grand total of 81 catches in the NFL over four seasons.

In contrast, in the same two drafts Ohio State produced guys who went in rounds 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6. That's way more NFL talent, and that includes guys like Ezekiel Elliot, Joey Bosa and Michael Thomas, arguably the best RB, WR and DL in the league today. And we don't even need to look at Alabama's picks to know they had a lot more talent than TCU, one of their guys in that year's playoffs was Derrick Henry.

There's little doubt Ohio State had way more talent than TCU and they also beat way better competition. Ohio State was clearly the deserving 2014 national champions.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to post a box score from the FSU/TCU playoff game than write that whole thing?

But Ohio State had a Virginia Tech problem.

I forgot about that. VT went up to Ohio State and beat them by 2 touchdowns, only to come home and lose to us in Blacksburg.