(01-04-2021 07:24 AM)NoQuarterBrigade Wrote: (01-04-2021 01:04 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (01-03-2021 11:53 PM)pvtlamb Wrote: Interesting articles in the WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-foo...1608562715
https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/artic...ppearances
https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/artic...ppearances
Only 11 different teams have been in the playoff. And the last "first" national champion was Florida in 1996. College Football is much more out of whack and top-heavy than College Basketball.
SEC is the only conference with three teams that have made it, and Georgia and LSU have only made it once.
PAC12 has Washington and Oregon, 1x
Big 12 with one; Oklahoma 4x
ACC: Clemson 6x, FSU 1x
Big 10: Ohio State 4x, Michigan State 1x
Notre Dame 2x (not counting them as ACC)
My point is that yes, AAC is getting screwed, but the way college football is financed, only a handful of teams in the P5 even have a shot let alone.
Well, everyone has a shot, you just have to be good enough. I mean, if USC went undefeated, do you think they would miss the playoffs?
Teams like Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio State have made the playoffs many times because they keep having fantastic seasons. Go 12-0 or 11-1 vs their schedules and anyone can make the playoffs.
I hope you’re being sarcastic, because that is a flawed view. It is not a fair system. When Cincinnati for example, started their season, they were playing for access to a NY6 bowl. That is the ceiling for every G5 school at the beginning of the season and it should not be. Coastal, another undefeated G5 team was ranked higher than UNC, yet they were not allied access to a NY6 bowl because of (A) Cincy was highest ranked G5 school, and (B), because of who they are, a G5 school from the Sunbelt Conference. Why were they not allowed to play in a NY6 bowl? They were ranked higher than UNC. Yet because of who they are, and the current system they were passed over by the committee and UNC got the nod. The whole FBS/CFP is a complete mess. It needs a major overhaul. There are way too many bowls that are meaningless and unwatchable. The CFP committee needs to be removed and the playoff should be expanded and decided by algorithms with a set of rules and guidelines that allow every member of the FBS access to a path to national title. It should not be placed in the hands of a committee filled with individuals who already have biased opinion.
You make a couple points here.
1) About making an NY6 bowl, of course the system is not formally equal. As you note, the P5 conference champs automatically make an NY6 bowl game no matter how bad and low-ranked they are. That hurts G5 teams, like Coastal, that are ranked higher. FWIW it also hurts P5 teams that are ranked higher, e.g., North Carolina and Oregon were not only ranked behind Coastal, they were also ranked lower than Indiana and in Oregon's case, some other P5 schools, but got in to an NY6 ahead of them too.
But that's because the bowls want to sign contracts with some conferences but not others. Complaining about that is like complaining that ESPN is willing to pay the ACC $25m a year and the AAC just $7m a year. That's based on market forces so no real way to change that, IMO. FWIW, this contractual arrangement helps the G5 as well - in several of the CFP years, lower-ranked G5 teams made the NY6 over higher-ranked P5 teams, because of the G5 auto-bid. Memphis in 2019 and WMU in 2016 would not have made the NY6 if we had just taken the top 12 teams with no auto-bids for anyone.
2) About the playoffs, yes, it is extremely hard for a G5 team to make the playoffs. You would need a perfect storm with OOC games against top P5, like Houston had in 2016, and maybe not then.
But that has less to do with prejudice vs the G5 on the part of the committee and more with the size of the playoff field. The playoff is only four teams out of 130, so you can be really, really good and still not deserve the playoffs. Cincy and Oklahoma were very good teams, so was Texas AM. None were worthy of the playoffs. Again, this doesn't just affect G5, it affects P5 as well.
G5 fans like to look at the playoff situation from the perspective of bias against the G5 on the part of the committee. That's because it's more viscerally satisfying to get angry at people than at rules. But truth is, the biggest nemesis is the size of the playoff field. We know it's not committee bias, because everyone else keeps the G5 out as well - that is, if we relied on the AP poll, the old BCS formula, or just all computers, Cincy would not have made the playoffs either. Neither would UCF in 2017 or 2018. None we ranked in the top 4 by any of those.