(03-05-2018 06:47 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(03-05-2018 06:18 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-05-2018 06:03 PM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(03-05-2018 05:57 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-02-2018 04:53 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  Sportsmen prefer that all participants have their shot based on on-field performance rather than comittees or polls.

In all sports, nobody is allowed to just hop off the couch and declare themselves a "participant" that the top dogs are obligated to compete against.

If I'm a tennis player, i can't just pick up a racket, show up at the gates of Wimbledon, and challenge Roger Federer. I have to prove I'm a valid 'participant' by winning many tennis matches against other top professionals, earning the points needed to gain entry. Only then is Federer obligated to play me. If I just try to declare that it isn't "sporting" of him to otherwise ignore me, I'll be hauled away by security.

As has been explained to you several times, FBS is not that kind of league, because the "participants" weren't selected for their worthiness, they just met the extremely low entrance requirements for FBS - 15,000 fans for two years, and about 85 schollies.

So no, just because a school or conference is FBS doesn't mean it has proven to be a viable 'participant' that has earned the right to compete for a title on the same level as an Alabama.

But if you were a professional tennis player you would be able to earn the right to play Federer for the title. If any team any given year can't play their way to a title then the title is a sham.

IMO, that's a complete exaggeration. E.g., let's say I'm the #130 player in the world. Now, that means I'm a really good player, but it also means I have a near-zero chance of winning Wimbledon. No player ranked lower than #20 has won it in the past 40 years.

Now lets say that for some reason, I am prevented from playing my way into Wimbledon. They are holding the Wimbledon qualification matches the week before the tournament, and I'm from North Korea, and the UK puts in place last-minute sanctions against NK that mean I'm not allowed to come to England and play my way in by qualifying.

But despite that, Wimbledon goes ahead and has their tournament anyway, and Federer beats Nadal in the final, after beating 4-5 other guys all ranked ahead of me. In fact, just about all of the 128 players in the event were ranked higher than me. Can anyone reasonably say that my absence, the fact that I wasn't allowed to play my way in to the draw at W, means that Federer's title is a sham? That would be rather ridonculous, eh?

Moral: When anyone isn't allowed to play their way in to an event, the "sham" quotient isn't absolute. It varies depending on the excluded party's chances of winning the event. Exclude Nadal or Federer from Wimbledon, and the winner deserves a big Asterisk next to their name, and "sham" is probably an appropriate name for it.

Exclude me, #130, and the odds of me winning were so low it's not even worth mentioning my exclusion, much less calling the entire event a 'sham'.

You're getting too wrapped up in your tennis analogy. But if you want to play it out then we're cutting out qualifying all together. ODU would not have won the national title last year. But we didn't have to play Bama to find that out. We rode FAU's Lane Train like most everybody else in CUSA. Could FAU have won a National Title? Probably not but we're getting closer. Now fast forward a little. Could UCF have won a National Title? Yes, clearly they could compete at that level. I agree with arkstfan that they shouldn't have been included in the four teams selected on the criteria set out. I think a lot of teams would have been undefeated with their schedule (More than a couple at least). Hard to say they didn't deserve a shot though.

My tennis example was just to prove that because someone, somewhere isn't allowed to 'play their way in' doesn't make an entire competition a sham, and I think that point was made.

Yes, UCF could conceivably have won the title if they'd been in the playoffs. But it would be very unlikely, say about 2%.

But there were other teams with a better chance that were left out - Ohio State for sure, probably Wisconsin, Penn State, USC, TCU, Notre Dame as well.

So UCF wasn't even the worst-case leave out, and those others aren't complaining.

Overall, it's hard to call the CFP title a "sham" when the overwhelming likelihood is that the best team won the playoffs.