(07-01-2018 07:22 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  Good point about how the NFL schedules. IMO that makes analogizing to college football even sillier. If anything, the NFL has a stronger basis for counting only division games in determining the division champs, because the divisional teams play home and away, a much fairer test of who is best than in college, where you only play your conference mates one time, so someone has home field advantage. But the NFL counts all games, like all pro leagues do.

As for the SEC, as I've said before, what matters is overall SOS, not OOC SOS. Because overall SOS tells us the strength of the entire schedule.

E.g., both LSU and Louisville play Alabama this year. Conceptually, it makes zero sense to give Louisville great credit for playing what we expect to be a tough team like Alabama because it is OOC while LSU gets no credit for doing so because it's a conference game. Conference game or OOC, you're still playing Alabama.

So forget about OOC and look at overall SOS. That's what should matter. And last year, the SEC teams that made the CFP had SOS of 3, 6, and 27.

A lot of your things that "make no sense" seem to make absolutely a lot of sense when you get down to it. Ultimately for determining the conference champion, it makes sense to only do conference games. The NCAA does this on every single sport.

The professional leagues have games each year that don't count as well. The NFL runs 4 games that don't count and don't get factored into the overall result. MLB runs an entire month that does the same thing. So, by your own definition, they don't determine their division winners by including all the games.

The NFL sets up their scheduling so that teams in the same division have vastly similar schedules. Out of the 16 games, 14 of them are against the same teams.

The NBA does the same thing out of the 82 games that NBA teams play, they play every team at least 2 times, and out of the 82 games, 78 match up against the same teams if you're in the same conference.

Here's the scheduling rules for the NBA:

Divisional Opponents x 4 (16 games)
6 Conference Opponents x 4 (24 games)
4 Conference Opponents x 3 (12 games)
15 Non-Conference opponents x 2 (30 games)

Mathematically, that means that teams within the same conference must play the same schedule for all but 2 games

So, out of the 82 games, teams within the same division (which automatically go to the playoffs) play the same schedule for 78 out of the 82 games. There's only 4 games that don't match up with the same schedule.

I don't have the scheduling matrix for the MLB, so I can't confirm that they do the same thing.

So, presuming that the cross-conference opponents are going to be different for each team (there may be some overlap, though between teams), that leaves

But professional leagues have a few things that the NCAA doesn't. The first is more games. The NCAA season caps out at 12 games, (13 with conference championship and 15 max if you include the playoffs). The NFL season starts out with 20 games (4 preseason, 16 seasonal games), with 4 additional ones for playoffs.

The second is fewer teams. The professional leagues have a maximum of 32 teams (NFL has 32, MLB and NBA both have 30 teams), Division I has 345 institutions, with 130 being in the FBS.

The third is no control over their schedules, and the ability to schedule virtually the same schedule. Out of the actual sesaonal games, the NFL has 14 out of 16 games (87%) against the same opponents, if you're in the same division. In the NBA, 78 out of 82 games (95%) are against the same opponents.

In NCAA Division I Football, as few as 6 out of 12 games (50%) are against the same opponents. If you take it down to only conference games, then 6 out of 8 games (75%) are against the same opponents, or 7 out of 9 (78%).

Your argument that the conferences should go to the overall schedule to determine the conference champion, or that there should be no conference championship births, because of it is ridiculous.

(06-16-2018 08:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-15-2018 03:04 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-09-2018 12:58 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-31-2016 06:39 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-31-2016 08:58 AM)stever20 Wrote:  Yeah, I think the folks that were in charge had MUCH more of an issue with Oklahoma St not getting a chance in 2011 than Alabama getting in. Having 4 is probably the best case scenario. a lot tougher for #5 to complain than it was #3 to complain.

Is it? Just remember #4 won in year one. Who's to say #5 wouldn't have won. My preference is send the conference champs. That way it's all decided on the field.

Except ... just because something is decided on the field doesn't mean it isn't perverse, because the methods for picking conference champs are far from perfect, and the immediate impact would be to make OOC games worthless, which should be more important than conference games in determining playoff worthiness.

E.g., in the AAC, Houston could go 12-0, with wins over two good OOC teams like say a high ranked Louisville and Oklahoma of a couple years ago. USF could go 8-4, with losses to terrible OOC teams. But if USF went 8-0 in the conference, they'd win their division, and if they then beat Houston in the AAC title game, you'd have a 9-4 USF team in the playoffs over a 12-1 Houston team.

That would be pretty crazy.

But acceptable---because UCF would have earned their way to the CFP by defeating the better team "on paper" in front of thousand of witnesses (and millions on TV). In fine with that. In fact---thats what sports is. If we knew who would win the games---sports wouldnt be very interesting. As long as the action plays out on the field--I dont think anyone can really argue with the outcome. Putting a bunch of big cigars in a behind closed doors and letting them decide outcomes is the polar opposite of letting things play out on the field in broad daylight in front of the nations fans.

IMO, the problem with your take is that it ignores the 4 other times that USF (I actually used USF, not UCF as my example) lost. It privileges the one H2H game between USF and Houston over not just one of those, but all four, which to me is nonsensical.

I always use 1992 NFL as an example. I'm a Rams fan of 45 years, and that year we had a lousy team, 6-10. The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year, with maybe the most talented roster any team has ever had.

But guess what? we played Dallas that year, in Dallas, and beat them. Does that mean our "win over the better team on paper in front of millions of witnesses" mean we should be ahead of them in the NFL standings? Of course not. They won 13 games, we won 6.

Similarly, in my example, USF won 9 games, Houston won 12. The problem here is the AAC method of picking its division winners - only the conference games count. Which is contrary to reason, and how every other league does it (e.g., in the NFL, all games count towards picking a division winner, not just the divisional games).

Since college conference methods for picking their champs are flawed, it makes no sense to use them as the sole, ironclad method for playoff inclusion.

In my example, Houston wasn't the better team on paper. Even after losing to USF, they were clearly the better team in terms of results on the field, but USF would go to the playoffs.

Your NFL expample is a good one. Nobody ever at argues that an NFL champion isn’t legit—-regardless if they have the best regular season record or whether they had the weakest schedule. If a team makes the playoff with a lackluster record because it plays in a lackluster division—-nobody cares. Every team knew going in what they needed to accomplish to make the playoff. Every team, once in the playoff, will move on based entirely on what transpires on the field. The NFL is the most watched athletic league in the country. A model where every team has a path to the playoff thats within its own control is a totally acceptable model. Granted—it will require some tweaks in the college world where all conferences are not equal—but the 8 team (5 P5 champs and the top ranked G5 champ are AQ with 2 wildcards) seems to come pretty close to that model in a imperfect world.

(07-01-2018 10:34 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-16-2018 08:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-15-2018 03:04 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-09-2018 12:58 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-31-2016 06:39 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Is it? Just remember #4 won in year one. Who's to say #5 wouldn't have won. My preference is send the conference champs. That way it's all decided on the field.

Except ... just because something is decided on the field doesn't mean it isn't perverse, because the methods for picking conference champs are far from perfect, and the immediate impact would be to make OOC games worthless, which should be more important than conference games in determining playoff worthiness.

E.g., in the AAC, Houston could go 12-0, with wins over two good OOC teams like say a high ranked Louisville and Oklahoma of a couple years ago. USF could go 8-4, with losses to terrible OOC teams. But if USF went 8-0 in the conference, they'd win their division, and if they then beat Houston in the AAC title game, you'd have a 9-4 USF team in the playoffs over a 12-1 Houston team.

That would be pretty crazy.

But acceptable---because UCF would have earned their way to the CFP by defeating the better team "on paper" in front of thousand of witnesses (and millions on TV). In fine with that. In fact---thats what sports is. If we knew who would win the games---sports wouldnt be very interesting. As long as the action plays out on the field--I dont think anyone can really argue with the outcome. Putting a bunch of big cigars in a behind closed doors and letting them decide outcomes is the polar opposite of letting things play out on the field in broad daylight in front of the nations fans.

IMO, the problem with your take is that it ignores the 4 other times that USF (I actually used USF, not UCF as my example) lost. It privileges the one H2H game between USF and Houston over not just one of those, but all four, which to me is nonsensical.

I always use 1992 NFL as an example. I'm a Rams fan of 45 years, and that year we had a lousy team, 6-10. The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year, with maybe the most talented roster any team has ever had.

But guess what? we played Dallas that year, in Dallas, and beat them. Does that mean our "win over the better team on paper in front of millions of witnesses" mean we should be ahead of them in the NFL standings? Of course not. They won 13 games, we won 6.

Similarly, in my example, USF won 9 games, Houston won 12. The problem here is the AAC method of picking its division winners - only the conference games count. Which is contrary to reason, and how every other league does it (e.g., in the NFL, all games count towards picking a division winner, not just the divisional games).

Since college conference methods for picking their champs are flawed, it makes no sense to use them as the sole, ironclad method for playoff inclusion.

In my example, Houston wasn't the better team on paper. Even after losing to USF, they were clearly the better team in terms of results on the field, but USF would go to the playoffs.

Your NFL expample is a good one. Nobody ever at argues that an NFL champion isn’t legit—-regardless if they have the best regular season record or whether they had the weakest schedule. If a team makes the playoff with a lackluster record because it plays in a lackluster division—-nobody cares. Every team knew going in what they needed to accomplish to make the playoff. Every team, once in the playoff, will move on based entirely on what transpires on the field. The NFL is the most watched athletic league in the country. A model where every team has a path to the playoff thats within its own control is a totally acceptable model. Granted—it will require some tweaks in the college world where all conferences are not equal—but the 8 team (5 P5 champs and the top ranked G5 champ are AQ with 2 wildcards) seems to come pretty close to that model in a imperfect world.

He's actually stating that because Conferences only use the conference records to declare their conference champions, then there shouldn't be any automatic bids to the championship. I disagree with that wholehartedly. That just because a 9-4 South Florida team beats a 12-0 Houston team in the championship, that it shouldn't be the 9-4 South Florida team that goes (despite them winning their conference championship).

I'd actually prefer a 16-team playoff, with all 10 conference champions getting in, and 6 wildcards, seeded by a committee.

The bids would have gone to the following teams:

1. Clemson (ACC Champ)
2. Oklahoma (Big-12 Champ)
3. Georgia (SEC Champ)
4. Alabama (SEC At-Large)
5. Ohio State (Big Ten Champ)
6. Wisconsin (Big Ten At Large)
7. Auburn (SEC At-Large)
8. USC (PAC-12 Champ)
9. Penn State (Big Ten At Large)
10. Miami (ACC At Large)
11. Washington (PAC-12 At Large)
12. UCF (AAC Champ)
Boise State (MWC Champ)
FAU (C-USA Champ)
Toledo (MAC Champ)
Either App State or Troy (Sun Belt Champ) (Haven't calculated the tiebreakers).

(07-01-2018 10:01 AM)dunstvangeet Wrote:  

(07-01-2018 07:22 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  Good point about how the NFL schedules. IMO that makes analogizing to college football even sillier. If anything, the NFL has a stronger basis for counting only division games in determining the division champs, because the divisional teams play home and away, a much fairer test of who is best than in college, where you only play your conference mates one time, so someone has home field advantage. But the NFL counts all games, like all pro leagues do.

As for the SEC, as I've said before, what matters is overall SOS, not OOC SOS. Because overall SOS tells us the strength of the entire schedule.

E.g., both LSU and Louisville play Alabama this year. Conceptually, it makes zero sense to give Louisville great credit for playing what we expect to be a tough team like Alabama because it is OOC while LSU gets no credit for doing so because it's a conference game. Conference game or OOC, you're still playing Alabama.

So forget about OOC and look at overall SOS. That's what should matter. And last year, the SEC teams that made the CFP had SOS of 3, 6, and 27.

A lot of your things that "make no sense" seem to make absolutely a lot of sense when you get down to it. Ultimately for determining the conference champion, it makes sense to only do conference games. The NCAA does this on every single sport.

The professional leagues have games each year that don't count as well. The NFL runs 4 games that don't count and don't get factored into the overall result. MLB runs an entire month that does the same thing. So, by your own definition, they don't determine their division winners by including all the games.

The NFL sets up their scheduling so that teams in the same division have vastly similar schedules. Out of the 16 games, 14 of them are against the same teams.

The NBA does the same thing out of the 82 games that NBA teams play, they play every team at least 2 times, and out of the 82 games, 78 match up against the same teams if you're in the same conference.

Here's the scheduling rules for the NBA:

Divisional Opponents x 4 (16 games)
6 Conference Opponents x 4 (24 games)
4 Conference Opponents x 3 (12 games)
15 Non-Conference opponents x 2 (30 games)

Mathematically, that means that teams within the same conference must play the same schedule for all but 2 games

So, out of the 82 games, teams within the same division (which automatically go to the playoffs) play the same schedule for 78 out of the 82 games. There's only 4 games that don't match up with the same schedule.

I don't have the scheduling matrix for the MLB, so I can't confirm that they do the same thing.

So, presuming that the cross-conference opponents are going to be different for each team (there may be some overlap, though between teams), that leaves

But professional leagues have a few things that the NCAA doesn't. The first is more games. The NCAA season caps out at 12 games, (13 with conference championship and 15 max if you include the playoffs). The NFL season starts out with 20 games (4 preseason, 16 seasonal games), with 4 additional ones for playoffs.

The second is fewer teams. The professional leagues have a maximum of 32 teams (NFL has 32, MLB and NBA both have 30 teams), Division I has 345 institutions, with 130 being in the FBS.

The third is no control over their schedules, and the ability to schedule virtually the same schedule. Out of the actual sesaonal games, the NFL has 14 out of 16 games (87%) against the same opponents, if you're in the same division. In the NBA, 78 out of 82 games (95%) are against the same opponents.

In NCAA Division I Football, as few as 6 out of 12 games (50%) are against the same opponents. If you take it down to only conference games, then 6 out of 8 games (75%) are against the same opponents, or 7 out of 9 (78%).

Your argument that the conferences should go to the overall schedule to determine the conference champion, or that there should be no conference championship births, because of it is ridiculous.

This is a difficult post to respond to. First, you actually try to compare NFL pre-season games to college OOC games? NFL preseason games are billed as practice games, nothing more. OOC games in college football are real, regular season games. Are you suggesting that college football stop scheduling real OOC games and schedule four preseason games instead? What would that accomplish?

Then, you conclude by saying my claim is ridiculous, without supporting that at all. I tried to make sense of what you were saying after you tried to analogize NFL preseason games to OOC games, but it's just a gobbledygook of incoherent unrelated ramblings about the nature of NFL and college schedules. You don't get anything done there.

If anything you say there makes sense, it's that the NFL and NBA create schedules such that teams in the same division play very similar schedules, both inside the division and outside of the division too. But again, that supports the notion that it makes sense for the NFL and NBA to give division winners automatic playoff berths, but it makes no sense for college football to do the same, since in college football conference mates can have very different OOC schedules.

You're still stuck with this conundrum: It makes no sense to give auto-bids to conference winners when only conference games count in determining who wins the conference, as that throws out fully 1/3 of the results that happen on the field. On the other hand, you can't just count OOC games too, because schools play vastly different OOC schedules of their own creation.

Either way, it makes no sense to give auto-bids to conference champs.

(07-01-2018 10:34 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-16-2018 08:48 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(06-15-2018 03:04 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(06-09-2018 12:58 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(07-31-2016 06:39 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  Is it? Just remember #4 won in year one. Who's to say #5 wouldn't have won. My preference is send the conference champs. That way it's all decided on the field.

Except ... just because something is decided on the field doesn't mean it isn't perverse, because the methods for picking conference champs are far from perfect, and the immediate impact would be to make OOC games worthless, which should be more important than conference games in determining playoff worthiness.

E.g., in the AAC, Houston could go 12-0, with wins over two good OOC teams like say a high ranked Louisville and Oklahoma of a couple years ago. USF could go 8-4, with losses to terrible OOC teams. But if USF went 8-0 in the conference, they'd win their division, and if they then beat Houston in the AAC title game, you'd have a 9-4 USF team in the playoffs over a 12-1 Houston team.

That would be pretty crazy.

But acceptable---because UCF would have earned their way to the CFP by defeating the better team "on paper" in front of thousand of witnesses (and millions on TV). In fine with that. In fact---thats what sports is. If we knew who would win the games---sports wouldnt be very interesting. As long as the action plays out on the field--I dont think anyone can really argue with the outcome. Putting a bunch of big cigars in a behind closed doors and letting them decide outcomes is the polar opposite of letting things play out on the field in broad daylight in front of the nations fans.

IMO, the problem with your take is that it ignores the 4 other times that USF (I actually used USF, not UCF as my example) lost. It privileges the one H2H game between USF and Houston over not just one of those, but all four, which to me is nonsensical.

I always use 1992 NFL as an example. I'm a Rams fan of 45 years, and that year we had a lousy team, 6-10. The Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year, with maybe the most talented roster any team has ever had.

But guess what? we played Dallas that year, in Dallas, and beat them. Does that mean our "win over the better team on paper in front of millions of witnesses" mean we should be ahead of them in the NFL standings? Of course not. They won 13 games, we won 6.

Similarly, in my example, USF won 9 games, Houston won 12. The problem here is the AAC method of picking its division winners - only the conference games count. Which is contrary to reason, and how every other league does it (e.g., in the NFL, all games count towards picking a division winner, not just the divisional games).

Since college conference methods for picking their champs are flawed, it makes no sense to use them as the sole, ironclad method for playoff inclusion.

In my example, Houston wasn't the better team on paper. Even after losing to USF, they were clearly the better team in terms of results on the field, but USF would go to the playoffs.

Your NFL expample is a good one. Nobody ever at argues that an NFL champion isn’t legit—-regardless if they have the best regular season record or whether they had the weakest schedule. If a team makes the playoff with a lackluster record because it plays in a lackluster division—-nobody cares. Every team knew going in what they needed to accomplish to make the playoff. Every team, once in the playoff, will move on based entirely on what transpires on the field. The NFL is the most watched athletic league in the country. A model where every team has a path to the playoff thats within its own control is a totally acceptable model. Granted—it will require some tweaks in the college world where all conferences are not equal—but the 8 team (5 P5 champs and the top ranked G5 champ are AQ with 2 wildcards) seems to come pretty close to that model in a imperfect world.

I agree as far as you take this, but I don't think you take it quite far enough. Yes, with the NFL and the other pro leagues - whoever wins the title is legit, well except when there's something like Spygate or whatever. But even if a 10-6 team that played a weak schedule beats a 14-2 team that played a tough schedule, nobody questions that the 10-6 team is the rightful champ.

But ... first, as for acceptance, the current model pretty much works, as did the BCS. Over the 20 years of the BCS/CFP, how many true controversies, where the official champ isn't regarded as 'legit' by a significant number of fans, have there been? I can only think of one - LSU vs USC in 2003, the "split championship". That's it. So if the goal is to produce a champ that is basically regarded as such by 99%+ of the college football community, these BCS/CFP systems get the job done.

Second, while I agree your model of all P5 champs in plus the top-rated G5 champ and two WCs would be acceptable to the P5 and public, it seems to me it doesn't address the fundamental problem that seems to animate your concern (and those of other G5 fans as well): G5 teams are still not given an NFL-like "guaranteed path" to the playoffs. An AAC team or MWC team or whatever could go undefeated and still not make the playoffs if a committee ranks another G5 higher and also puts them outside the wild-cards.

If I'm a P5 fan, I'm down with your plan but from a G5 perspective it's just the same wine in a new bottle - no path to the title.

In hoops, all conference champs make the tournament. But, that's only because the event is large enough to include enough "wild cards" to ameliorate the concern that much better Power conference non-champs are being left out in favor of much weaker champs from smaller conferences. That concern is what caused the abandonment of the champs-only tournament in 1975. Heck, i am pretty certain that this concern is strong enough that if the NCAA were forced to have a hoops tournament with all conference champs included but only conference champs included, or an event with everyone being "at large", with conference champs not being guaranteed a tourney spot (as in the CFP) the "at large" model would be the one adopted.

Assuming the hoops ratio of champs to non-champs is regarded as acceptable to the football community as well, given that there are 10 FBS conferences, there would need to be about 14 "wild cards" in a football playoff, or a 24-team playoff, similar to the size of the FCS event, for the football community to be happy with an event that guarantees every FBS team a "win on the field" path to the title via all champs being included.