NCAA FOOTBALL 2024 MEGA THREAD - WELCOME TO THE PLAYOFF ERA

Don’t forget to add a caveat about them playing each other.

UGA being ranked this low is bad for football.

What is even the point of scheduling Clemson anymore? Just schedule Furman MTSU and Wake Forest, then duck 5 of the top 6 teams in your conference, lose a home game to a bad team, and go to the playoffs anyway

The UGA/Clemson game is absolutely killing Clemson's ranking, but it isn't helping UGA at all

ND loss is hurting ATM, but it's helping ND, so at least that one feels balanced

You know the SEC powers are looking at these rankings and are going to try to make sure the schedules going forward will have the best teams in the SEC avoiding each other so they can end up like the B1G is this year and will avoid going to 9 game conference schedule.

Miami is currently 9th. How high will they be if they win out?

I doubt Bama jumps them by beating Mercer, OU and Auburn
Ole Miss won't jump them by beating UF and MSU
Tennessee will likely fall behind this weekend by losing to UGA
UGA might jump them beating Tenn and GT

BYU is 74% to lose at some point and will likely fall behind
Indiana likely falls behind when they lose to OSU (or OSU falls behind if they lose to IU at home)
Out of Texas, ND and PSU, odds are one of them loses another game

So if they win out they probably jump 4 teams and maybe get jumped by 1, so that has them at 5th or 6th

Say the rankings going into champ week are:

1 12-0 Oregon
2 11-1 OSU
3 11-1 Texas
4 11-1 Penn State
5 11-1 Miami
6 10-2 UGA
7 10-2 Alabama
8 11-1 BYU
9 11-1 Indiana
10 10-2 Ole Miss
11 10-2 Tennessee
12 11-1 SMU
13 11-1 Boise
14 10-2 Colorado
15 10-2 Notre Dame

Texas beats Alabama, Colorado beats BYU and SMU beats Miami
I think 11-2 Miami probably stays in? BYU probably drops out and Tennessee goes in?

Too bad they don't play Kennesaw State, I would like to see them beat ALL of the Owls.

Whoof. Knew it was mostly bottom half teams but didn’t realize the schedule was this weak.

Our bad teams aren’t bad enough for that to work and I mean that seriously; SP+ has 6 teams ranked below Vanderbilt compared to just Mississippi State (who would be a touchdown favorite over Purdue!). 11 of the 14 worst (which obviously means 11 of the 15 worst) are big10. It’s a decided schematic advantage! Are Wazzu and Oregon State still available?

Some of my favorite games are the EOY SEC-ACC rivalries. I suspect I should enjoy them while they last, since they’re basically now set up as reverse freerolls for UGA, Clemson, and the Floridas. Nostalgia might hold up until one of them actually misses the playoff because of it.

When I’ve clutched my pearls about diminishing the regular season, this kind of race to the bottom is what I meant. I couldn’t even fault UGA or UF after these schedules.

BTW; I give Texas a pass on strength of schedule complaints just for having the balls to schedule Michigan, regardless of them happening to have a crash of a post-champ season. Recognize the effort of trying to set up a marquee game!

[optimistic] The committee has generally gotten things right at the end despite consistently stupefying rankings leading up to it. The last few years I’ve tried to avoid their word vomit explanations, and have been happier for it. [/optimistic]

BTW,

I hope you're right. I'll snap call at any universe where Ohio State doesn't win it all. Hate is all I have left in my heart this year.

If Georgia finishes 9-3 and doesn't get in after facing one of the toughest schedules in the nation then the system is broken (which it IS to some degree cuz humans/money, just a matter of how badly). I would've said the same thing about an 8-4 Florida team but nobody cares at that point. Either way, the system will largely fix itself as the playoffs are expanded.

Yeah, like Notre Dame's schedule is absolute garbage, but I don't fault them for it. FSU was supposed to be a top-10 team, and instead you get the worst FSU team ever. USC was supposed to be good, instead they're about to miss a bowl game

Purdue's got the worst Purdue squad of all time (or close), Stanford is abysmal.

ATM, Louisville, GT, UVA are all about what was promised

Army and Navy are giving them a small boost relative to expectations, but nobody really thinks they're actually that good

huh?

well that's gunna put a dent into the efficiency of southern rodent poisoning

South Carolina above LSU is surprising. They are right next to each other in the rankings and LSU won at South Carolina.

Probably doesn't matter for either.

If we have a system where a 9-3 Georgia team--with one of the toughest schedules in the nation--doesn't get in, the easiest fix is too expand the playoffs until that doesn't happen again. Well because of money pressures they'll be expanding the playoffs over time anyway.

After watching them play each other I would say that's justice.

Isn't this proof of OMG SEC.

Every metric I have seen puts NDs SOS in about the 50-60s. With 134 teams I would say our schedule is about average. It looked a bit better recently with UL & GTech beating Clemson and Miami.

So, looking at the incoming 10-2 SEC logjam, you have two independent teams (OM and Bama) and two matchups between 1L and 2L teams (UT/ATM and UGA/Tenn)

22% chance Ole Miss loses again (80% @ UF, 98% vs MSU)

23% chance Bama loses (80% @ OU, 96% vs Auburn)

Then in the ATM/Texas pair the distribution looks like this:
54% Texas 1L ATM 3+
23% Texas 2L, ATM 3+ (includes both Texas loses to UK or Ark then beats ATM, or Texas loses to ATM but ATM loses to Auburn)
17% Texas 2L, ATM 2L
4% ATM 2L Texas 3+L
2% both 3+L

So that's a 81% chance of 1 team emerging, a 17% chance of both emerging, and a 2% chance of neither emerging

In the Tenn/UGA pair:
60% both have 2 losses
20% Tenn 1L, UGA 3+
13% UGA 2L, Tenn 3+
6% Tenn 2L, UGA 3+
0% both 3+

So there's a 60% chance of both having 2 (UGA > Tenn, Tenn > Vandy, UGA > GT)
And a 40% chance of only 1 having 1-2 losses (everything else)

so we're looking at:

88% 1, 12% 0
87% 1, 13% 0
81% 1, 17% 2, 2% 0
60% 2, 40% 1

So to the question "how many 1 or 2 loss SEC teams will there be at the end of the regular season" we have the following distribution:

2 - 1%
3 - 9%
4 - 39%
5 - 44%
6 - 8%

so, as you would intuitively guess, the most common scenarios are 4 or 5, with an outside chance at 3 or 6

Note, Bama and/or UGA could still get in at 9-3, and then this also doesn't include any of the paths where LSU wins the SEC and steals an extra bid (~3%)

Also, now that the lines have moved, I can tell you guys what the awful DK (and betrivers) lines were:

Bama +350 to make the SECCG and +650 to win it and UGA +1400 to win SEC

Bama is more like 28% to win and UGA is more like 10% to win

UGA has an extremely good shot under any of these circumstances after winning out (73%):
Bama & LSU lose
Auburn > ATM, ATM > Texas, LSU or Bama lose
Texas loses to UK or Ark, ATM loses, LSU loses

If Bama wins out, they win an incredible percentage of the big, multi-way 10-2 tiebreakers. When it's super multiway there is almost no opponent that *all* the teams involved played, so h2h and mutuals are irrelevant and it goes to opponent win percentage, where Bama likely wins

The cause of and solution to all CFB's problems!

can’t remember the last time I saw a team go for it when they should be kicking

UNT is going full YOLO mode

Cig extendeds with Indiana. Dude even wins bye weeks

so cool seeing the flatirons on gameday

pretty solid hike, and the view from up there is amazing

lol Shedeur

what a shitty throw

Ball falls right into Travis Hunter's hands luckily, he returns it 21 yards. Time to Heisman pose again. 15-yard penalty.

I really hate this team.