NCAA FOOTBALL 2024 MEGA THREAD - WELCOME TO THE PLAYOFF ERA

No.

What if you have a year where two teams in a G5 conf are legitimately solid?

That's the problem. The committee said SMU was a top 10 team last week. Whether or not they are is up to you to decide, but that's what they said. If that's the case going into CCG week, why would SMU want to play it's CCG if the risk/reward is you may get a bye with a win, but will 100% be out with a loss?

Meanwhile, someone like BAMA is just chilling and sliding in?

If you want to argue BAMA is the better team, that's fine, but then they should've been ranked higher (or adjacent) going into CCG weekend, so a loss by SMU can easily explain why they're out and BAMA is in.

Reseeding fixes this without an respect to the auto-bids.

Solid argument. Thanks

You asked a yes-or-no question.

It's a feature not a bug.

Well, see, there might be room for that 2nd good g5 if they stopped giving the CCG losers a do-over for reasons that escape me. As much joy as it would bring me to see Penn State and Texas sitting this one out, I’d gladly settle for just making CCGs normal-game-meaningful instead of this weird safe-space-unless-you-really-get-your-ass-kicked construct. Importantly, this isn’t even something that’s against the rules as none of this is in the rules so much as made up on the spot.

Like in this case the loss actually would have easily explained why SMU was out and Bama in. SMU was 8th with an iffy SoS and played their toughest opponent, 17th, to a standstill-level close loss on a neutral. Last week 17th lost to 14th at home, so you have a pretty good idea 17th is about where that opponent belongs. This wouldn’t normally mean SMU drops only to tenth (probably more like 12-15th) so why should it now since, “what we thought last week” is literally what they’re supposed to overcome every other week?

Based on that game SMU went from SoS 75 to 15. Seems like a perfect case of something to consider beyond “not bad enough”.

And, c’mon, “we’ll just not participate” is about the most easily ignored blowhard-coach threat imaginable and I don’t understand why anyone is scared of that. If you want to add incentives like round 2 home games, such that no one in their right mind would ever consider “opting out” of a CCG, knock yourself out but seems entirely unnecessary since a little casual whining is all we’ve actually seen or ever will see.

The fact CCG losers play an extra game over teams that avoid their CCG escapes you? Why do you believe teams that are poor enough to avoid being in the top 2 in their conference should be rewarded for it as they can't lose that weekend?

This year it's super close at the top, but by a thin margin Oregon, Texas and Ohio State are the 3 best teams, and they're all on the same side of the bracket

Nobody would ever "tank" to avoid the CCG - that would involve losing, and losing a game is always worse than *maybe* losing a game

But, teams might be really unhappy about having to play the CCG where they're solidly in but are very much in danger with a loss (i.e. SMU this year, or hypothetically if Indiana had won the tiebreak with PSU, they might've gotten left out if they had lost to Oregon by 30)

Conference championship games barely make any sense anymore anyway though, with 18 team mega conferences with wildly unbalanced schedules

Based on the gigantic benefit of the doubt that the committee gave Boise, it seems totally plausible that two G5s would get in if they're good enough.

If Tulane beat Oklahoma and Kansas State and Memphis (who beat FSU) and Army and finished 13-0 they would've finished in the top 5.

And Boise finished ranked higher than ASU and Clemson

The main reason I think it's tough is because NIL ends up actually being fine for the second tier of teams (the Indiana, Michigan State and NC States of the world) - they lose their superstars to the UGA/OSU/Alabamas of the world, but they pick up the 4* and 5* players who are sitting on the bench for UGA/OSU/Alabama, and then they poach a lot of talent from the G5. But the G5 gets ransacked.

I think the difference between top-10 teams and the middle of the pack P4 teams has thus far ended up being not as severe as people feared, but the gap between middle of the pack P4 teams and the G5 increased a lot

Q1: That fact doesn’t escape me. The loss shouldn’t count escapes me. Texas let a backup quarterback on the only top 25 team they’ve played all year come from behind to beat them for a second time. This doesn’t affect their standing or cakewalk to the semis let alone rule them out and leaves a good chance UGA has to beat them a third time (+360 to title so ~+180 to final).

This makes sense? Texas specifically?

Q2: Because it’s just part of the playoffs and every team (except one) has to lose anyway, so why not make the game with a tangible reward on the line matter? The giant conferences mean teams will have wildly different SoS so the “top two” is likely a lucky draw rather than a true rank, like Texas’ “extra game” amounts to Mississippi State. Big deal. That extra team with the CCG week off is just going to be a very good one that had a hard schedule. Perfectly deserving of a chance, and they’d be having to win a road game against 8+ instead of hosting 9- so likely a 2 touchdown kneecapping which is more than enough to offset the skipped game and it’d still be hugely +EV to make the CCG.

You get a larger field, you get better CCGs because it’s do-or-die, you don’t have the weird specter of half the first round hosted by teams that lost their last game, and you’ve finally solved the committee’s sort by losses problem…I’m only seeing wins here!

Don't think I'd change much at all from the current system.

I'd rank strength of record a bit more and head to head a bit less than the committee does.

So Georgia flies through the regular season, crushing everyone by 30-40 points, trips up and loses to Texas in the conference championship by a last second field goal and some fluke pick 6's, and now Georgia sits at home during the playoff and a 3 loss Alabama who lost to Georgia in the regular season by 40 now gets in?

Yeah, I'm totally missing Holliday's super simple proposal here. Are you suggesting all CCG's are treated as elimination games or just the G5 games? Both plans are dumb, but the former would be all-world stupid.

This year Penn State and Texas get left out in favor of Bama and Miami? Ok then.

If you just mean the G5 games, then again, why would a team take the chance. Yeah, a bye is cool, but that isn't worth the risk if the week leading up to it you ranked me as in the top 12. And in the rare year where Boise St and UNLV somehow have top 10 cases (maybe each scheduled tOSU and BAMA apiece early and beat them or something), now they have to play and one is left out?

Maybe, there could just be some sort of "ranking" that attempts to establish the top XX teams, then they can take CCGs into account, but with the understanding that it's an extra game that they already had to do well to access.

The system they have is basically fine, just give the top 5 CCG winners bids but not byes, seed 1-12 by strength alone, and re-seed after Rd.1. Ez game

lol at thinking +180 is half of +360. cmon man

Yeah you got it, same as if they skull-****ed Texas by 80 then lost their first playoff game in some flukish way. It's just a matter of recognizing it as a playoff round instead of some ephemeral pageant. Georgia got to go to the CCG. They had at least 50% equity to make it to the 2nd round with a slight advantage for extra rest. Bama would squeeze in to play a road game with about 25% equity to make it to the 2nd round. They're not trading places--the CCG is a much better deal, which UGA already deservedly got but lost.

So they go home and someone else gets a chance instead of the committee tossing them an abomination do-over home game as a huge favorite. Definitely my preference between the two, though again I'd settle for just normal game stakes like zoiks they drop down like they lost any other game.

But instead of that hypothetical, we have the *actual* of Texas being a good team but not crushing everyone by 30-40 points and more choking away a game Georgia Tech would have run away with instead of losing because of fluke pick 6's. Do you not think it odd that doesn't count at all?

Gonna' plead cold on this one, but still; easy path.

Forget the bye--you're talking about casting aside a 50% chance of going straight to round 2 in favor of playing an away game as a big dog to get to round 2. It would be a colossal blunder akin to starting a land war in Asia. Only in America would we think that 50% chance should also come with a second chance when there are other teams they were practically tied with right there.

As for the rest, yes; consider some of the biggest games of the season instead of not considering them just because. I like where you're going with this.

I’m confused by your argument. Almost no good team would ever take that risk. Take Texas for example. Your hypothetical would be objectively worse for them than just not playing the championship game and taking the 5 or 6 seed.

Sure, I guess if you are someone like Boise and are in the championship game then you’d take the risk in order to try and get a bye. But teams in the sec and big ten certainly would not. And even teams like Boise may not want to take the risk bc being in the playoffs is such good exposure (but if they are looking at championship odds then they obviously should take it).

It does not have to be some fictional sitting out of the CCG. A coach could play it slow, or hold out his starting qb on any pretense; why take a chance?

I mean this is basically how the basketball tourney does it (without the byes). Maybe this is how it will change for next year.

So this year the B1G is exactly the same except instead of OSU/PSU having played in the regular season, PSU played some other bad team and won.

So at the end of the year it's:

12-0 ORE
12-0 PSU
10-2 OSU
11-1 IU

ORE and PSU are set to play in the B1G CCG where one will be eliminated and IU OSU get a free pass to the CFP and all it's extra exposure.

I...don't think that's a good idea.

Belichick to UNC

Gratz heels?

I’m hoping this isn’t a sorry heels, but we might look back at it that way in a few years.

We’ll see how it goes.