NCAA FOOTBALL 2024 MEGA THREAD - WELCOME TO THE PLAYOFF ERA

Remember back before the SECCG how much talk there was about leaving UGA out of the playoffs?

Somebody should have been listening--even if it meant rigging the SECCG.

one in sixty times it's linquistically impossible to spell second without a second hand

Notre Dame beat Indiana by 10 and then all the SEC homers started talking about how IU didn't belong in the playoff and how an Alabama team that lost to Michigan's 3rd string or a South Carolina team that lost to Illinois should've been in instead.

Notre Dame beats Georgia by 13 (and Tennessee gets nuked) and all of a sudden it's real quiet in here

I'm sure we will have to suffer through the same nonsense next year again

Funny you mention that, the sec's only hope left is a Big 12 team.

You guys need to get rid bobo the clown

With NIL, the transfer portal, and Lord Saban retired, CFB has a dose of parity not enjoyed for a long time.

Ole Miss gonna go with the big man direct snap early and often.

LOL Miss

Yep. Like Klatt said, we really are in the golden age of college football. This epic upcoming matchup of ND vs PSU is more proof of that. The previous system was practically designed to make schools like ND, PSU & Michigan irrelevant. With only 4 teams getting in, and paying players being illegal, most of the championship equity went to the most blatant cheaters (Bama, Ohio State, Georgia). Teams like ND, PSU and Michigan were never supposed to have shot. The system was rigged against them. Now with paying being legal, and the transfer portal precluding all teams from having reliable depth, spreading out even more talent, the summit of college football has never been flatter. 10-15 teams legit have a chance now. When ND lines up to play PSU next week, the winner will have probably around 30% natty equity which is HUGE!!! The game is way better now. When two blue blood programs like ND and PSU face off next week all of college football will benefit. I can't ****ing wait.

I did my job guys. All I can do is give you the locks. It's your job to bet the opposite and get rich.

Yep, and with the 12 team playoff the "play in the playoff" recruiting pitch that Ohio State, Clemson, Bama had is no longer in play and talent should be more evenly distributed.

So stupid that the Pac-12 and Big 10 were always against playoff expansion when it would have helped their teams the most.

Incredible work ILP [emoji23]

Also I just realized that no team that earned a bye won this week. All CCG winners are out. And the Final Four all hosted opening round games. Probably too small of a data set for that to tell us anything, but interesting nevertheless.

Going to object to including Georgia in this list. They settled for second tier for decades because they believed in "the spirit of the rules", academics, and giving drug testers wide berth to pick their (day after spring break) moments. You don't get superstars busted for hawking jerseys on ebay because you're shelling out the big bucks.

Cut to 4:40 and you have "Marcus Freeman draws a critical offsides penalty":

I actually agree with you that a distinction needs to be made between Richt and Smart administration.

Dart making bank by not opting out of the Gator Bowl.

Shut the hell up about the sec

I really think Michigan can be included with the haves, and not the have nots as you suggest above

Google biggest cheaters in college football... and no, I am not saying it rhetorically.. actually google it and you get, as the first result.....
Some college football teams that have been involved in cheating scandals include:

University of Michigan: The NCAA alleged that the football team was involved in sign-stealing, with former head coach Jim Harbaugh, former assistant coach Chris Partridge, and Denard Robinson among those accused.

FWIW Steratore said "It meets all the criteria for Targeting (rule 9-1-4)."

I'm not saying Steratore is 100% right and the field crew is 100% wrong, but for an experienced ref who knows the rules to come out and say it met all the criteria, to me illustrates the ambiguity of the rule and the broad interpretative opportunity of the field crew.

IMO it was not the classic targeting for which the rule was expressly trying to penalize, but it met the spirit of the rule if not the verbiage as well.

Fake scandals like stretchgate, burgergate, and signgate do not move the needle for me. And I don't think they move the needle for anyone who knows ball. The cheating that mattered, the cheating that actually confers a huge advantage on the field was stacking rosters with 5/4 star players by illegally paying players. That's how Ohio State dominated the Big Ten for most of the 21st century. That's how Bama became Bama and that's how Smart took Georgia to the stratosphere of college football. In that regard I know Michigan is one of the cleanest programs in the game. Michigan stubbornly not illegally paying players is precisely why we ended up with arguably the worst QB room in college football after winning a National championship. It's also why our recruiting was meh even tho we went on one of the best runs (40-3) in team history.

0-8?

Perhaps not. The only thing that could have made it more perfect is if GTech wins one of 7 overtimes and then the SEC champion and likely still #2 is a 4 loss team.

We sense that. But any team that has a bad game is suddenly a fraud. NIU > ND > UGA etc. The final four are frauds.

The opening line for Penn State vs. Notre Dame is Notre Dame -1.5. For Texas vs. Ohio State, the opening line is Ohio State -6

It’s small, but I wonder how much difference the extra 48 hours of rest Penn State got will make. ND also endured a much more physical game than PSU did.

this is the crux of the matter. the play wasn't a clear cut targeting. if it were, it would've been called targeting in real-time after the review

i would've been fine w the call going the other way. in the moment, i was taking exception to the targetingstans who were shouting from the mountaintop that this was the biggest injustice in cfb this season. newsflash: it wasn't

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also, LOL at the anti-SEC circle jerk over the past several hrs itt

inb4 next yr's CFP title game is SEC vs SEC

Historically NFL MNF teams playing next week get hit with about a 2-3% win equity loss, or a point or so in point spread.

Two days? Maybe 4%?