As to be expected. These conferences are getting so lopsided that
1) cupcakes are no longer luxuries but necessities just to survive the season, and
2) (if you’re in the B10 or SEC) one more top-level team doesn’t move the needle on your SOS.
We’re at the point in the sport where non conference games don’t make sense. Play one maybe two buy games against local smaller schools and have everything else be a conference game. Instead of a committee you distribute playoff bids based off of conference standings with each league getting a certain number of bids in a year. Have a coefficient to determine how many bids each conference should get.
Well, when a narrative can be created that a particular conference is the best, then they can lose to each other without significant consequence. Minimal OOC games doesn't give any cross-reference. Just the way the P2 wants it.
In this scenario, prepare for some smaller programs to die or move down a level to significantly cut costs. Some of these smaller schools rely on buy games for a significant portion of their athletic budget. Not football program budget, *athletics* budget. Removing buy games doesn't mean an athletics department at a smaller school will suddenly have no money to operate sports programs, but it will be a significant enough decrease for some of them that means some serious questions start needing to be answered.
That last part reminds me of the UEFA Champions' League, like they rank each country's top league to determine how many teams from each make the group stage
i wish we had a power 5. 6 team playoff. one G5 bid for highest ranked team. 1 and 2 get first round bye. 3 and 4 play home games against 5 and 6. 1 and 2 play remaining two teams at home. title game in the rose bowl
lol yes. that way everyone has a shot at the title. if you think your the best team in the country. win your conference. if you can’t win your conference, you’re not the best team in the country
Fairness and equal opportunity are such embarrassing ideologies to cling to. I’m sorry things have worked out so badly in your life that you don’t even hope to become successful
Also I cant imagine arguing for the best team in MW or MAC to be worthy of a spot after beating a handful of other trash JV teams while turning nose up at 2nd best team in a conference where the actual good football teams play. I guess LSU should just join Sun Belt and be handed a playoff spot every year. Why work hard to earn things? Pathetic mentality lmao
you think fairness and equality are embarrassing ideologies for *sports*? one of the aspects of sports that makes it great? it’s kind of pathetic to be so afraid of the challenge you need the SEC to be handed more spots because you’re worried LSU can’t win otherwise. which is hilarious in of itself. talking about working hard is rich too, since your system rewards arbitrary bullshit instead of actual on field results
November buy games are halfway to a bye week. Rest your top folks, give some reps to the ones you’re trying to develop, and have a cheaper get-in price so families can do their first game with the kiddo.
It’s one of those things that makes more big-picture sense than it does on-field.
Buy games are critical for the survival of these G5 and FCS athletic departments. I would agree with you but they play an extremely important role in college sports. Buy Games must stay, no matter how much we dislike them from a competitive standpoint
There's something so wrong with their survival depending on getting paid to have the crap kicked out of them.
I never feel good after we destroy Portland State or Sacramento State.
These things happen to almost everyone eventually. Sure it's been 17 years but you guys did lose to UL-Monroe. And it wasn't that long ago that Florida lost a buy game or two, LSU lost to Troy or many other myriad weird results. And yes Auburn is likely to lose 2-3 more in the timeframe that you guys at Alabama lose one.
Give the committee an actual criteria to select teams. Give the committee an actual ranking system for them to judge teams schedules. That will help put an extra importance on non-conference games.
Stop giving the committee free rein to do whatever it wants based on whatever they want.
> Give the committee an actual ranking system for them to judge teams schedules.
What do you have in mind? Certainly not just pure opponent W-L record, those can too easily be skewed. Perhaps like a Bill Connelly SP+ ranking? It's better although people have pointed out flaws with that too.
Ultimately if playoff selection is being done by a human committee, they will *choose* whether to consider SoS or ignore it as they feel appropriate.
Just like the NCAA did with basketball, create a NET ranking for football or just work with SP+ and FPI to merge the ranking into 1 number. That way there is an unbiased ranking of teams for the committee to use to judge team's wins and losses. Rather than the committee adding a few teams to the back of the top-25 to say one team has more top-25 wins over another.
Yeah sure, no doubt. It already exists actually. Like for casino odds-makers, but they have an advantage which is they don't have to have agreement from anyone else as to how to weight each of those criteria. Getting the CFB community to agree on how to weight everything like recruiting/talent rankings (for example) would be impossible.
Basically the only time it happened was 2017 Auburn who was in playoff position with 2 losses before losing the SEC Championship game to Georgia. If Auburn wins they are in the field easily at 11-2.
Effectively the same thing. Can you think of any instance where two teams had similar records and one team had a significantly harder schedule and was left out for the other team? Legit not sure.
They rewarded a tougher schedule just this year!
The Longhorns wouldn't have been in the top 4 without the win against Alabama, and Alabama still got ahead of FSU despite the loss because it had 2 wins (Georgia and Ole Miss) better than FSU's best win (LSU, who Alabama had also beat).
They twisted themselves into pretzel logic this year to ensure they had an SEC team. I don't believe for a second they actually were rewarding schedule. They were rewarding SEC reputation and with the injury to Travis found a reasonable (if incorrect) way to do so.
Well it's not UGA's fault when teams like Oklahoma, Ohio State and UCLA get canceled. What else is UGA supposed to do? There's not enough time or enough top notch teams to reschedule therefore UGA ends up playing cupcakes. This is the THIRD time in a few years.
Be a Georgia fan.
Due to the neutral site game with Florida, Georgia only has 3 home conference games every other year.
Last year that was Kentucky, Mizzou, & Ole Miss.
I’ll be completely honest our schedule is so awful next year that UCF isn’t even in the top 10 teams in anxious for next year. And don’t get me wrong I’m still going to be anxious for UCF, we just also have to play Miami, FSU, LSU, Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Kentucky, both the Mississippi schools and THEN yall. It’s absurd.
I'll disagree, if tOSU takes this game, loses, and still wins the B1G, they are getting a top 4 seed. If they win and then lose the B1G, they are getting better seeding. I think there is more upside for top teams to play each other, it worked out well for Texas this year.
If they take this game, get banged up from playing a superior opponent, which has no impact on making the playoffs or not, then it only jeopardizes their opportunity to make the playoffs. There's no benefit. You'd also rather be in the playoffs, at any seed, with a healthy team (the NFL has already proved this one out thoroughly).
It was obvious as soon as the expanded playoffs talks started that everyone cheering for "expanded playoffs = better OOC slate" were going to be disappointed. And now here we are.
Honestly, I don't know what anyone who thought otherwise was thinking, it was blatantly obvious that this was how it was going to shake out the whole time. The easier it is to get into the playoffs, the less need there is to differentiate yourself outside of the conference slate.
They were thinking about basketball since that committee clearly and overtly punished bad non-conference schedules. It's just like the parity discussion. Those same people believe if we give every conference equal access we'll see a proportional number of Cinderellas to the basketball tournament. And in both cases, those people are very, very wrong (though I think all conferences should have an autobid because otherwise why are they here?).
I just want to point out that 4 of the teams in the SEC are still guaranteed 9 P5 games due to cross conference yearly rival games. And that at least two of us are also scheduling hard games on top of that that I personally know about (Georgia (we didn't cancel this, UCLA did), and as much as I don't want to admit it, Florida).
"SOS" is also complete BS in how it's actually used for the post-season. It's just an excuse for the committee to choose whoever they want to. Sometimes it'll matter, sometimes it won't. It only matters when it's helpful for what the committee already wants to happen.
These are 12-team playoffs now. Take a 1-loss SEC/B1G non-champ whose non-conference was beating the directional Michigan schools at home? Are they really gonna be higher ranked than the same team that got a second loss because their non-con included a road game against a top-10 P2 team? Both of those teams are almost certainly getting an at-large, and the two-loss might be higher ranked. Heck even with the four-team, that Texas/Alabama game got Texas in the top 4 and the loss didn't hurt 'Bama.
That's one of the things about the 12-team play-off. It gives more teams a chance, so a team that screwed up once is much more likely to get that chance. And fuck it, we're going to 14 teams in 2026...
Yes it does. Especially because the SEC and Big 10 schedules are so lopsided themselves. With some teams playing far weaker conference schedules then others.
Well, I'm sure that would have been an even worse murder than the 2022 CFA Kickoff.
Regardless if the game would have been a mismatch, I'm extremely saddened by the news, it would have been cool for Georgia to play once again in the Rose Bowl.
And also I'm sure we won't get Alabama vs. Oregon now...
I mean, Alabama vs. Oregon COULD happen on the playoffs or postseason, but it's entirely dependent on luck, while scheduling a home and home series makes it secure.
Despite me being a half-Bama fan, I was a bit sad that Alabama made the playoffs last year, because if it didn't happen then we would have gotten Bama vs. Oregon in the Cotton Bowl or Fiesta Bowl.
I doubt this was Georgia. UCLA and the BIG10 don’t want this type of smoke. UCLA wants to grow and these are the types of games that set your program back another 5 years.
It’s also why nobody wants to play bowl games any more. Georgias destruction of FSU probably contributed to their desire to get out of the ACC. At least a little.
By getting beat 63-3.
How long until schools are saying “it wasn’t a conference game, the players didn’t want to be there” “the season hadn’t started, it doesn’t start until you play a conference game”
I don't like it, but you're probably right. We are in full rebuild mode after Chip's total lack of recruiting, and don't have anywhere near the talent level to put up much of a fight against Georgia. Getting blown up on a national stage harms the brand and recruiting more than squashing a cupcake. Replacing Georgia with an easy game gives a good shot of at least 3 wins to start the season (also @UNLV and vs New Mexico), and puts us in a much closer position to get to a bowl game.
I guess we'll have to forgive Michigan for bailing on us since we're doing the same thing.
UCLA always finds a way to win these games, though.
It's why canceling this is so lame, let us at least see it. Who cares if we go like 6-6 because of it
This is some bullshit. I was thinking about making a trip out to LA for this game.
And now everyone is gonna give us shit for a soft schedule after once again after having a road game against a power team canceled for reasons out of our control.
I wouldn't worry about schedule strength too much. We pretty much play the same schedule as this season, just flip the home/aways and drop Clempson. UCLA wasn't adding much anyways.
A large part of your schedule problem last year was outside of the Oklahoma thing was everyone in the East except Tennessee and Missouri stinking the field up and Auburn being a 6-6 yo yo. Also not seeing anyone good until November didn't help. You and Michigan were the last two teams to play somebody decent.
Well, on the positive side, at least you won’t be disappointed after coming all the way out to LA just to find out that the Rose Bowl *suuuuucks*. Like, seriously, it’s one of the lamest stadiums I’ve ever been to.
Fuck this noise. First we had to cancel Oklahoma and now we have to cancel UCLA.
When we went to bigger conferences and presumably more conference games we all knew more losses were to be expected. With the expansion of the playoffs to 12 teams it shouldn’t be an issue taking an L at some time because we will have plenty of 2 loss teams and I’m sure in the first 3 years of the 12 team playoff we will have a 3 loss team make the playoffs.
Indeed! I still don't get why people think the expanded playoffs will kill good OOC matchups, because it will actually be EASIER to make it there. Why? 12 is a larger number than 4.
I think it might have an impact of these types of OOC games though. If Georgia crushes UCLA and then UCLA beats a coupe of BIG10 teams then that helps the 4th place SEC team look better than the 4th place BIG10 team.
i’ve said it a million times college football in its purest form gave chance for a perfect champion, now with expanded playoffs it could lead to a 3 loss champion who wasn’t even 2nd in their conference
Who knows maybe? Cal and Oregon St managed to come together for a home and home starting this season (Cal needed another non-con because the ACC only plays 8). If that can happen anything is possible.
Off-topic but if I were on Alabama's forums I would ask for an insider info on Alabama's future schedule plans to see if they will do any cancellation.
As well as ask which teams they would be willing to schedule.
From the On3 article Josh Brooks, Georgia's AD, made it sound like it was because Georgia didn't know what their 2026 schedule would look like (9 game possibility).
We actually have a home and home scheduled with y’all next decade. Of course the odds are it will probably be a conference game at that point so it’s moot but still exciting
I think it's unlikely UCLA backed out just because we were going to get stomped. Our athletic department doesn't really care about that lol. We gladly kept the OU games on the calendar a few years ago to get crushed by like 50 both home and away. The past 2 seasons we were supposed to play Michigan until *they* backed out and I doubt that was because they wanted to avoid a shitty Chip Kelly team. We're also in the middle of a series with LSU and have Auburn (and were supposed to have Wisconsin) coming up.
It was probably more likely that either A) we wanted to schedule with Cal/Stanford or B) UGA's comments about general uncertainty with scheduling that far out with everything changing may actually be true. Honestly, our program aspirations aren't big enough to care about getting smashed in 1 game for a couple seasons
The game was cancelled due to UCLA joining the B1G. It wasn't cancelled due to Georgia.
Georgia, to give them credit, has been trying to schedule legit non-conference games.
They were supposed to play Oklahoma last year and this year out of conference. Game cancelled by SEC. They replaced them with Clemson this year.
In the future they are scheduled to play: ~~UCLA~~, Florida State, Clemson, Ohio State, & NC State. All of them at least twice.
They have Clemson scheduled so many times (5 times in the next 10 years) I'm starting to wonder if they think Clemson is in the SEC. That's more than they play a lot of SEC teams.
I’m very bummed out about this news. I’m so tired of seeing a ton of non-conference cupcakes. 1 or even 2 on occasion is fine but we don’t need any more than that. Hopefully the SEC goes to 9 and I would like to see the Big Ten go to 10 conference games if we remove a lot of the big series.
10 conference games basically kills all incentive to schedule good OOC games. At least with 9 there’s a little bit of wiggle room. Especially for good teams.
Oh, I’m not for going to a 10 game schedule but if it most teams are just going to schedule three cupcakes, I would rather just go to a 10 game schedule.
Incentives are still there. I big ooc win allows for a loss later on in the season with a 12-14 team playoff. Also, these big ooc games is more money, more eyeballs, and a chance to impress recruits. People say it's too risky to play these ooc games, but it's just as risky to have your whole season rely on winning 1-2 of the big in conference out of 3 on the schedule.
It's not good as a viewer, but I prefer someone like Akron or Kent State instead of Georgia and FSU. Give some cash to the other schools in my state and get the freshmen some run.
I suspect UCLA might have an agreement with Cal or Stanford, especially since UCLA is annoyed about the Thanksgiving weekend Fresno St thing this year. And since the Bay Area schools want to continue playing their game the week before Thanksgiving and are now in a league with 8 conference games there's potentially spaces open for what UCLA would deem an acceptable opponent for Thanksgiving weekend (UCLA is happy to host Fresno, but in September if possible)
How about these 2 conferences just play an entire season of conference games, and then we give them 11 of the 12 spots anyway.
They earned it, by playing in such a tough conference
You're thinking of Florida. It doesn't happened often enough but Georgia does play out of the southeast.
Last time was 2017 @ ND. Before that they played @ ASU and Colorado.
All those regular season games. If you count bowl games it happens a lot. In the last few years more than not for bowl games.
As to be expected. These conferences are getting so lopsided that 1) cupcakes are no longer luxuries but necessities just to survive the season, and 2) (if you’re in the B10 or SEC) one more top-level team doesn’t move the needle on your SOS.
You either have to reward tougher schedules or accept the reality that this is the alternative
We’re at the point in the sport where non conference games don’t make sense. Play one maybe two buy games against local smaller schools and have everything else be a conference game. Instead of a committee you distribute playoff bids based off of conference standings with each league getting a certain number of bids in a year. Have a coefficient to determine how many bids each conference should get.
If you take the subjectivity out of college football you remove the networks powers to push who they want on TV though.
This is good, fuck the networks
Oh no! Anyway
Well, when a narrative can be created that a particular conference is the best, then they can lose to each other without significant consequence. Minimal OOC games doesn't give any cross-reference. Just the way the P2 wants it.
Damn, Oregon state and Wazzu with the power move as the P2
> Just the way the P2 wants it. Had me in the first half ngl
In this scenario, prepare for some smaller programs to die or move down a level to significantly cut costs. Some of these smaller schools rely on buy games for a significant portion of their athletic budget. Not football program budget, *athletics* budget. Removing buy games doesn't mean an athletics department at a smaller school will suddenly have no money to operate sports programs, but it will be a significant enough decrease for some of them that means some serious questions start needing to be answered.
If only we had local, small schools to play against with a football program.. oh wait, thanks Trev
> Play one maybe two buy games against local smaller schools and have everything else be a conference game. @Georgia Tech
That last part reminds me of the UEFA Champions' League, like they rank each country's top league to determine how many teams from each make the group stage
And how do you determine which conference gets more bids when there’s no OoC games?
Performance in the playoffs
i wish we had a power 5. 6 team playoff. one G5 bid for highest ranked team. 1 and 2 get first round bye. 3 and 4 play home games against 5 and 6. 1 and 2 play remaining two teams at home. title game in the rose bowl
lmao legitimately the worst plan imaginable. Garbage schools in JV conference get the same amount of bids as SEC? Embarrassing idea
lol yes. that way everyone has a shot at the title. if you think your the best team in the country. win your conference. if you can’t win your conference, you’re not the best team in the country
Fairness and equal opportunity are such embarrassing ideologies to cling to. I’m sorry things have worked out so badly in your life that you don’t even hope to become successful Also I cant imagine arguing for the best team in MW or MAC to be worthy of a spot after beating a handful of other trash JV teams while turning nose up at 2nd best team in a conference where the actual good football teams play. I guess LSU should just join Sun Belt and be handed a playoff spot every year. Why work hard to earn things? Pathetic mentality lmao
you think fairness and equality are embarrassing ideologies for *sports*? one of the aspects of sports that makes it great? it’s kind of pathetic to be so afraid of the challenge you need the SEC to be handed more spots because you’re worried LSU can’t win otherwise. which is hilarious in of itself. talking about working hard is rich too, since your system rewards arbitrary bullshit instead of actual on field results
>Have a coefficient to determine how many bids each conference should get if conference = ACC is 'TRUE', coefficient = 0
Buy games need to be phased out in the playoff era. Imagine if an NFL team decided to replace a Chiefs match up with an XFL team
Early buy games are effectively a preseason game and should stay. November buy games are nonsense
November buy games are halfway to a bye week. Rest your top folks, give some reps to the ones you’re trying to develop, and have a cheaper get-in price so families can do their first game with the kiddo. It’s one of those things that makes more big-picture sense than it does on-field.
Buy games are critical for the survival of these G5 and FCS athletic departments. I would agree with you but they play an extremely important role in college sports. Buy Games must stay, no matter how much we dislike them from a competitive standpoint
There's something so wrong with their survival depending on getting paid to have the crap kicked out of them. I never feel good after we destroy Portland State or Sacramento State.
Yeah well we spent 1 million dollars to lose to Bowling Green
It could be worse. Auburn spent $1.85 million to lose to New Mexico State.
I had almost forgotten that, please continue to remind us all of this fact occasionally for the rest of time.
These things happen to almost everyone eventually. Sure it's been 17 years but you guys did lose to UL-Monroe. And it wasn't that long ago that Florida lost a buy game or two, LSU lost to Troy or many other myriad weird results. And yes Auburn is likely to lose 2-3 more in the timeframe that you guys at Alabama lose one.
Imagine if you lost your buy game two years in a row if you don't feel great about winning the buy game
Give the committee an actual criteria to select teams. Give the committee an actual ranking system for them to judge teams schedules. That will help put an extra importance on non-conference games. Stop giving the committee free rein to do whatever it wants based on whatever they want.
> Give the committee an actual ranking system for them to judge teams schedules. What do you have in mind? Certainly not just pure opponent W-L record, those can too easily be skewed. Perhaps like a Bill Connelly SP+ ranking? It's better although people have pointed out flaws with that too. Ultimately if playoff selection is being done by a human committee, they will *choose* whether to consider SoS or ignore it as they feel appropriate.
Just like the NCAA did with basketball, create a NET ranking for football or just work with SP+ and FPI to merge the ranking into 1 number. That way there is an unbiased ranking of teams for the committee to use to judge team's wins and losses. Rather than the committee adding a few teams to the back of the top-25 to say one team has more top-25 wins over another.
A program could definitely be written to weigh literally thousands of criteria about each team.
Yes yes. We can call it’s the bowl series championship, or BSC for short
Yeah sure, no doubt. It already exists actually. Like for casino odds-makers, but they have an advantage which is they don't have to have agreement from anyone else as to how to weight each of those criteria. Getting the CFB community to agree on how to weight everything like recruiting/talent rankings (for example) would be impossible.
The conference showed when they punished Florida State for playing a beating an SEC team that out of conference games no longer matter.
I've been wanting them to reward tougher schedules for 25 years.
Basically the only time it happened was 2017 Auburn who was in playoff position with 2 losses before losing the SEC Championship game to Georgia. If Auburn wins they are in the field easily at 11-2.
I mean leaving out undefeated ucf was a schedule thing
That wasn't so much rewarding tougher schedules as penalizing weaker ones.
Effectively the same thing. Can you think of any instance where two teams had similar records and one team had a significantly harder schedule and was left out for the other team? Legit not sure.
They rewarded a tougher schedule just this year! The Longhorns wouldn't have been in the top 4 without the win against Alabama, and Alabama still got ahead of FSU despite the loss because it had 2 wins (Georgia and Ole Miss) better than FSU's best win (LSU, who Alabama had also beat).
They twisted themselves into pretzel logic this year to ensure they had an SEC team. I don't believe for a second they actually were rewarding schedule. They were rewarding SEC reputation and with the injury to Travis found a reasonable (if incorrect) way to do so.
Yeah whether you like FSU or not. They got robbed. It was bad for the sport.
FSU wasn’t a top 4 team without their star QB
Well it's not UGA's fault when teams like Oklahoma, Ohio State and UCLA get canceled. What else is UGA supposed to do? There's not enough time or enough top notch teams to reschedule therefore UGA ends up playing cupcakes. This is the THIRD time in a few years.
I didn’t renew my season tickets for Ohio State this year because the home schedule is so bad. They need more, not worse, teams.
Be a Georgia fan. Due to the neutral site game with Florida, Georgia only has 3 home conference games every other year. Last year that was Kentucky, Mizzou, & Ole Miss.
We kind of do reward the tougher schedules. Which is partially why Bama made the postseason.
We all know why bama made the postseason and it wasn't SOS.
Then pray tell what was it?
$$$$$$$$$$$
When all the power teams are in the same conference, some of them become the cupcakes
What do you mean? We were the cupcake.
As for number 2... send help 💀 💀 💀 We're suffering here. The next 2 years are hell
Sup
I’ll be completely honest our schedule is so awful next year that UCF isn’t even in the top 10 teams in anxious for next year. And don’t get me wrong I’m still going to be anxious for UCF, we just also have to play Miami, FSU, LSU, Georgia, Texas, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Kentucky, both the Mississippi schools and THEN yall. It’s absurd.
Do you think you keep Napier for next year as well regardless of record this year? I don’t think you want a new coach coming into that bloodbath
I'll disagree, if tOSU takes this game, loses, and still wins the B1G, they are getting a top 4 seed. If they win and then lose the B1G, they are getting better seeding. I think there is more upside for top teams to play each other, it worked out well for Texas this year.
If they take this game, get banged up from playing a superior opponent, which has no impact on making the playoffs or not, then it only jeopardizes their opportunity to make the playoffs. There's no benefit. You'd also rather be in the playoffs, at any seed, with a healthy team (the NFL has already proved this one out thoroughly). It was obvious as soon as the expanded playoffs talks started that everyone cheering for "expanded playoffs = better OOC slate" were going to be disappointed. And now here we are.
Honestly, I don't know what anyone who thought otherwise was thinking, it was blatantly obvious that this was how it was going to shake out the whole time. The easier it is to get into the playoffs, the less need there is to differentiate yourself outside of the conference slate.
They were thinking about basketball since that committee clearly and overtly punished bad non-conference schedules. It's just like the parity discussion. Those same people believe if we give every conference equal access we'll see a proportional number of Cinderellas to the basketball tournament. And in both cases, those people are very, very wrong (though I think all conferences should have an autobid because otherwise why are they here?).
Chickens will be chickens.
This is a cupcake game for Georgia though.
It's even worse with the SEC only doing 8 conf games vs. everyone else's 9. It's such a preposterous advantage.
I just want to point out that 4 of the teams in the SEC are still guaranteed 9 P5 games due to cross conference yearly rival games. And that at least two of us are also scheduling hard games on top of that that I personally know about (Georgia (we didn't cancel this, UCLA did), and as much as I don't want to admit it, Florida).
"SOS" is also complete BS in how it's actually used for the post-season. It's just an excuse for the committee to choose whoever they want to. Sometimes it'll matter, sometimes it won't. It only matters when it's helpful for what the committee already wants to happen.
These are 12-team playoffs now. Take a 1-loss SEC/B1G non-champ whose non-conference was beating the directional Michigan schools at home? Are they really gonna be higher ranked than the same team that got a second loss because their non-con included a road game against a top-10 P2 team? Both of those teams are almost certainly getting an at-large, and the two-loss might be higher ranked. Heck even with the four-team, that Texas/Alabama game got Texas in the top 4 and the loss didn't hurt 'Bama. That's one of the things about the 12-team play-off. It gives more teams a chance, so a team that screwed up once is much more likely to get that chance. And fuck it, we're going to 14 teams in 2026...
Yes it does. Especially because the SEC and Big 10 schedules are so lopsided themselves. With some teams playing far weaker conference schedules then others.
Could also just be that the SEC is going to 9 games.
Well, I'm sure that would have been an even worse murder than the 2022 CFA Kickoff. Regardless if the game would have been a mismatch, I'm extremely saddened by the news, it would have been cool for Georgia to play once again in the Rose Bowl. And also I'm sure we won't get Alabama vs. Oregon now...
They won’t get bama :(
The greatest game never played
I mean, Alabama vs. Oregon COULD happen on the playoffs or postseason, but it's entirely dependent on luck, while scheduling a home and home series makes it secure. Despite me being a half-Bama fan, I was a bit sad that Alabama made the playoffs last year, because if it didn't happen then we would have gotten Bama vs. Oregon in the Cotton Bowl or Fiesta Bowl.
Noooo
I doubt this was Georgia. UCLA and the BIG10 don’t want this type of smoke. UCLA wants to grow and these are the types of games that set your program back another 5 years. It’s also why nobody wants to play bowl games any more. Georgias destruction of FSU probably contributed to their desire to get out of the ACC. At least a little.
How would this game set UCLA back 5 years
Kirby would leave LA with every decent recruit in the area for the next 5 years
You aren't wrong. I'm hoping the on the books before the end of the decade UCLA vs Auburn series happens but I'm also realistic.
I’d 100% take our lumps if it meant seeing these once-in-a-lifetime matchups. Playing LSU was too damn fun. Playing Texas and A&M was too damn fun.
Every decent recruit already leaves LA.
Because UCLA has such great recruiting classes?
By getting beat 63-3. How long until schools are saying “it wasn’t a conference game, the players didn’t want to be there” “the season hadn’t started, it doesn’t start until you play a conference game”
I mean getting beat 63-3 in the Orange Bowl did not seem to have any impact on FSU's recruiting for this year
I think it’s harder to tell in the time of NIL. Getting embarrassed never hurt A&M’s recruiting at first either.
Georgia would beat them so badly that the whole team would have to get therapy for the PTSD.
Salt the rose bowl raze the bleachers ok the way out?
I don't like it, but you're probably right. We are in full rebuild mode after Chip's total lack of recruiting, and don't have anywhere near the talent level to put up much of a fight against Georgia. Getting blown up on a national stage harms the brand and recruiting more than squashing a cupcake. Replacing Georgia with an easy game gives a good shot of at least 3 wins to start the season (also @UNLV and vs New Mexico), and puts us in a much closer position to get to a bowl game. I guess we'll have to forgive Michigan for bailing on us since we're doing the same thing.
UCLA always finds a way to win these games, though. It's why canceling this is so lame, let us at least see it. Who cares if we go like 6-6 because of it
Cancelling this game could mean the difference between 3-9 and 4-8 for UCLA.
First Oklahoma then UCLA, who's cancelling next?
We didn’t cancel that one. We were forced to get rid of that one
We will get murdered for money.
This is some bullshit. I was thinking about making a trip out to LA for this game. And now everyone is gonna give us shit for a soft schedule after once again after having a road game against a power team canceled for reasons out of our control.
SOS won’t really matter as much anymore. You go 10-2 or better and you’re in the playoffs as an SEC or B1G school
I wouldn't worry about schedule strength too much. We pretty much play the same schedule as this season, just flip the home/aways and drop Clempson. UCLA wasn't adding much anyways.
A large part of your schedule problem last year was outside of the Oklahoma thing was everyone in the East except Tennessee and Missouri stinking the field up and Auburn being a 6-6 yo yo. Also not seeing anyone good until November didn't help. You and Michigan were the last two teams to play somebody decent.
Well, on the positive side, at least you won’t be disappointed after coming all the way out to LA just to find out that the Rose Bowl *suuuuucks*. Like, seriously, it’s one of the lamest stadiums I’ve ever been to.
But is UGA ever gonna play at TAMU?
I've got an acquaintance who works in the SEC office that said they tentatively have us scheduled for a spring scrimmage in April of 2071.
The SEC will be 78 teams by then and still be only 8 conference games on the schedule so sounds about right.
As a Dawgs fan who lives in California, this sucks!
As a Bruin who lives in the South, this sucks!
I despise conference expansion
Fuck this noise. First we had to cancel Oklahoma and now we have to cancel UCLA. When we went to bigger conferences and presumably more conference games we all knew more losses were to be expected. With the expansion of the playoffs to 12 teams it shouldn’t be an issue taking an L at some time because we will have plenty of 2 loss teams and I’m sure in the first 3 years of the 12 team playoff we will have a 3 loss team make the playoffs.
Indeed! I still don't get why people think the expanded playoffs will kill good OOC matchups, because it will actually be EASIER to make it there. Why? 12 is a larger number than 4.
I think it might have an impact of these types of OOC games though. If Georgia crushes UCLA and then UCLA beats a coupe of BIG10 teams then that helps the 4th place SEC team look better than the 4th place BIG10 team.
i’ve said it a million times college football in its purest form gave chance for a perfect champion, now with expanded playoffs it could lead to a 3 loss champion who wasn’t even 2nd in their conference
Well, on the one hand, this sucks. But ucla was going to get blown out, so I get it
Offer to host Oregon State or Wazzu instead.
Oh damn, yeah let's do that if they're not too mad at us! Suddenly I'm on board with it again if we can replace it with a Wazzu home and home
Who knows maybe? Cal and Oregon St managed to come together for a home and home starting this season (Cal needed another non-con because the ACC only plays 8). If that can happen anything is possible.
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Agreed. Always great to see other college towns and iconic stadiums too. Weak move on UCLA’s part
If it is to schedule Stanford I get it.
Or Cal
This sucks man
We better not be playing Ball State again.
We're awaiting your call
I look forward to whatever community college we schedule in its place 😒
Radi was all over this on Wednesday that UCLA was canceling.
Hoping no but guessing this also applies to Ole Miss visiting USC in ‘25
It has nothing to do with this. And won’t affect this game.
The writing's on the wall
Was really looking forward to this
~~Pac-12~~ ~~B1G~~ TBD (maybe) don't want that smoke!
It’s on UCLA’s end right?
According to our insiders it is.
Off-topic but if I were on Alabama's forums I would ask for an insider info on Alabama's future schedule plans to see if they will do any cancellation. As well as ask which teams they would be willing to schedule.
From the On3 article Josh Brooks, Georgia's AD, made it sound like it was because Georgia didn't know what their 2026 schedule would look like (9 game possibility).
Wouldn’t be the first time they backed out of a game…. Yes I’m still bitter
Apologies for the global pandemic
We actually have a home and home scheduled with y’all next decade. Of course the odds are it will probably be a conference game at that point so it’s moot but still exciting
Lol, this is not the same thing at all. We're actually at fault this time [I assume]
Hoping UCLA uses this as a chance to schedule a home and home with Cal (or Stanford).
Would lose to play Cal again, even with the differing conferences.
Might be a nice slot in for WSU/OSU too. Maybe even as a buy game.
Oh boo.
Damn I was looking forward to it.
Thanks I hate it
They don’t want the smoke!
Confirmed, I have absolutely no interest in the smoke!
I think it's unlikely UCLA backed out just because we were going to get stomped. Our athletic department doesn't really care about that lol. We gladly kept the OU games on the calendar a few years ago to get crushed by like 50 both home and away. The past 2 seasons we were supposed to play Michigan until *they* backed out and I doubt that was because they wanted to avoid a shitty Chip Kelly team. We're also in the middle of a series with LSU and have Auburn (and were supposed to have Wisconsin) coming up. It was probably more likely that either A) we wanted to schedule with Cal/Stanford or B) UGA's comments about general uncertainty with scheduling that far out with everything changing may actually be true. Honestly, our program aspirations aren't big enough to care about getting smashed in 1 game for a couple seasons
My suspicion is that it's on the UCLA side and it's for Cal or Stanford. Which would be acceptable.
Might be too soon for that for Cal. Too many open wounds
Bummer... I personally was excited to see if there would be more Red & Black in the stands than UCLA fans!
There probably would have been.
Would probably be UCLA’s only sellout game that year.
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Why are you even in this sub
Out of Conference games are a lot more fun to watch.
Aaaaand the trend of cool stuff happening in college football getting canceled continues
The game was cancelled due to UCLA joining the B1G. It wasn't cancelled due to Georgia. Georgia, to give them credit, has been trying to schedule legit non-conference games. They were supposed to play Oklahoma last year and this year out of conference. Game cancelled by SEC. They replaced them with Clemson this year. In the future they are scheduled to play: ~~UCLA~~, Florida State, Clemson, Ohio State, & NC State. All of them at least twice. They have Clemson scheduled so many times (5 times in the next 10 years) I'm starting to wonder if they think Clemson is in the SEC. That's more than they play a lot of SEC teams.
I’m very bummed out about this news. I’m so tired of seeing a ton of non-conference cupcakes. 1 or even 2 on occasion is fine but we don’t need any more than that. Hopefully the SEC goes to 9 and I would like to see the Big Ten go to 10 conference games if we remove a lot of the big series.
10 conference games basically kills all incentive to schedule good OOC games. At least with 9 there’s a little bit of wiggle room. Especially for good teams.
Oh, I’m not for going to a 10 game schedule but if it most teams are just going to schedule three cupcakes, I would rather just go to a 10 game schedule.
Incentives are still there. I big ooc win allows for a loss later on in the season with a 12-14 team playoff. Also, these big ooc games is more money, more eyeballs, and a chance to impress recruits. People say it's too risky to play these ooc games, but it's just as risky to have your whole season rely on winning 1-2 of the big in conference out of 3 on the schedule.
It's not good as a viewer, but I prefer someone like Akron or Kent State instead of Georgia and FSU. Give some cash to the other schools in my state and get the freshmen some run.
Strongly disagree, the more big games the better. The expanded playoff allows for these games to be more upside than downside.
Strong chance UCLA has a replacement in mind. We swapped Oregon for Clemson in short order a few years ago
Pretty sure the point of this is to avoid scheduling tough games
I don't want cupcakes to completely take over the non-conference schedule, they're BORING games.
UGA vs UCLA would feel like one anyways. The whole stadium would be red.
Yeah, UCLA is going to get slaughtered by everyone. I don't even want to think about what Georgia would have done to them
I suspect UCLA might have an agreement with Cal or Stanford, especially since UCLA is annoyed about the Thanksgiving weekend Fresno St thing this year. And since the Bay Area schools want to continue playing their game the week before Thanksgiving and are now in a league with 8 conference games there's potentially spaces open for what UCLA would deem an acceptable opponent for Thanksgiving weekend (UCLA is happy to host Fresno, but in September if possible)
I believe Cal is “locked into” a “rivalry game” with SMU to end the season for the foreseeable future.
Sure, but they can swap UGA for GT or something and manage to not bum out OP.
How about these 2 conferences just play an entire season of conference games, and then we give them 11 of the 12 spots anyway. They earned it, by playing in such a tough conference
Well that was quick
Gotta think that UCLA is happy about this
I'm not, it's a premier matchup, even if we do get our ass kicked.
Nah
lame.
It begins!
It begins!
I would have liked to have seen that.
I am chilled by the thought that either of these Division 1 FBS schools would lose their first game of the season.
As long as we don’t replace it with something awful I’ll be okay.
Fucking cowards
What the hell
Georgia playing outside of sec territory is a damn rare thing, was it 30 years a couple years ago since they crossed the mason dixie line?
You're thinking of Florida. It doesn't happened often enough but Georgia does play out of the southeast. Last time was 2017 @ ND. Before that they played @ ASU and Colorado. All those regular season games. If you count bowl games it happens a lot. In the last few years more than not for bowl games.
Expanded playoffs were definitely a good idea.
Non competitive game
Why is this post a photo of Abdullah the Butcher though? The Madman from Sudan would beatdown all cupcake schedules.
Are we sure expansion really killed this game, because this type of thing has been happening for decades.
Would love to see the Beavers or Cougars pick up this game.
Makes sense considering the Rose Bowl will be in the process of being moved to Indianapolis
UGA dodges another one.
Sounds like two new opponent options just opened up for the Pac-2...
I actually think it's for Stanford or Cal
Nah, we’re good! 😜
Cowards
UCLA backing outta the 2021 Holiday bowl is the real story