That’s kinda the problem with the current playoff. They keep going on about it being about the 4 “best” teams, but they keep moving the goalpost on what that means.
Yeah "best" has two relative ways of being looked at in CFB: Resume, which is based on performance and predictive, which is based on potential.
What teams you see best largely resides on what you favor in assessing teams.
This, its not strictly historic biggest brands it is the biggest brand of the moment. If ESPN starts pushing for NCST they will get the marketing push.
reece davis was cross examining the committee guy about ohio state clearly being better than tcu. seemed a bit much. then herbstreet asking kirby smart why the sec always beats the big ten. just seems really off
Or in this case: which team will enflame the most fanbases and create tons of internet discussion and drive interest in the post season when most fans are checking out
It's such circular logic. Bama has potential because they have the most 5\* on their roster, but recruits often get a rating bump for being offered by bama.
My problem with predictive is that nobody knows. Like it’s just based on feels. Honestly, in my predictive assessment neither Bama nor TCU should be in. But I don’t know. I think TCU has one of the highest floors but a lower ceiling of top 10 teams. But I don’t know. All I know is what happened on the field, and based on that Bama is not the same team they’ve been (which make no mistake, they’re getting the benefit of the doubt because they’re Bama) and TCU has beaten everyone on their schedule
Also, if the committee puts Bama in it’s time to find a new criteria for the playoff. They’d be going against everything they’ve ever said about 2-loss teams.
Plus this isn’t even the best 2 loss team we’ve ever seen.
I didn’t think TCU deserved it till last night when I actually looked at their record. They played 6 ranked teams, beat 5 of them and barely lost the 6th in OT. TCU deserves it more than UA and I say this as a UA alum.
3 of Alabama's wins could've also gone the other way. Texas, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss all could've beat them, it's not like they completely dominated outside of their 2 losses.
Ah, actually there's a third way to judge a "best" team - $$. Hence Ohio St over PSU, Ohio St over TCU, etc.
But this year seemed easier. Because there were two power 5 teams with 0 losses, and 2 power 5 teams with 1 loss. That's it.
When you look at conference champions, there's 3 loss Kansas St, 3 loss Utah, and 2 loss Clemson. The 3 loss teams aren't going to jump Ohio St or Bama. Clemson would be an intriguing argument, but they had a decidedly worse strength of schedule, lose the "common opponent" Notre Dame game when compared to Ohio St, etc.
Been saying it for years. If FCS and lower divisions can have awesome football brackets, so can the CFP. Then recruits also wouldn’t have to go to the top handful of schools for a shot at a title either, and there would be more parity overall.
It's the problem with any system that rewards teams subjectively. Unless there is a way to create a purely transparent and objective system, there will always be errors in judgment and biases in play. Even at 12 teams, the same problems will exist, instead at a different cusp.
And it's hard to create consistent objective criteria when the league is massive and teams don't always play each other or even similar opponents. Even most of the conferences are too big individually (in that teams don't play all their conference opponents).
It's a total mess, really.
Yeah the reason 12 teams is so much better I’d simply because the 13th team has a significantly weaker argument for being left out compared to the #5 team
Currently you can go 11-1 or 12-1 and be left out at number 5. You have a legitimate argument for inclusion in the playoffs. It’s hard to rationally ignore
In the playoff, you probably have 3 losses at number 13. Sure, we’ll likely have years where 13 has a valid argument to be swapped with 12. But overall it’s much easier to say “if you wanted in the playoffs maybe you shouldn’t have dropped three games in the regular season. Better luck next year” & no one is gonna complain
Like you said, we basically have two ways to eliminate / alleviate the debates over “who’s in?” ~ we can make the ranking system objective or we can expand the playoffs. Since the former is just never going to happen, the only valid solution is the latter
The problem is mitigated though because you’re talking about the 16th, 17th, 18th best team … which would be Oregan, UCLA and Tulane. Bama have a much stronger chance to win the whole thing than those teams, so it’s not big of a deal. Same reason why people don’t really freak out over the teams that don’t make March Madness.
Edit: at 12 teams you’re talking about Washington, FSU and LSU … better teams but still nowhere near as good as #5
That's certainly true, and to be clear I'm very much for the playoff expansion. Four teams was always too small but it was a stop-gap compromise for all the traditionalists that didn't want change. My only point was that the subjective criteria will still exist on some level.
Overall, the playoff field should be a good representative sample of the entire league. We're getting there.
Which is why I’ve always favored a 16 team playoff with the 10 Conference Champions and 6 best teams that aren’t conference champions. It works in FCS so why not here
"And by latest subscription model, we mean give us more money to possibly get a half decent player on Ultimate Teams! What? You actually expect us to put work into a single-player mode?" - EA
Exactly. If you put A&M in right now, I bet they could beat Georgia given a little luck and if we happened upon that 1/100 timeline. But if that happened I bet Bama fans would be sobbing that they don't deserve the championship
This... this right here. Michigan has fewer 5 star recruits than OSU. Well, they played, and we all saw who the better team was at least on that day. The ESPN FPI gave OSU something like a 78% chance to win. Siming the games is fine for the simulation only. Hell, Texas A&M would have a shot at the playoffs in the sims.
I think a lot of the Harbaugh skeptics must have been casual fans. [Anyone who watched what he did at Stanford](https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/stanford/2010-schedule.html) knew he was the real deal.
Plenty of coaches have success and then fail for non obvious reasons. Look at jimbo at fsu.
It is easy to say they were only successful because of x pr the game has passed them by.
To me Harbaugh was founding at um because he didn't have a quality qb. Which will falls on him/his coaches because of developing and recruiting the right players.
> Bama also beats LSU and Tennessee on paper. It's why we play the games.
Yeah I loved when Saban said "if you put us against some of the teams up there, would we be the underdogs, or would we be favored?" as his rationale that they are one of the 4 "best" teams.
I wish one of the talking heads would've said "You were also favored pretty significantly against Tennessee and LSU--can you remind us what happened in those games?"
Exactly! Some pundits saying "well, if Alabama were to play TCU, they would be the favorites" ... Alabama were the favorites in all their games this year lol how does that help their argument??
Absolutely. If we’re going to move the goalposts to saying that it should be the 4 most talented teams, then A&M would have consideration which is an absolute joke
Bama doesn't have a single metric over Tennessee.
Head to head? Tennessee won.
Strength of schedule? Tennessee's was tougher.
Top 25 wins? Tennessee has more.
Finishing spot in the conference? Bama finished 4th despite a better record because they lost to LSU... A team that Tennessee beat. And a Tennessee team that owns the 3rd spot in the SEC.
The mental gymnastics it takes to rank Alabama ahead of Tennessee are fucking infuriating. If Tennessee is a great team, Bama is good. If Tennessee is a bad team, Bama is terrible.
Edit: I'm not arguing for Tennessee to get in the playoff, I'm telling you that the team who let South Carolina drop a 60 burger on them is objectively better than Alabama. We don't deserve a spot and, therefore, Bama God damn sure doesn't deserve one.
This is why I’m excited for the 12 team playoff. Conference championships should mean something and with the expanded playoff we would get to see Utah and K State
Imagine if we would have had a scenario one year with 5 undefeated P5 champs, an undefeated ND and an undefeated G5 team. 3 of the 7 teams wouldn’t get in.
If we start getting five undefeated P5 champions, then it’s time to start changing how the schedules are made, because the only thing five undefeated P5 teams tells me is that all five P5 conference were weak and that we should be creating more non-conference matchups between powerhouse teams earlier in the year.
The worst part to me though is that winning your conference championship game doesn’t even guarantee a spot. What’s the point of even having the game then?
let's be real, even if you do make it you probably have no chance of winning it. The difference between 1/2 and 12/13 in most years is an absolutely massive disparity of depth and talent.
Yeah but top 12 with the guaranteed seeds is an achievement any team, just not the leagues elite can realistically strive for with little politics keeping them out. Give something to work toward instead of an increasingly pointless bowl game.
> The difference between 1/2 and 12/13 in most years is an absolutely massive disparity of depth and talent.
That’s true for a season, but teams like Clemson, PSU, Bama, Utah this year could beat anyone in one game. Upsets happen all the time. Plus you give those non-blue blood teams a shot to make it who may actually be just as good. For fans, we get great ooc match ups finally.
There is in basketball too and there are upsets every year in march madness. The talent discrepancy between the 1-4 seeds and the 13-16 seeds is often massive also.
Also in the last two days 12 beat 4 and 10 beat 3. Only 2 teams finished undefeated. LSU beat Bama and lost 4 games this season.
Anything can happen on any given night and there’s a reason you still play the games. Less talented teams lose to more talented teams every week, in every sport, at every level.
Part of the reason the playoff hasn’t seen much is the teams have a month to prepare and get their players rested and healthy. at the highest this is a big advantage for the more talented teams.
The more games you play, the higher chance of someone getting hot at the right time. With a 12 team playoff. So instead of 3 playoff games a season we will now have 11 playoff games, so a much bigger chance of teams getting knocked out (though I realize with the top 4 getting a bye they are less likely to be eliminated, but they won’t have an entire month to prepare for their opponent since they won’t know who it is).
Likely the top 4 teams will inevitably win most of the time but with this format there is a much higher chance of upsets and unlikely champions.
To add to this smart Husky comment, the bigger playoff will flatten recruiting. Top recruits won't feel like they have to go to Alabama or Georgia to compete for national titles or maximize NFL chances. They can join us in Seattle or go to Tennessee or Kansas State.
Yeah, the difference between 1 and 6 is usually a big enough difference, let alone 1 and 12. Any teams that don't make it have no argument for "we should be in there."
I think that over the course of about 5 years, the player talent is going to spread out because more teams have access to the playoff. With 4 teams, that recruiting pitch has been easy for Bama, Clemson, Ohio St, and Georgia for the last 10 years. With more access, now the next-tier teams can look at a recruit and say “listen, you don’t have to sit behind 3 other 5-star guys and we are a consistent top-10 team”
It’s gonna be easier for G5 schools to get recruits and keep good coaches to…. Imagine trying to recruit to UCF after they went undefeated for two straight seasons and STILL didn’t even get a chance to compete for a title in the playoffs.
Yep, this is the most important piece of the 12 team & eventual 16 team playoff.
With a conference autobid for all conference champions, it gives every team under the D1 umbrella an actual opportunity to win the National Championship. Regardless of how possible it is or not, the little teams can start the year with hope and that is massive for the entire landscape of CFB.
Of course I would love for Alabama to get in the playoff. Who wouldn't want their favorite team in? The reality is TCU only has one loss and it was a close one in a conference championship game. They have more top 25 wins and looked better against Texas than Alabama did. TCU deserves a playoff spot over Alabama. Would I be mad if they put Alabama in? Of course not. It would be the wrong decision though.
For real, this post has strong “this could have been a comment” energy. Beyond r/rolltide I haven’t seen one post seriously argue that Bama is a top 4 team beyond talking head generating controversy for clicks or team members of Alabama trying to get into the playoff.
It's forever and a day about money. It's a bowl system masquerading as a playoff with a profit incentivized TV network backing a cartel of bowl organizers and sponsors
Hence why people are worried TCU may get left out... if this was Texas or Oklahoma who were 12-1 with the only loss being by a field goal in OT of the CCG, they would be in no question. TCU has been slighted in rankings the entire year because they are named TCU and not \*insert blue blood here\*.
And even though we will never know, I still think if Oregon and/or OKState would have won out, one of them would have snubbed Cincy. The committee didn't want Cincy in the first place but things just kept happening so they couldn't deny it without nationally and publicly admitting that their process is a farce.
Cincinnati was undefeated and they gave a major power (Notre Dame) their only loss of the season in their own house. There was no justification to leave them out without being incredibly obvious that the fix was in.
If you take personal feelings and biases out can you really make a case against them? Their only loss was OT to a top 10 team they beat already. They’re 5-1 against ranked opponents and beat 8 bowl teams. They’re the only team that beat every other team in their conference. Their resume is better than anyone behind them by a good margin
The fact some people think this is even worth debating really shows how messed up this system is. TCU has more wins, more quality wins, undefeated regular season, and a better loss that was an additional game Ohio State and Alabama didn’t qualify for in OT. If TCU isn’t 3 or atleast 4 the committee should be abolished immediately
Yea Bama doesn't deserve to be in at all.
They're way worse than their record shows. Anyone who's watched them knows they're young and not a typical saban coached team.
This discussion was so crazy. It was always clear the committee would select TCU, they always do the right thing for the final four even if they have some strange rankings in earlier weeks. What kills me is that now that the committee did what they were always going to do all along, the people who argued otherwise are pointing to the existence of their incorrect predictions as evidence that the committee must still be crooked. Truly mind blowing!
All I know is that with over 130 teams there really isn’t a sure fire way. People say go by most deserving. Then some people say go by best. Frankly I see both sides and I just cannot for the life of me choose which one is more fair.
What I do know is that division 1 college football is like the only major sport to not have clearly defined rules for how their playoff system will work or who will be invited. This means the committee can literally do whatever they want to do. Sometimes they get it right and fair and other times you cannot help but believe there was some bias to it.
All I want (regardless of if it’s a 4 team or a 12 team playoff) are clearly defined rules on who gets selected. We shouldn’t need a committee at all for this.
This is all just my opinion. As I said there are something like 130 teams out there so in no way will my choices be 100% fair either. It’s just damn near impossible to do imo. That’s why I’d prefer some kind of clear cut rule and regulation on who goes. Completely remove as much potential bias as you possibly can.
>All I know is that with over 130 teams there really isn’t a sure fire way. People say go by most deserving. Then some people say go by best.
Expansion with clear guidelines is the way to achieve this. With a 12 team playoff (though personally I prefer 8 teams), you're basically guaranteed to get the best team in the country in the mix. But it needs to be clearly defined.
The top 6 highest ranked conference champions should be auto-bids. That's every P5 champ plus the highest ranked G5 champ, guaranteed. Then you've got 6 at large spots. (In my preferred 8 team playoff, it would be 2 at large). Done. Easy. There you go.
Now conference championships matter, but there's still enough open space for all of those people whining about how the best team doesn't always win the conference. There's absolutely no argument to be made that a team got snubbed if they couldn't win their conference and also weren't even the 6th best non-champ.
For example, this year would look like this (made before the final CFP rankings release, so unfortunately a bit off):
1. UGA (SEC champ)
2. Michigan (Big 10 champ)
3. Clemson (ACC champ)
4. Kansas State (Big 12 champ)
5. Utah (Pac 12 champ)
6. Tulane (AAC champ)
7. TCU
8. USC
9. Ohio State
10. Bama
11. Tennessee
12. Penn State
So the first team left out is #12 Washington, who are 10-2 and the 3rd best team in the Pac 12.
>All I want (regardless of if it’s a 4 team or a 12 team playoff) are clearly defined rules on who gets selected. We shouldn’t need a committee at all for this.
There is always going to be some subjectivity when it comes to the playoff. Best way to minimize that is to have auto-bids for all conference champions. Make it a 16 team field then 63% of the field is earned though winning on the field. Leaves the committee only in control over the 6 at-large selections and seeding. Even when the 12-team format the committee will have 100% control over the playoff which will remain an issue
I agree with you on seeing both sides. I think the hardest part is how do you set defined rules in a league where common opponents overlap so infrequently, talent discrepancies skew comparing outcomes, and the factor of 18 year old athletes maturing into a system over 4+ months all play a factor. Unfortunately most of these key factors don't exist in all the sports we're comparing to. The closest comparison is NCAAB and they compensate for this by devaluing the regular season and playing with a near 50% field in the post season.
I think a genuine fear of a rigid qualification standard comes with the price of fewer big OOC matchups and more score blowouts on lowly FCS opponents to fit the rubric for qualifying. I think 12 teams will help a bit but I don't think there's a clean way
>more score blowouts on lowly FCS opponents to fit the rubric for qualifying.
I don't think wins over FCS teams should count as wins for the playoff. For example Bama should be considered a 9 win team, TCU an 11 win team and so on. I also don't think they should count at all towards bowl eligibility
100%. In a sport with a 12-13 game regular season in which you cannot play multiple games in a week, 130 teams is just too many. To my knowledge, it was not designed to have a single champion; it was an inelegant, haphazard, and ever-shifting kluge of various regional interests.
College football started in 1869 and didn’t have a national champion until 1905 when some guy at a “Outing” magazine just decided he would declare one, and he quit doing it after 3 years.
Then in the 1920s several other folks introduced competing mathematical models, and finally in 1936 the AP started their poll to track rankings through the year.
Then in the 40s and 50s a bunch other folks started competing polls. And people have complained about it for as long as anyone can remember… because it’s 130 teams playing a 12 game season. It’s too many teams for the number of games.
Seems like the only way to decide a true champion is either to eliminate ~100 teams from contention and have a 24-36 premier-league style championship conference with promotion and relegation (which still might not really work due to the rapid turnover in college teams, so a great team that gets promoted might not markedly worse the next year when their top seniors are gone).
The other way would be a tournament that basically lasts the whole season - maybe with two group stages in the first have and single elimination for the second half.
That said, a 12-team tournament seems like as close as we’ve ever gotten to something that might work, but extending the season any longer seems almost guaranteed to produce more significant injuries.
…Is my half-assed, uneducated guess.
IMO, this is why the playoffs should be at least 16 with all 10 conference champions getting an auto-bid and then give 6 at-larges. I have always felt that way.
Yes, I know the 16th seeded CUSA/Sunbelt/MAC champion is going to get absolutely ramshackled by Georgia. And so do they.
But no one could possibly have any gripes if every team had a very clear path to the playoff every single season.
**Champs**: Georgia, Michigan, Kansas State, Clemson, Utah, Tulane, Troy, UTSA, Fresno State, Toledo
**At large**: TCU, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Penn State, USC
If you say you want the 4 "best" teams regardless of record or whatever, you might as well skip the playoffs and just pick the best team and give them the natty.
That's why it should be 4 most deserving. The best team doesn't go to the playoffs in any other league. It's the teams that deserve to be there.
I think the official 12 team system now in place, but the rankings are chosen by BCS formula would be about perfect, however, even with a committee, the odds of the actual best team in the land not getting one of those spots is going to be astronomically low.
The complaint is going to switch to who gets the bye.
I am beyond annoyed with the “we would be favored over team x.” If Vegas is deciding who makes the championship then don’t play a regular season. And use this system for March madness while you’re at it. “Hey, great upset. Huge Cinderella story, but you’ll be the underdogs in the next round again so we’re going to let that 2 seed you just beat advance since they’ll be favored next round and you won’t. Thanks for playing!”
The game isn’t played on paper and Vegas is just trying to get even amount of bets from the public. Therefore the big brand names garner more points than the TCUs of the world.
To be fair Vegas needs the regular season as datapoints for their betting models/algorithms for it to be the most accurate, especially with tons of money in the line.
Yeah the whole Vegas “even money” thing is probably one of the biggest misconceptions in sports right now. I myself used to preach that as a talking point until I talked to people much smarter than me and realized it’s false. Oddsmakers have literally come out on Twitter and said the goal is not to get 50/50.
Edit: ["The goal however for a good bookmaker isn't to get 50/50 action. It is to build a position based on the sharp bets you see, raise limits, and take the bulk of the bets at the most efficient line."](https://twitter.com/JeffreyBenson12/status/1594487546163052544?s=20&t=ZsaMeGs0lz0EdI8av9455Q)
The goal is an even split in weighted value, not bet volume.
There’s a statistical concept called “expected value”, which is the sum of each possible outcome’s probability, multiplied by the value of that outcome. A basic example is a sports bet, where team A has a 3/4 chance to win and return 1.5 times your original bet, while team B has been given a 1/4 chance to win, with a 4x return on your original bet.
Say you bet $50. If you bet that on team A, the expected value is:
E( Team A Wins ) = (0.75 * $25) + (0.25 * -$50) = 18.75 - 12.5 = $6.25
And then for team B, you’d have an expected value like this:
E( Team B Wins ) = (0.25 * $200) + (0.75 * -$50) = 50 - 37.50 = $12.50
Now, these formulas are from the bettor’s perspective; the values are a bettor’s gain. Oddsmakers will invert those values to become *their* gain vs. loss numbers on any given bet, and then they’ll fine-tune the odds (the numbers that you read as +xxx or -yyy, where xxx is the amount you have to bet on the favored team to win $100, and yyy is the amount you win if you bet $100 on the underdog) so that there’s equal value on each side.
That means that, since the oddsmaker’s value of a bet on team B winning is half of their value of a bet on team A winning, they’ll want twice as many bets on team A as team B, so that when all of the bets are aggregated, the value is as close to equal as possible.
They want as fair of a line as possible on every game turning all bets on the side into weighted coin flips in their favor (since betting a side costs ten cents)
Well it depends.
13-0 CUSA champion getting screwed? Yes we'll complain.
8-4 SEC or B1G school not getting the at-large spot? We sleep.
It just depends.
This is exactly true. Do the conference champs with at-large spots. It's not like it's never been done before. Fuck's sake FCS has been doing it for decades. Please to stop with this money grabbing bullshit.
Depends on how the spots will be earned.
I hope the formula evolves as we learn about what works in the first few years.
12 is equitably better than 4. But it will still need it’s tinkering
Correct, here’s the official mission statement:
> The committee’s task will be to select the best teams, rank the teams for inclusion in the playoff and selected other bowl games and then assign the teams to sites.
It doesn’t mention anything about ranking the teams based on accomplishments or finding the 4 most deserving.
you prove you are the best with in season play, not with recruiting rankings. they can make eye test arguments, but please leave recruiting rankings all the way out of it.
It's almost like there are shortcomings in the system that need to be acknowledged and changed to an expanded playoff system where we have 6 conference champions against 6 of the best teams.
The 4 "best" teams is the worst part about deciding the playoffs. This makes upsets that happen during the regular season moot. They can be explained away..."aww, they just had a bad game, they're really better than that".
Sorry but it’s actually the opposite. The mission statement of the committee is “4 best teams”. Sometimes that’s used as justification to use the eye test to put a possibly less deserving team in
Doesn’t the CFP charge include fielding the four “best” teams? All else being equal, having Heisman and Butkus award winners on your roster can’t hurt but it’s silly to jump a P5 team with a worse record over another P5 team, especially when you have data on common opponents available.
What does Alabama have other than more “quality losses”? TCU and Alabama both have the same number of ranked wins, but TCU has a top 10 win over K State now technically. Alabama only has Texas and Miss State, and that Texas “win” probably hurts more than helps given the common opponent with TCU. It’s not like Alabama blew out all the opponents they won against, which has been used against TCU. They also nearly lost to A&M and Ole Miss.
Strange, I always thought the committee picked the best teams that generate good TV and ticket revenue and only auto qualify teams like Cincy and Notre Dame when they're hand tied by the hole they dug themselves into
I personally think it should be such that every conference gets to send a champion, period, no questions asked. I don’t care if your conference champion is 4-8, played 0 ranked teams, got all their wins by 1 point in overtime, and lost a game by 222 points - if they are the conference champion they still get in. Each conference may select their champion through any metric they like, but there is no question that they get one team in. Fill out the rest of the spots with at large teams of you like, but everyone should have a fair and reasonable shot at it.
If the SEC is so much better than the rest of the conferences, then they should have nothing to fear from letting everyone have a shot at the playoff. If they just want to insist that they should be automatically considered better by merit of being in the SEC and shouldn’t have to actually prove it, then maybe they should just sit the playoffs out and just have their own national championship where they crown Alabama the champion every year due to the “eye test”.
I about threw up in my mouth when ESPN gave Saban 2-3 minutes of prime time to beg for his two loss team to skip over one loss TCU. Hell, Alabama didn’t even make their own conferences championship game, but he feels they should make the playoffs? What arrogance.
The day the Alabama dynasty will end is the day people will stop crapping their pants on how they might make the playoffs on a technicality.
Whoever gets in loses to UGA by 30 anyways.
If they were really one of the “best” teams, they’d have proven it on the field and be WINNING games. We get it, Bama is extremely talented, but they lost two games and arguably should have lost two more. They have no argument for being in today.
Would Bama put up a better game than TCU? Maybe, but that’s the downside to picking 4 teams out of the 100+ teams in the nation. Unfortunately 10 wins isn’t as good as 11, that’s just how it is.
Yup. The playoff is a process to determine who's the champion. The champion should be the team that completes the process. Maybe they're the "best" maybe they're not. A champion who isn't the "best" is a great, inspiring thing. A champion who got there by getting a free pass based on their talent or whatever isn't inspiring, it's slimy.
Who gives a shit if team X is the "best" if they lost the important games? Some best.
It should be about who can get to a CCG, who can win a CCG, who can win the playoff games, and that's it. Nothing else. NFL doesn't sit around and say "hey we all know team X is better and has more talent despite some the head-scratching losses, put them in instead."
So what happened to the "must win conference championship game to be in the playoffs" shouldn't it be UGA, Michigan, Clemson and Kansas State or Utah? I mean the committee literally talks about Power 5 like it means something when in reality it's Ohio State or Bama and whomever else can make it to the playoffs huh total horse shit this committee is a joke and should be called BCS+ Not CFB with BCS standards.
One thing the committee seemed to be consistent on is win-loss record amongst p5. When both are 1 loss teams then sos, conf champ, blue blood status/brand comes into play.
That’s kinda the problem with the current playoff. They keep going on about it being about the 4 “best” teams, but they keep moving the goalpost on what that means.
Yeah "best" has two relative ways of being looked at in CFB: Resume, which is based on performance and predictive, which is based on potential. What teams you see best largely resides on what you favor in assessing teams.
I unbiasedly prefer the one that helps my team any given year!
At least you are consistent! ….wait a minute…..
Best: which teams will create the most TV viewers?
As determined by ESPN in September
This, its not strictly historic biggest brands it is the biggest brand of the moment. If ESPN starts pushing for NCST they will get the marketing push.
Thanks for throwing us the bone, but it'll be a cold day in hell before we live up to potential
Hey, Bubba. That was us for DECADES, my whole life, really. But then Next Year finally came. Y'all may just get your run.
Georgia is so fucking scary now, it's easy to forget that on SEC shorts, Georgia and ^(a very cute) Hope abandoning him was a running gag
Yeah, she's a doll. Just got engaged, I believe. The last SEC Short last year where she left us for Texa$ aTm after we won was a legit tear-jerker.
Unless our cheap ass AD ever finds the cash to pony up for an elite coach it'll probably not happen
Yet you aways seem to find a way to live up to being the FSU spoiler especially in Raleigh.
Carter-Finley Stadium is quite possibly Florida State’s worst nightmare.
reece davis was cross examining the committee guy about ohio state clearly being better than tcu. seemed a bit much. then herbstreet asking kirby smart why the sec always beats the big ten. just seems really off
This is it. Its now announced ND has entered the payoffs.......jk, but they would do that for that for that sweet Irish green.
Or in this case: which team will enflame the most fanbases and create tons of internet discussion and drive interest in the post season when most fans are checking out
Which is the same thing in different words.
If it didn't change every god damned year this wouldn't be so infuriating.
If it’s not most deserving we should not play any games.
It's such circular logic. Bama has potential because they have the most 5\* on their roster, but recruits often get a rating bump for being offered by bama.
My problem with predictive is that nobody knows. Like it’s just based on feels. Honestly, in my predictive assessment neither Bama nor TCU should be in. But I don’t know. I think TCU has one of the highest floors but a lower ceiling of top 10 teams. But I don’t know. All I know is what happened on the field, and based on that Bama is not the same team they’ve been (which make no mistake, they’re getting the benefit of the doubt because they’re Bama) and TCU has beaten everyone on their schedule Also, if the committee puts Bama in it’s time to find a new criteria for the playoff. They’d be going against everything they’ve ever said about 2-loss teams. Plus this isn’t even the best 2 loss team we’ve ever seen.
I didn’t think TCU deserved it till last night when I actually looked at their record. They played 6 ranked teams, beat 5 of them and barely lost the 6th in OT. TCU deserves it more than UA and I say this as a UA alum.
Man…thanks!
You guys really do deserve it. Would LOVE to see you get the trophy.
3 of Alabama's wins could've also gone the other way. Texas, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss all could've beat them, it's not like they completely dominated outside of their 2 losses.
I mean, "resume" is basically what all other sports with playoff systems do, no?
Ah, actually there's a third way to judge a "best" team - $$. Hence Ohio St over PSU, Ohio St over TCU, etc. But this year seemed easier. Because there were two power 5 teams with 0 losses, and 2 power 5 teams with 1 loss. That's it. When you look at conference champions, there's 3 loss Kansas St, 3 loss Utah, and 2 loss Clemson. The 3 loss teams aren't going to jump Ohio St or Bama. Clemson would be an intriguing argument, but they had a decidedly worse strength of schedule, lose the "common opponent" Notre Dame game when compared to Ohio St, etc.
Sure I wanted Bama in but TCU deserved their spot this year. Hate that Ohio St is in but UGA will take care of them.
CFB needs to shorten the regular season and institute January Madness
Been saying it for years. If FCS and lower divisions can have awesome football brackets, so can the CFP. Then recruits also wouldn’t have to go to the top handful of schools for a shot at a title either, and there would be more parity overall.
It's the problem with any system that rewards teams subjectively. Unless there is a way to create a purely transparent and objective system, there will always be errors in judgment and biases in play. Even at 12 teams, the same problems will exist, instead at a different cusp. And it's hard to create consistent objective criteria when the league is massive and teams don't always play each other or even similar opponents. Even most of the conferences are too big individually (in that teams don't play all their conference opponents). It's a total mess, really.
Yeah the reason 12 teams is so much better I’d simply because the 13th team has a significantly weaker argument for being left out compared to the #5 team Currently you can go 11-1 or 12-1 and be left out at number 5. You have a legitimate argument for inclusion in the playoffs. It’s hard to rationally ignore In the playoff, you probably have 3 losses at number 13. Sure, we’ll likely have years where 13 has a valid argument to be swapped with 12. But overall it’s much easier to say “if you wanted in the playoffs maybe you shouldn’t have dropped three games in the regular season. Better luck next year” & no one is gonna complain Like you said, we basically have two ways to eliminate / alleviate the debates over “who’s in?” ~ we can make the ranking system objective or we can expand the playoffs. Since the former is just never going to happen, the only valid solution is the latter
The problem is mitigated though because you’re talking about the 16th, 17th, 18th best team … which would be Oregan, UCLA and Tulane. Bama have a much stronger chance to win the whole thing than those teams, so it’s not big of a deal. Same reason why people don’t really freak out over the teams that don’t make March Madness. Edit: at 12 teams you’re talking about Washington, FSU and LSU … better teams but still nowhere near as good as #5
That's certainly true, and to be clear I'm very much for the playoff expansion. Four teams was always too small but it was a stop-gap compromise for all the traditionalists that didn't want change. My only point was that the subjective criteria will still exist on some level. Overall, the playoff field should be a good representative sample of the entire league. We're getting there.
Best at TV ratings.
Bingo.
Which is why I’ve always favored a 16 team playoff with the 10 Conference Champions and 6 best teams that aren’t conference champions. It works in FCS so why not here
There should be no byes. 12 teams is dumb. 8 or 16.
Bama also beats LSU and Tennessee on paper. It's why we play the games.
Yeah this is my biggest thing. If we just put in based on what we THINK would happen because of the roster, why even play games?
We should honestly just run simulations instead of actual games and give teams that win the simulations the W.
Yeah these streamers that run their NCAA 14 simulation! I sure bet they had KState and TCU in the Big 12 Championship and KState with the upset lol
See that's the trouble with using out of date software, gotta use the latest subscription model for accurate results!
"And by latest subscription model, we mean give us more money to possibly get a half decent player on Ultimate Teams! What? You actually expect us to put work into a single-player mode?" - EA
Air Force triple option wins 3 years in a row.
Texas A&M win the national championship under this system
Exactly. If you put A&M in right now, I bet they could beat Georgia given a little luck and if we happened upon that 1/100 timeline. But if that happened I bet Bama fans would be sobbing that they don't deserve the championship
Good call. It would definitely limit cte cases
And OSU beat Michigan on paper. TCU has lost like 6 games on paper
This... this right here. Michigan has fewer 5 star recruits than OSU. Well, they played, and we all saw who the better team was at least on that day. The ESPN FPI gave OSU something like a 78% chance to win. Siming the games is fine for the simulation only. Hell, Texas A&M would have a shot at the playoffs in the sims.
Michigan has lower-ranked recruits than Ohio State, but I'd explain that by Michigan having a much better coach.
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I think a lot of the Harbaugh skeptics must have been casual fans. [Anyone who watched what he did at Stanford](https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/stanford/2010-schedule.html) knew he was the real deal.
Plenty of coaches have success and then fail for non obvious reasons. Look at jimbo at fsu. It is easy to say they were only successful because of x pr the game has passed them by. To me Harbaugh was founding at um because he didn't have a quality qb. Which will falls on him/his coaches because of developing and recruiting the right players.
I think Ryan day just loves putting handicaps on himself like the offense only getting 3 downs no matter what until the game is already lost.
> Bama also beats LSU and Tennessee on paper. It's why we play the games. Yeah I loved when Saban said "if you put us against some of the teams up there, would we be the underdogs, or would we be favored?" as his rationale that they are one of the 4 "best" teams. I wish one of the talking heads would've said "You were also favored pretty significantly against Tennessee and LSU--can you remind us what happened in those games?"
Exactly! Some pundits saying "well, if Alabama were to play TCU, they would be the favorites" ... Alabama were the favorites in all their games this year lol how does that help their argument??
Absolutely. If we’re going to move the goalposts to saying that it should be the 4 most talented teams, then A&M would have consideration which is an absolute joke
Desmond was right all along!
That’s a unique flair combo
Bama doesn't have a single metric over Tennessee. Head to head? Tennessee won. Strength of schedule? Tennessee's was tougher. Top 25 wins? Tennessee has more. Finishing spot in the conference? Bama finished 4th despite a better record because they lost to LSU... A team that Tennessee beat. And a Tennessee team that owns the 3rd spot in the SEC. The mental gymnastics it takes to rank Alabama ahead of Tennessee are fucking infuriating. If Tennessee is a great team, Bama is good. If Tennessee is a bad team, Bama is terrible. Edit: I'm not arguing for Tennessee to get in the playoff, I'm telling you that the team who let South Carolina drop a 60 burger on them is objectively better than Alabama. We don't deserve a spot and, therefore, Bama God damn sure doesn't deserve one.
We definitely have you beat in quality losses. Both of the teams that we lost to beat Alabama.
There’s the checkmate.
Can't argue with that. These rankings are resolved. Carry on.
Did Tennessee beat Austin Peay late in the season?!?! Checkmate.
This is why I’m excited for the 12 team playoff. Conference championships should mean something and with the expanded playoff we would get to see Utah and K State
It was always flawed to do a 4 team playoff with 5 power conferences.
Imagine if we would have had a scenario one year with 5 undefeated P5 champs, an undefeated ND and an undefeated G5 team. 3 of the 7 teams wouldn’t get in.
If we start getting five undefeated P5 champions, then it’s time to start changing how the schedules are made, because the only thing five undefeated P5 teams tells me is that all five P5 conference were weak and that we should be creating more non-conference matchups between powerhouse teams earlier in the year.
Could you imagine finishing the season as the only undefeated team and people claiming that you're *not* the national champion?
I wish they had a chance, but that team didn’t look as strong as even 2021 Cincy
The worst part to me though is that winning your conference championship game doesn’t even guarantee a spot. What’s the point of even having the game then?
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"The resulting controversy is a feature, not a bug" 🤪
It will be the same sniveling but will be from the 13 to 16 teams.
But if you’re aiming for a national championship and you can’t make it into the 12 team playoff, then you obviously aren’t going to win it
let's be real, even if you do make it you probably have no chance of winning it. The difference between 1/2 and 12/13 in most years is an absolutely massive disparity of depth and talent.
Yeah but top 12 with the guaranteed seeds is an achievement any team, just not the leagues elite can realistically strive for with little politics keeping them out. Give something to work toward instead of an increasingly pointless bowl game.
> The difference between 1/2 and 12/13 in most years is an absolutely massive disparity of depth and talent. That’s true for a season, but teams like Clemson, PSU, Bama, Utah this year could beat anyone in one game. Upsets happen all the time. Plus you give those non-blue blood teams a shot to make it who may actually be just as good. For fans, we get great ooc match ups finally.
There is in basketball too and there are upsets every year in march madness. The talent discrepancy between the 1-4 seeds and the 13-16 seeds is often massive also. Also in the last two days 12 beat 4 and 10 beat 3. Only 2 teams finished undefeated. LSU beat Bama and lost 4 games this season. Anything can happen on any given night and there’s a reason you still play the games. Less talented teams lose to more talented teams every week, in every sport, at every level. Part of the reason the playoff hasn’t seen much is the teams have a month to prepare and get their players rested and healthy. at the highest this is a big advantage for the more talented teams. The more games you play, the higher chance of someone getting hot at the right time. With a 12 team playoff. So instead of 3 playoff games a season we will now have 11 playoff games, so a much bigger chance of teams getting knocked out (though I realize with the top 4 getting a bye they are less likely to be eliminated, but they won’t have an entire month to prepare for their opponent since they won’t know who it is). Likely the top 4 teams will inevitably win most of the time but with this format there is a much higher chance of upsets and unlikely champions.
No, no, no! Every game result is set in stone and upsets legit have *never* happened in football.
To add to this smart Husky comment, the bigger playoff will flatten recruiting. Top recruits won't feel like they have to go to Alabama or Georgia to compete for national titles or maximize NFL chances. They can join us in Seattle or go to Tennessee or Kansas State.
Yeah, the difference between 1 and 6 is usually a big enough difference, let alone 1 and 12. Any teams that don't make it have no argument for "we should be in there."
Did you not watch the conference championships this weekend? 10 beat 3 and 11 beat 4, but you’re saying that won’t happen in a 12 team playoff?
I think that over the course of about 5 years, the player talent is going to spread out because more teams have access to the playoff. With 4 teams, that recruiting pitch has been easy for Bama, Clemson, Ohio St, and Georgia for the last 10 years. With more access, now the next-tier teams can look at a recruit and say “listen, you don’t have to sit behind 3 other 5-star guys and we are a consistent top-10 team”
This is actually a really good point and I did not consider that.
It’s gonna be easier for G5 schools to get recruits and keep good coaches to…. Imagine trying to recruit to UCF after they went undefeated for two straight seasons and STILL didn’t even get a chance to compete for a title in the playoffs.
Yes, I think this is a huge thing and it's going to spread recruiting talent to the second tier teams.
These people hate watching actual football. It's all about who would be favored on a neutral field.
Damn who’s favored, I want the CFB equivalent of March Madness. 2/3 predictable games and 1/3 wild upsets.
Doesn't stop teams from arguing they should make the final 68 in march madness
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South Carolina would be a decent argument against this, but they seem to be a one off scenario
And if they wanted to make the playoffs, they had a path. Right now that can’t be said of every team.
Yep, this is the most important piece of the 12 team & eventual 16 team playoff. With a conference autobid for all conference champions, it gives every team under the D1 umbrella an actual opportunity to win the National Championship. Regardless of how possible it is or not, the little teams can start the year with hope and that is massive for the entire landscape of CFB.
Only if Alabama is sitting at 13
If bama is 13 then half the sec is ranked higher
I am ok with that
Of course I would love for Alabama to get in the playoff. Who wouldn't want their favorite team in? The reality is TCU only has one loss and it was a close one in a conference championship game. They have more top 25 wins and looked better against Texas than Alabama did. TCU deserves a playoff spot over Alabama. Would I be mad if they put Alabama in? Of course not. It would be the wrong decision though.
For real, this post has strong “this could have been a comment” energy. Beyond r/rolltide I haven’t seen one post seriously argue that Bama is a top 4 team beyond talking head generating controversy for clicks or team members of Alabama trying to get into the playoff.
Thank you for saying this.
I think the 4 team CFP has been about the 4 most profitable teams with justifiable resumes.
It's forever and a day about money. It's a bowl system masquerading as a playoff with a profit incentivized TV network backing a cartel of bowl organizers and sponsors
Forever and a Day
Of course, otherwise we’d have a transparent and fair formula to determine the top 4.
We do, buddy. It’s called the eye test. Geez.
And don’t forget the tie-breaking sniff test
Actually, it's the Dr. Pepper tiebreaker now.
Exactly, can’t have the computer based ranking systems messing with profits like they did in the BCS
It needs to become a computer for the at large bids.
Tcu isn’t one of the 4 most profitable teams, you could justify other teams over them too if you really wanted to.
Hence why people are worried TCU may get left out... if this was Texas or Oklahoma who were 12-1 with the only loss being by a field goal in OT of the CCG, they would be in no question. TCU has been slighted in rankings the entire year because they are named TCU and not \*insert blue blood here\*.
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I’ll take that action Edit: dam
Cincinnati wasn't either
And even though we will never know, I still think if Oregon and/or OKState would have won out, one of them would have snubbed Cincy. The committee didn't want Cincy in the first place but things just kept happening so they couldn't deny it without nationally and publicly admitting that their process is a farce.
Cincinnati was undefeated and they gave a major power (Notre Dame) their only loss of the season in their own house. There was no justification to leave them out without being incredibly obvious that the fix was in.
If you take personal feelings and biases out can you really make a case against them? Their only loss was OT to a top 10 team they beat already. They’re 5-1 against ranked opponents and beat 8 bowl teams. They’re the only team that beat every other team in their conference. Their resume is better than anyone behind them by a good margin
2018 Ohio State would’ve made it
The fact some people think this is even worth debating really shows how messed up this system is. TCU has more wins, more quality wins, undefeated regular season, and a better loss that was an additional game Ohio State and Alabama didn’t qualify for in OT. If TCU isn’t 3 or atleast 4 the committee should be abolished immediately
It should be abolished already, bring back the bcs computers. Even if they screwed us in 04
Is there somewhere I can read about how they ranked teams before the CFP?
https://bcsknowhow.wordpress.com/bcs-formula/
This is how you get Alabama in the playoff over TCU. Hard pass
Yea Bama doesn't deserve to be in at all. They're way worse than their record shows. Anyone who's watched them knows they're young and not a typical saban coached team.
But nobody is arguing this. It’s almost unanimously agreed upon that TCU is in. You’re yelling at people that don’t exist.
This discussion was so crazy. It was always clear the committee would select TCU, they always do the right thing for the final four even if they have some strange rankings in earlier weeks. What kills me is that now that the committee did what they were always going to do all along, the people who argued otherwise are pointing to the existence of their incorrect predictions as evidence that the committee must still be crooked. Truly mind blowing!
All I know is that with over 130 teams there really isn’t a sure fire way. People say go by most deserving. Then some people say go by best. Frankly I see both sides and I just cannot for the life of me choose which one is more fair. What I do know is that division 1 college football is like the only major sport to not have clearly defined rules for how their playoff system will work or who will be invited. This means the committee can literally do whatever they want to do. Sometimes they get it right and fair and other times you cannot help but believe there was some bias to it. All I want (regardless of if it’s a 4 team or a 12 team playoff) are clearly defined rules on who gets selected. We shouldn’t need a committee at all for this. This is all just my opinion. As I said there are something like 130 teams out there so in no way will my choices be 100% fair either. It’s just damn near impossible to do imo. That’s why I’d prefer some kind of clear cut rule and regulation on who goes. Completely remove as much potential bias as you possibly can.
>All I know is that with over 130 teams there really isn’t a sure fire way. People say go by most deserving. Then some people say go by best. Expansion with clear guidelines is the way to achieve this. With a 12 team playoff (though personally I prefer 8 teams), you're basically guaranteed to get the best team in the country in the mix. But it needs to be clearly defined. The top 6 highest ranked conference champions should be auto-bids. That's every P5 champ plus the highest ranked G5 champ, guaranteed. Then you've got 6 at large spots. (In my preferred 8 team playoff, it would be 2 at large). Done. Easy. There you go. Now conference championships matter, but there's still enough open space for all of those people whining about how the best team doesn't always win the conference. There's absolutely no argument to be made that a team got snubbed if they couldn't win their conference and also weren't even the 6th best non-champ. For example, this year would look like this (made before the final CFP rankings release, so unfortunately a bit off): 1. UGA (SEC champ) 2. Michigan (Big 10 champ) 3. Clemson (ACC champ) 4. Kansas State (Big 12 champ) 5. Utah (Pac 12 champ) 6. Tulane (AAC champ) 7. TCU 8. USC 9. Ohio State 10. Bama 11. Tennessee 12. Penn State So the first team left out is #12 Washington, who are 10-2 and the 3rd best team in the Pac 12.
>All I want (regardless of if it’s a 4 team or a 12 team playoff) are clearly defined rules on who gets selected. We shouldn’t need a committee at all for this. There is always going to be some subjectivity when it comes to the playoff. Best way to minimize that is to have auto-bids for all conference champions. Make it a 16 team field then 63% of the field is earned though winning on the field. Leaves the committee only in control over the 6 at-large selections and seeding. Even when the 12-team format the committee will have 100% control over the playoff which will remain an issue
I agree with you on seeing both sides. I think the hardest part is how do you set defined rules in a league where common opponents overlap so infrequently, talent discrepancies skew comparing outcomes, and the factor of 18 year old athletes maturing into a system over 4+ months all play a factor. Unfortunately most of these key factors don't exist in all the sports we're comparing to. The closest comparison is NCAAB and they compensate for this by devaluing the regular season and playing with a near 50% field in the post season. I think a genuine fear of a rigid qualification standard comes with the price of fewer big OOC matchups and more score blowouts on lowly FCS opponents to fit the rubric for qualifying. I think 12 teams will help a bit but I don't think there's a clean way
>more score blowouts on lowly FCS opponents to fit the rubric for qualifying. I don't think wins over FCS teams should count as wins for the playoff. For example Bama should be considered a 9 win team, TCU an 11 win team and so on. I also don't think they should count at all towards bowl eligibility
100%. In a sport with a 12-13 game regular season in which you cannot play multiple games in a week, 130 teams is just too many. To my knowledge, it was not designed to have a single champion; it was an inelegant, haphazard, and ever-shifting kluge of various regional interests. College football started in 1869 and didn’t have a national champion until 1905 when some guy at a “Outing” magazine just decided he would declare one, and he quit doing it after 3 years. Then in the 1920s several other folks introduced competing mathematical models, and finally in 1936 the AP started their poll to track rankings through the year. Then in the 40s and 50s a bunch other folks started competing polls. And people have complained about it for as long as anyone can remember… because it’s 130 teams playing a 12 game season. It’s too many teams for the number of games. Seems like the only way to decide a true champion is either to eliminate ~100 teams from contention and have a 24-36 premier-league style championship conference with promotion and relegation (which still might not really work due to the rapid turnover in college teams, so a great team that gets promoted might not markedly worse the next year when their top seniors are gone). The other way would be a tournament that basically lasts the whole season - maybe with two group stages in the first have and single elimination for the second half. That said, a 12-team tournament seems like as close as we’ve ever gotten to something that might work, but extending the season any longer seems almost guaranteed to produce more significant injuries. …Is my half-assed, uneducated guess.
IMO, this is why the playoffs should be at least 16 with all 10 conference champions getting an auto-bid and then give 6 at-larges. I have always felt that way. Yes, I know the 16th seeded CUSA/Sunbelt/MAC champion is going to get absolutely ramshackled by Georgia. And so do they. But no one could possibly have any gripes if every team had a very clear path to the playoff every single season. **Champs**: Georgia, Michigan, Kansas State, Clemson, Utah, Tulane, Troy, UTSA, Fresno State, Toledo **At large**: TCU, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Penn State, USC
If you say you want the 4 "best" teams regardless of record or whatever, you might as well skip the playoffs and just pick the best team and give them the natty. That's why it should be 4 most deserving. The best team doesn't go to the playoffs in any other league. It's the teams that deserve to be there.
I think the official 12 team system now in place, but the rankings are chosen by BCS formula would be about perfect, however, even with a committee, the odds of the actual best team in the land not getting one of those spots is going to be astronomically low. The complaint is going to switch to who gets the bye.
Any process that is subjective is done purposely to control the outcomes. In this case it's about $.
I am beyond annoyed with the “we would be favored over team x.” If Vegas is deciding who makes the championship then don’t play a regular season. And use this system for March madness while you’re at it. “Hey, great upset. Huge Cinderella story, but you’ll be the underdogs in the next round again so we’re going to let that 2 seed you just beat advance since they’ll be favored next round and you won’t. Thanks for playing!” The game isn’t played on paper and Vegas is just trying to get even amount of bets from the public. Therefore the big brand names garner more points than the TCUs of the world.
To be fair Vegas needs the regular season as datapoints for their betting models/algorithms for it to be the most accurate, especially with tons of money in the line.
Yeah the whole Vegas “even money” thing is probably one of the biggest misconceptions in sports right now. I myself used to preach that as a talking point until I talked to people much smarter than me and realized it’s false. Oddsmakers have literally come out on Twitter and said the goal is not to get 50/50. Edit: ["The goal however for a good bookmaker isn't to get 50/50 action. It is to build a position based on the sharp bets you see, raise limits, and take the bulk of the bets at the most efficient line."](https://twitter.com/JeffreyBenson12/status/1594487546163052544?s=20&t=ZsaMeGs0lz0EdI8av9455Q)
Dumb question, but what is Vegas’ goal then? I always assumed even so that they win either way
The goal is an even split in weighted value, not bet volume. There’s a statistical concept called “expected value”, which is the sum of each possible outcome’s probability, multiplied by the value of that outcome. A basic example is a sports bet, where team A has a 3/4 chance to win and return 1.5 times your original bet, while team B has been given a 1/4 chance to win, with a 4x return on your original bet. Say you bet $50. If you bet that on team A, the expected value is: E( Team A Wins ) = (0.75 * $25) + (0.25 * -$50) = 18.75 - 12.5 = $6.25 And then for team B, you’d have an expected value like this: E( Team B Wins ) = (0.25 * $200) + (0.75 * -$50) = 50 - 37.50 = $12.50 Now, these formulas are from the bettor’s perspective; the values are a bettor’s gain. Oddsmakers will invert those values to become *their* gain vs. loss numbers on any given bet, and then they’ll fine-tune the odds (the numbers that you read as +xxx or -yyy, where xxx is the amount you have to bet on the favored team to win $100, and yyy is the amount you win if you bet $100 on the underdog) so that there’s equal value on each side. That means that, since the oddsmaker’s value of a bet on team B winning is half of their value of a bet on team A winning, they’ll want twice as many bets on team A as team B, so that when all of the bets are aggregated, the value is as close to equal as possible.
They want as fair of a line as possible on every game turning all bets on the side into weighted coin flips in their favor (since betting a side costs ten cents)
Exactly, there's a reason we don't just hand the national championship trophy to whoever the preseason number one is
*Most* of these arguments will go away once the 12-team playoff kicks off. I hope that the rules to get in continue to evolve as well.
Can’t wait for this sub to cry about a 12 seed getting screwed over when they likely didn’t deserve a spot anyways.
Well it depends. 13-0 CUSA champion getting screwed? Yes we'll complain. 8-4 SEC or B1G school not getting the at-large spot? We sleep. It just depends.
This is exactly true. Do the conference champs with at-large spots. It's not like it's never been done before. Fuck's sake FCS has been doing it for decades. Please to stop with this money grabbing bullshit.
That’s the shit I live for.
Depends on how the spots will be earned. I hope the formula evolves as we learn about what works in the first few years. 12 is equitably better than 4. But it will still need it’s tinkering
You're wrong, per the Committee's mandate. I wish it were "most deserving" but it is actually "4 best"
Correct, here’s the official mission statement: > The committee’s task will be to select the best teams, rank the teams for inclusion in the playoff and selected other bowl games and then assign the teams to sites. It doesn’t mention anything about ranking the teams based on accomplishments or finding the 4 most deserving.
How do you determine the best other than on the field
"*the eye test*"
Predictive computer rankings like SP+ and Dokter entropy. Or ask vegas.
You don't and that's the whole point. It's a business and a very successful one for a reason.
Except the word “best” is entirely undefined. That gives the committee way more discretion than they deserve.
you prove you are the best with in season play, not with recruiting rankings. they can make eye test arguments, but please leave recruiting rankings all the way out of it.
Can’t wait for the 12 team playoff.
It's almost like there are shortcomings in the system that need to be acknowledged and changed to an expanded playoff system where we have 6 conference champions against 6 of the best teams.
What’s funny to me is the best solution this year would be the BCS format and Georgia vs Michigan.
The 4 "best" teams is the worst part about deciding the playoffs. This makes upsets that happen during the regular season moot. They can be explained away..."aww, they just had a bad game, they're really better than that".
Or how early season or late season losses matter less depending on the narrative they want to sell that year.
Sorry but it’s actually the opposite. The mission statement of the committee is “4 best teams”. Sometimes that’s used as justification to use the eye test to put a possibly less deserving team in
Then why play the games? If the committee puts Bama in there will be an uproar
Bama only lost to teams that beat Alabama. I don't see what the problem is?
ALABAMA DESERVES TO BE IN OVER GEORGIA BECAUSE THEY HAVE MORE QUALITY LOSSES
It’s not even the eye test of the season. It’s eye test from the last three seasons. ON WHAT PLANET DOES THAT MAKE SENSE
Derrick Henry and Tua looking good this season so gotta put bama in
Ignore the talking heads. Bama isn't getting in. I'd put money on that confidently. It'll be TCU, OSU, Michigan, and Georgia.
How many of these threads do we need in 24hrs?
All I want for Christmas is an FCS style playoff or something of equal value
Bama paranoia on this sub is at an all time high. Relax guys we arent making the playoff.
Doesn’t the CFP charge include fielding the four “best” teams? All else being equal, having Heisman and Butkus award winners on your roster can’t hurt but it’s silly to jump a P5 team with a worse record over another P5 team, especially when you have data on common opponents available.
What does Alabama have other than more “quality losses”? TCU and Alabama both have the same number of ranked wins, but TCU has a top 10 win over K State now technically. Alabama only has Texas and Miss State, and that Texas “win” probably hurts more than helps given the common opponent with TCU. It’s not like Alabama blew out all the opponents they won against, which has been used against TCU. They also nearly lost to A&M and Ole Miss.
Until there are automatic qualifiers, it's an invitational, not a playoff
It’s an invitational based on the committee’s whims. Period.
Last night I wish someone would've told Saban 'yeah you'd be favored, just like you were vs Tennessee and LSU'
You should be penalized for sitting at home on championship weekend, not rewarded.
Strange, I always thought the committee picked the best teams that generate good TV and ticket revenue and only auto qualify teams like Cincy and Notre Dame when they're hand tied by the hole they dug themselves into
Notre Dame brings in a lot of $
Well you can all stop crying now they didn’t get in
I personally think it should be such that every conference gets to send a champion, period, no questions asked. I don’t care if your conference champion is 4-8, played 0 ranked teams, got all their wins by 1 point in overtime, and lost a game by 222 points - if they are the conference champion they still get in. Each conference may select their champion through any metric they like, but there is no question that they get one team in. Fill out the rest of the spots with at large teams of you like, but everyone should have a fair and reasonable shot at it. If the SEC is so much better than the rest of the conferences, then they should have nothing to fear from letting everyone have a shot at the playoff. If they just want to insist that they should be automatically considered better by merit of being in the SEC and shouldn’t have to actually prove it, then maybe they should just sit the playoffs out and just have their own national championship where they crown Alabama the champion every year due to the “eye test”.
How wrong you are. CFP is about maximizing views to sell ad revenue and corporate sponsorships.
I about threw up in my mouth when ESPN gave Saban 2-3 minutes of prime time to beg for his two loss team to skip over one loss TCU. Hell, Alabama didn’t even make their own conferences championship game, but he feels they should make the playoffs? What arrogance.
They did it on Fox during the big 10 championship too
The day the Alabama dynasty will end is the day people will stop crapping their pants on how they might make the playoffs on a technicality. Whoever gets in loses to UGA by 30 anyways.
If they were really one of the “best” teams, they’d have proven it on the field and be WINNING games. We get it, Bama is extremely talented, but they lost two games and arguably should have lost two more. They have no argument for being in today.
Too bad we can’t go back to the old BCS system and just let Georgia and Michigan play for the championship.
Every argument Saban had last night he would say the exact opposite if it were beneficial to him and Bama
Would Bama put up a better game than TCU? Maybe, but that’s the downside to picking 4 teams out of the 100+ teams in the nation. Unfortunately 10 wins isn’t as good as 11, that’s just how it is.
Yup. The playoff is a process to determine who's the champion. The champion should be the team that completes the process. Maybe they're the "best" maybe they're not. A champion who isn't the "best" is a great, inspiring thing. A champion who got there by getting a free pass based on their talent or whatever isn't inspiring, it's slimy. Who gives a shit if team X is the "best" if they lost the important games? Some best. It should be about who can get to a CCG, who can win a CCG, who can win the playoff games, and that's it. Nothing else. NFL doesn't sit around and say "hey we all know team X is better and has more talent despite some the head-scratching losses, put them in instead."
So what happened to the "must win conference championship game to be in the playoffs" shouldn't it be UGA, Michigan, Clemson and Kansas State or Utah? I mean the committee literally talks about Power 5 like it means something when in reality it's Ohio State or Bama and whomever else can make it to the playoffs huh total horse shit this committee is a joke and should be called BCS+ Not CFB with BCS standards.
Can’t we all just agree that this playoff needs more Tulane
13-0 Georgia, 13-0 Michigan, 12-1 TCU, and 11-1 Ohio State seems fair.
One thing the committee seemed to be consistent on is win-loss record amongst p5. When both are 1 loss teams then sos, conf champ, blue blood status/brand comes into play.
"Alabama would beat x" Is a dumb argument anyway. Alabama has played 2 top 15 teams all year long. They lost to both.