This, of course, is the week we see the selection committee’s first work. It’ll be interesting to see how it matches up with this week’s Mumme Poll results.
Rank Team Votes 1 Mississippi State 73 2 Florida State 71 3 Alabama 70 4 Auburn 66 5 Oregon 63 6 Georgia 59 7 Mississippi 51 8 TCU 46 9 Michigan State 29 10 Kansas State 20 11 Notre Dame 16 12 Arizona 5 12 Ohio State 5 14 Baylor 4 15 LSU 2 15 Arizona State 2 17 Oklahoma 1 17 Marshall 1
Get The Picture 
Gut prediction for the Committee:
Mississippi State
Florida State
Notre Dame
Oregon
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I tend to think that is about right. If they include a second SEC team will likely be Bama and knock out Oregon.
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They should knock out ND at this point from that four for Bama or Auburn in my opinion.
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I honestly have no clue what to do with Alabama through Notre Dame. Fortunately for clarity, many of them still play one another. Also, fortunately for ND, MSU, and Oregon, those guys don’t.
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Notre Dame used to have, when they were winning regularly, a huge bump in the normal polls because there are so many more newspapers in the midwest than in in, say, the south. Is Notre Dame going to have to actually earn its ranking with the new system? We shall see, I reckon.
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Yeah, my Dad always said that’s why Michigan and Notre Dame have so many national championships because the Northern newspapers so outnumbered the Southern ones back in the day that they always got the tie breaker when in doubt by sheer numbers.
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You are right about ND but it wasn’t just the Midwest papers, it was the Northeast as well, they are almost exclusive ND in their support….and they don’t even watch/follow CFB. If the committee puts ND in there with their one and only decent win a close game against Stanford, they lose major credibility, imo. Not in a conference so you set your own schedule, already have a loss, and you have no impressive wins does not equate to a Top 4 position. Not saying they could make it there by season’s end but they are about 11-14 on my list. If they beat AZ State and USC impressively and the right teams in front of them fall, they could have a case but not with what they have done so far. Good team, not great.
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Wow, I see through red and black glasses myself but I can’t understand how UGA is ahead of Ole Miss – I had both in my top 8 but Ole Miss’s loss to LSU was better than our loss to USCe and Ole Miss’s win against Bama is better than any of our wins to date. Hard to justify a ballot that includes UGA but does not include Ole Miss – unless the justification is that the voter does not include teams that pay players – in which case those voters have to leave off Auburn too.
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SEC BIASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
(says the Ohio State alum who voted for five SEC West teams in his top eight)
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Wish we could clear up the perceived conference bias a little easier. I’ve got a simple solution that will almost certainly never get adopted.
Have two weekends a year set aside for out of conference games that teams must “qualify” for. The games will be among the top 48 teams as determined by an agreed metric (likely a combination of polls and computers). There will be two sets of teams – the top 24 from the prior year and the top 24 from the prior 4 years average that were not in the prior year’s top 24. Each team will play one team from it’s own group of 24 and one team from the other group of 24. Each team will get one road game and one home game. No team will play a team that is in it’s conference or a traditional rival that is already on the schedule. (For example, UGA could not draw Tech but could get Clemson in a year they are not on the schedule or UF could get Miami but not FSU.)
Games will be picked via a random selection process that is televised in March or April.
This will also increase the meaning of bowl games as there will almost always be several teams trying to get in/remain in the top 24 and the top 24 for the last 4 years.
Teams not in the top 48 will presumably have kept their schedules open and can schedule other teams not in the top 48 for those two weekends – or take byes and schedule other games on there would-be by weeks.
If this is done, we would have a much better look at how teams from different conferences compare instead of just a game or two here and there.
If conferences went to 8 games, this would allow for 2 decent OOC games, a cupcake and a rivalry OOC game. 9 games would work for conferences where no one has a rivalry OOC game.
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8 teams can stake a claim to the 3rd and 4th slot in the playoff bracket IF this had to be decided today. I’m sure this will all sort itself out and be pretty easy to decide the top 4 at the end of the season….says nobody.
MOAR Playoffs!
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More playoffs just weakens the regular season. Regardless, if you can’t stake a legitimate claim to number 1 (or maybe 2) you”re just lucky to be in the discussion. We already have a 12 game playoff – it’s called the regular season. You just don’t know if it’s single elimination or double elimination – or, once in a blue moon, triple elimination.
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