Saturday was a banner day for the Big Ten.
The Big Ten had a historically bad day. Outside of Ohio State, which asserted control in the second half to beat TCU 40-28, the league’s performance has been ordinary at best through three weeks of the season. Akron’s 39-34 win at Northwestern won’t have any impact on the playoff race, but it continues the well-established narrative that the middle of this league is exceptionally mediocre. This week, it was BYU coming into Madison and punking Wisconsin, 24-21. It was Troy upsetting Nebraska, 24-19. It was 0-2 Temple going to Maryland and dominating for a 35-14 victory. And it was Missouri coming away with a last-second field goal to beat Purdue, 40-37. Obviously, the Buckeyes are very good and are well-positioned to make the College Football Playoff. But this isn’t a one-week trend. Michigan State melted in the desert last Saturday night. Michigan’s loss to Notre Dame in Week 1 erased the Wolverines’ margin for error. Obviously the Buckeyes can carry the banner for the Big Ten all the way to the semifinals, but it would be hard to draw up a worse start for the league than what it has experienced.
From a CFP perspective, as bad as that was, the Pac-12’s playoff picture already appears to be reduced to a heap of smoking rubble.
Which leads me to this question for those of you who advocate that the playoff field should be populated by conference winners only: should Alabama and Georgia live up to early expectations and run the regular season table (if you check out their FPI projections, you’ll find that the Dawgs have only one game with a win projection under 80% and Alabama has none), what team keeps the loser out of the semi-finals field?
The Big Ten has two contenders in Ohio State and Penn State, but as they’re both in the same division, one of those two won’t even make it to their conference title game. Oklahoma looks to be the class of the Big 12; if it turns out that Oklahoma State is a legitimate threat, those two will play each other twice, which will eliminate one or possibly both. The ACC is Clemson.
If you’re an advocate of the best teams playing for the national title — which is supposed to be the selection committee’s guiding principle — essentially all of those teams would have to run the table to avoid being ousted from the semis by the loser of the SECCG. If that doesn’t happen, but any or all of those teams win their conferences, which would you put in ahead of what looks like right now to be one of the country’s two best teams losing to the other?
Get The Picture 
Herbstreit of 200X couldn’t agree with you more!
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I just can’t see the committee’s willingness to allow 2 teams from the SEC in unless the 2nd team is Alabama. If we don’t win the SECCG, the committee is going to use our non-conference schedule against us. All the pundits at the WWL are going to be shilling for the Big 12 winner or ND (if they finish with 1 loss) over the SEC runner-up. Ohio State, Clemson and the SEC champion are in (assuming OSU and Clemson win their leagues).
The only way a 2nd team gets in is if the Big 12-2 champ, the Pac 12 champ, and ND have more than 1 loss.
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Pundits didn’t play any role in last years decision. As I remember it, they thought Ohio would get in and should get in. And some shilled their asses off. Unfortunately, until their is a quantifiable system that has less human input and uses more data, we will have these discussions.
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Some folks cannot/will not believe you…
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Don’t forget that the system quantifiables have changed this year. That sos will matter as well.
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One the one hand, the rest of the country hates the SEC so badly, and wants to will the Big 10, Pac 12, Big 12 into parity that they’d have a fit even worse than last year if 2 SEC teams are in the CFP again. The whole idea behind the playoff was to give all those losers a seat at the table after the BCS turned into “who dies the SEC beat this year.” On the other hand, UGA v Alabama turned out to have awesome ratings.
Maybe the rest of the country is trying to avoid 3 SEC teams in the CFP. OU is legit, everything else west of the Mississippi is trash. Irvin State? Possible, but the rest of the Big 10 is trash and TOSU may be trash, too. Clemson? Legit.
OH, and Auburn sucks.
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Communists will keep the SEC from having two (or three) teams in.
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I’m for expanding to 6 teams, but not for seeding it with conference champions exclusively. I’m ok with allowing the top 6 of the AP to enter the playoffs. I think having a playoff committee is redundant.
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Please explain how a six team bracket would work. After week one, you’re left with three teams. How do three teams play? Would you really want to give Alabama an extra week of rest and preparation after you’ve just played Clemson, and face Oklahoma?
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Yes. Top two teams take a by week the first week of playoffs. There is a benefit for being the best at the top.
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One and two would get a bye in a six-team format.
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I’m only for this if the #3 vs. #6 and #4 vs. #5 games are played the week after the conference championships.
Otherwise, leave it alone.
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No we wouldn’t want to see any “byes”. Going around your thumb to get to your butt by forcing six games just contributes more bullshit subjective reasoning.
The effort that some of you make not to absorb the reasoning for 8 teams is ridiculous. Can’t believe that some of you have fallen for the sideshow of “slippery slope” and “we are going to 32 teams for sure” crud that has infested your minds rather than embrace 8 teams as the final measure of getting a possible NC into the playoffs. Stow the comments about “the 9th and 10th teams’ feelings being hurt” and just try for once to see that 8 has been the true number to be called a “Playoff”. Thank you.
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Yeah..giving byes would just increase the speculation and arguing. “Team 3 lost to team 1 by two points and if 1 had not had that extra week to rest and prepare, blah, blah..”
But we’d hear it and we’d even be spouting it ourselves if we happened to be team 3. Byes are blatantly unfair.
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5th and 6th teams’ feelings being hurt is legit. 9th and 10th team’s feelings being hurt isn’t. It’s all so clear and rational. Thanks.
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Amen, four games played two weeks after the conference championships at Top 4’s home stadiums. Let’s make the regular season and conference championships mean something. No roadblocks by voters/committees. All anyone talks about is the two game playoff. Right now I want undisputed 2nd in SEC titles this year. Anything else is gravy.
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Way, way too early to speculate. While fun to bat around a bit, all this talk is just wasted breath until mid November.
Remember all the fretting on here last season about Notre Dame getting in ahead of us?
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Exactly. But people will do this to themselves every year, because what else have they got to worry about?
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It’s possible that the SEC East is the third best division in college football. That’s how bad the rest of the country has looked so far.
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Seriously. The SEC West is obviously head and shoulders above the rest of the country but I’m not overly impressed with the rest of the country. At the start of the season, it looked like the BIG10 East had finally arrived, but Penn ST needed a 2nd class miracle to beat Appy St, Mich lost to a ND team that struggled against a SEC East bottom dweller and Ohio St was given gifts against TCU to keep them in it until they got on track. The ACC is Clemson and Va Tech. The Big12 is OU and possibly two others. The PAC is the PAC. The SEC East is bad but the rest of CFB is NOT overly impressive. If UF and UT grow to be close to what they were (hopefully not), the SEC East will be the SEC West’s toughest competition.
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And given what we’ve seen out of Stanford’s offense, Ohio State’s defense, Clemson’s offense, and Oklahoma’s defense so far, is it plausible one or more of those teams could find themselves upended in their conference championship game by a 3 loss entrant from the ACC Coastal, P12 South, or B1G West? Yes it is.
The problem with “conference champions only” is that it assumes relative conference parity. In a sport that consciously eschews competitive parity. Laugh at Ole Miss, but they have a W over a B12 team that thumped Houston that thumped Arizona. Vandy took Notre Dame to the wire in South Bend. Those are probably not the worst teams in their divisions, but their in the bottom tier.
Final point: Auburn’s W over Washington and LSU’s W over Miami, combined with the rest of the league’s performance, could end up being the margin for a second SEC team to get into the playoffs. Going with conference champions only makes those games meaningless outside of recruiting visibility and appearance fees, doesn’t it?
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I firmly believe that if we’re the SEC runner up we should get a slot in the playoff.
If we beat Alabama in the SECCG they won’t deserve to advance, period.
I’m kinda actually pulling for 3 of the following: OSU, Clemson, Oklahoma, UW and/or ND to run the table.
I just think our best shot at Alabama will be on 12/1/18. I don’t want to have to beat them twice. Let’s get it done on 12/1 and move on to lesser opposition.
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I agree with Derek. I want December to be it for the SEC both because I don’t want to play Bama 2x and because I don’t want to fuel playoff expansion.
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This. I just can’t get past the winner of the SEC having to beat the SEC Champ game runner up twice to win the natty. It was bad enough that we were made to try to win the conference twice last year, but at least I understood the rationale
If we and Alabama meet in Atlanta in December let that be it.
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JIm..I don’t understand YOUR rationale..which would have eliminated us from the SEC CG because we lost to Auburn.. Your rationale would change the rules for playing in the SEC championship game to require that you did not lose to the winner of the opposing division during the regular season.
Maybe I’m missing something, but you seem to contradict your own thoughts.
Not trying to be contrary here..just curious to how you figure it’s OK to lose to Auburn and still get to play them for the SEC, and not apply that same scenario to the NC.
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I didn’t read his rationale that way at all….
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I did.
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Obviously I’m treating the conference championship, which is formulaic and based on 8 conference games, different than I’m treating the playoff.
How are you going to feel if we beat Alabama in December and then are faced with the prospect of playing them again in the playoffs?
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If they are truly the two best teams, let it be. I don’t want a rule change so we can dodge Alabama.
Would you have wanted Auburn named champs last year so they wouldn’t have to play Georgia again? Same idea.
What if Georgia won the SEC, but lost to GT (forgive me for using this example) in the season..And GT won the ACC. Would you think we shouldn’t play them again in the playoffs?
I am a purist on this. I want the four best teams in, even if hate one of them.
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All fair points.
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Conference champions only makes a lot of sense to me:
Conferences already do a relatively decent job of identifying the best team in the conference (notwithstanding a few outliers, which are inevitable in a sport with so few games per season and so much randomness within most games).
Including multiple teams per conference further undermines the regular season and devalues the conference championship.
Meaningful inter-conference games are always interesting, but are rare in the regular season.
Regional/conference rivalries are fun. “SEC” chants still feel weird to me, but I get the impulse. Keeping it to one team per conference helps to build the conference rivalry aspect.
Including more conferences in the playoff raises the status of the whole affair by getting more people to care. Yes, that benefits the networks, but it also benefits us as fans by increasing the number of people who we can talk to about it (whether to talk shit, commiserate about a common enemy, or whatever). The whole point of fandom is to build community, so it’s just not as much fun when fewer people care. And more people will care more when their conference is represented (giving them at least some shred of personal investment).
If you really want it to be all about narrowing the field to the two best teams in the country, that sounds like an argument for an expanded field playoff. But matchups between closely-matched teams are always going to have a heavy dose of randomness, and football really isn’t suited to long seasons with lots of games.
What if three of the best teams in the country are all from the same conference, or even four?
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“What if three of the best teams in the country are all from the same conference, or even four?”
If ever a question provided it’s own answer, this is it.
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Allowing the PAC12 champ a guaranteed spot in the playoff means there is no incentive for OOC scheduling. Or even adding conference games.
I would love for the SEC to be forced to go to a 9-game schedule due to strength of schedule concerns. Hooray for the fans! I would love for other conferences to do likewise. And the same for ending cupcake games. If UGA never demolishes Austin Peay or MTSU in tuneup games again, I can live with that.
Guarantees take away all of that incentive. And there’s not much to begin with. If an undefeated conference champ is guaranteed a playoff spot, then load up on FCS opponents, keep your conference schedule small, and hope for the best in the 4-5 competitive games each year. I know that’s McGarity’s preferred approach.
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Most of what you type I can get behind, except that a 9-game conference schedule is inherently unjust what with the imbalance in Home games.
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It wouldn’t be even within each season. But over time, it would even out.
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That logic doesn’t square. Every season is its own unique data set.
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Each season is a unique data point. Over years, the data points average out. Currently, SEC teams play rotating teams in the opposite division. This year, UGA has the bad luck of playing a good team in LSU. Vandy has the good luck of playing Arkansas. In other years, the luck will reverse and UGA will play a weak team out of the West and Vandy will play a strong team. Over the long term, the yearly fluctuations disappear. The same would happen with a 9 game conference schedule. Some teams will have 5 home games and other teams 4. The next year, the advantage will switch. Over the long term, each team will average 4.5 games a year.
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I’m perfectly fine with a 12-1 SECCG loser being left out even if they’re a clear #2 in the country and the alternative is a 11-2 Pac-12 champ. Why? Because I want the biggest games to have as much meaning as possible. It would be a mockery for us to beat Alabama in Atlanta and be rewarded with a game against Alabama in Dallas in the first round of the playoff. I habe no problem with the team that is the clear #1 being rewarded with a lesser team from another conference if they’ve already proven superior by the #2 (or 3) team in their own conference by winning a league title.
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Was it a mockery for Auburn to beat UGA last year and UGA be rewarded with a game against Auburn in the SEC championship game?
I don’t care if it’s four ACC teams; the best four teams in the country should get the bids.
Suppose there was a beauty contest to determine the most beautiful woman college student in America…..and you got to date the winner. The two most obviously beautiful ladies in the world happened to be from the same conference. The rest are down-right ugly to so-so looking
Do you really want to disqualify one of the two “most obviously beautiful” ladies because they happen to be in the same conference? Would disqualifying one of them make the so-so one you replaced her suddenly more beautiful?
This is a playoff to determine the best. Not to assuage the fee-fee’s of the perennial also-rans. Put the best 4 teams in.
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You do understand how divisions in the SEC work, correct? UGA and AU won their said divisions…UGA and AU were rewarded for winning their divisions..thus they played…IF AU had been 12-0 when they lost to UGA in the SECCG, they would have taken Bamas spot last year…
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Yeah..PTC, I understand that. You’re missing the point. The rules called for the two divisions winners to play each other, regardless to what happened when they played head to head.
Now, you do understand how the playoffs work, correct? Alabama and Georgia both won the committee’s vote that they were top four teams in the nation…thus they played. And AU was not voted to be a top four team so they, like UCF didn’t get in. So what?
Bottom line, either you want the top four teams or you want the thing manipulated to make things fair.
But we probably should just agree to disagree on this one. I’ve seen few instances on GTP when anyone swayed another’s hard opinion.
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I’m for the best 4 teams, I think they got it right last year.
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But Senator, obviously if you don’t win your arbitrary conference Championship game it proves that your entire season was worthless and you aren’t a very good team.
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Just wait until a 2 or 3 loss team from the east beats an undefeated team from the west in the conference championship game, or vice versa, and the SEC conference champion is left out while the runner up gets in. Same scenarios could play out in any conference
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Exactly, I’d like to see the numbers for how many conference championship games actually prove anything verses how many only serve as potential spoilers for a team with legitimate championship aspirations. By my count only 5 out of the last 11 were between two teams with a shot to win it all. The rest were between the best team and an also ran.
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In all seriousness, I think the goal should be to get the 4 best teams in, but a caveat to that would be that if two of them already played at a neutral site in a conference championship game then we’ve already figured out who the winner is so what’s the point in letting them both in? It’s already been hashed out on the field. Also, I think all of you are assuming that Georgia will lose to Bama in the CG, but what if Georgia wins? Do you really want Bama to get another crack at us? I don’t want any part of Saban in a revenge game if that’s how it plays out. Just for the record, I hate every other team in the conference. Dawgs and nobody else.
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A caveat to that would be last season when one team commits the arbitrarily assigned sin of not winning their division and therefore doesn’t get a shot at the conference champion. Then two teams from the same conference seems to make more sense.
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Yall realize that going to 8 teams would solve all the angst as to the best teams, don’t you?
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Yes, I still prefer 6, but 8 is better than 4 imo. 6 is still exclusive and provides a high incentive to get a top two seed.
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What 4 other teams do you think would have beaten one of the 4 in the playoff last year?
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Don’t have any idea since they weren’t selected to be in the other foursome. I’m sure there are at least 3 teams that thought they were good enough to be there and they will be there again this year as well. Since the Committee posts a ranking, they have already selected the top 8.
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Except maybe Auburn could have had a shot if Keryon was able to get healthy.
Other than that nobody knows.. but it would go a long way in shutting some mouths…(UCF to name one).
I think it will go to 8…especially if the SEC gets two in again.
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I thought UCF should have been in over Alabama last year. Still do. They’d have been annihilated by Clemson, and that would have been a good thing.
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No, 8 would only make things way worse on that front.
There would be, on average, 10 teams with similar arguments for those 7 and 8 spots. 2 in, 8 out. And then we would have the seeding arguments after those arguments.
Go back the last 3 years and look at the rankings 6-16. Show me how we would differentiate those resumes consistently. We couldn’t. It’s impossible.
Now – seed 1 through 8.
Heck, just do last year.
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My standard is always that if you don’t have an argument that you’re #1, I don’t GAS you think you’re #4 or #8 or #16 or whatever. The goal is to crown a national championship, not to rank the teams behind them.
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My dream season includes two wins over Bama, and I think UGA goes Orange if we are the 1 seed…
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Guess its about time for espn to pick over the bones of the BIG and PAC tv networks.
And should we start looking into booking trips to the Cotton Bowl or Orange Bowl?
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Of the 5 losses posted by the SEC thus far, was one team mostly responsible (here’s looking at you, Porkers)?
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Don’t write off Oregon too soon. This may not be the year, but they’re on the rise, and they’re back in the top 20.
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The big secret that the media won’t spill is that everybody who pays attention knows who the top 4 is. All the drama are conspiracy theories wrapped around ratings and money. It’s all bullshit is the bottom line. It’s fun, gripping drama that remains why college sports are so intense. Just embrace what we have and don’t eff it up.
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Depends on the outcome of the SECCG.
If it’s a blowout, I’d be interested in seeing a team that hasn’t been blown out take a shot at the SECCG winner. Certainly more interested than I would be in seeing a blown-out team get a second chance against the team who whipped them a month prior.
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