College football playoff megathread

[bigrig15]

Washingtons notable games:
-#9 USC
-#10 Colorado
-#18 Stanford
-#19 Utah
-Washington St (just dropped out of rankings after back to back losses to Washington and Colorado)

I think the teams are pretty similar but it's hard to put a team in the playoff that losses by 39 regardless of when in the season or injuries

[Manfred]

Konjo, thanks. It really wasn't meant to come out like that, I appreciate your mis-guided zeal, bro.

[davesandstorm]

I think they got it right. This is best case scenario for Penn State. They'll play a very good USC team and have the opportunity to win another quality game instead of being led to the slaughterhouse that has been Alabama. This is all icing on the cake because one of the youngest teams in college football just won their conference, got to play an extra game because of winning the conference, and get to go to a major bowl game. This has to be recruiting gold for Franklin and his staff.

On the other hand, this basically says that the conference championship games are what they've been all along in the grand scheme of things: pointless extra games, only used to generate money for the suits. I have always wished we'd just have 12-team conferences where you play all your conference opponents and a 12th game used for rivalry games like Florida-FSU, Pitt-Penn State, Clemson-SC, etc. The best record in the conference is the conference champion and they get a bid to the playoffs and you fill the rest in with a set number of wild-cards and build a method that Notre Dame and non-power 5 conference champions can earn their way in automatically as well.

[abpk2903]

Well I think 4 precedents have been set by the committee this year. I'm not saying they are good or bad but:

1. A conference title holds little weight. Oklahoma and Penn State both won their conference and were only a loss behind Ohio State. Penn State even held the head-to-head in that scenario but it wasn't enough.

2. A non-power 5 school will never have a chance. A 13-0 and dominating season with 2 B1G wins wasn't enough (or even close) for the MAC Champion.

3. Poor non-conference scheduling will not be penalized. Oklahoma and Penn State would both be in if they wouldn't have challenged themselves out of conference.

4. Late season play holds some weight but not a ton. Penn State, USC, and Oklahoma all haven't lost since September but wasn't enough to close the gap on the top 4 with later season losses.

[12HankQB]

Well I think 4 precedents have been set by the committee this year. I'm not saying they are good or bad but:

1. A conference title holds little weight. Oklahoma and Penn State both won their conference and were only a loss behind Ohio State. Penn State even held the head-to-head in that scenario but it wasn't enough.

2. A non-power 5 school will never have a chance. A 13-0 and dominating season with 2 B1G wins wasn't enough (or even close) for the MAC Champion.

3. Poor non-conference scheduling will not be penalized. Oklahoma and Penn State would both be in if they wouldn't have challenged themselves out of conference.

4. Late season play holds some weight but not a ton. Penn State, USC, and Oklahoma all haven't lost since September but wasn't enough to close the gap on the top 4 with later season losses.

Cancel next years Pitt and Temple games, we want Frostburg and ITT Tech

[abpk2903]

Honestly, that is an issue. It's not even the fear of losing but also the injuries and lack of ability to build depth by playing good opponents.

If Penn State played washington's schedule, they probably don't go into the Michigan game without all 3 starting linebackers. They could have gotten 2nd and 3rd team reps by basically playing 3 scrimmages.

It really is going to be an issue moving forward.

[konjo78]

in some ways though abpk it was ohio states non conference schedule that allowed them to move ahead of oklahoma and penn state.

If oklahoma's only loss was to ohio states they would be in. If penn States only loss was to michigan they would be in. But both teams lost an additional game to another team, pitt and houston.


It also came down to top 25 records. Washington was 3-1 where as penn state was 3-2. Clemson was 4-1 and ohio state was 3-1 (all being top 10 teams.). Bama was 4-0.

So penn state was hurt because against the top 25 they had the worst record overall.

[abpk2903]

I am not arguing that PSU should have been invited to the playoff. To be quite honest, the Rose Bowl is a huge accomplishment for a team that graduates only 3 of the 24 starters (including specialists). The team should play USC pretty close and most likely will be a preseason top 5 team in 2017.  As a PSU fan, there isn't anything to be upset about.

All I am commenting on is the precedent is set. You can't possibly schedule any worse of a OOC schedule than Washington had last year. They were guaranteed to win those 3 games. What incentive do athletic departments have to schedule a real schedule going forward? Why not play 8 home games and guarantee your team 3 wins to start the season? Why risk injury? Why not guarantee that you can build depth with your 2nd team by getting them in 6 quarters of football during blowouts? Why not get the 8th home gate? 

Is there really any way to truly determine if Washington is better than Penn State, Michigan, or Oklahoma? Or vise versa? I know I certainly can't tell them apart by watching. They all have great dominating wins and a few weeks where they looked really bad.  I guess the committee went with the safe route but if you replace Oklahoma or Penn State's OOC schedule with Washington's they would have identical or better records than the huskies.  So they team that scheduled the next to worst OOC schedule in the entire FBS gets rewarded because of it.

[El-Moldo]

Just checked PSU future schedules for 2017-2019. Here is the OOC schedule for each year:
2017 has Akron, Pitt, and Georgia State all at home. I'm sure Pitt will be a weaker team next year compared to this year.
2018 has Appalachian State, at Pitt and Kent State
2019 has Idaho, Buffalo and Pitt all at home
So in the next 3 seasons, PSU only plays ONE OOC game at home out of 9 games. Maybe abpk shouldn't bad mouth Washington's schedule this year, because someone will be arguing with him about PSU's OOC in the near future.

[El-Moldo]

Sorry, meant PSU plays only ONE OOC game on the road in the next 3 years. But you catch my drift.