We’ve been hearing for years about how great SEC football is. We’ve been hearing for years how terrible ACC football is.
Why is anyone surprised that a committee whose primary responsibility is to stage made-for-TV games chose the SEC team over the ACC team?
The problem is that “best” is subjective. Oregon was “better” than UW (a 10 point favorite over UW) and lost. Oregon may be a favorite over UW if they were to play again, so should they get into the playoff instead? The. Games. Have. To. Matter. And the games are the best way to define “best”.
But on the subjective front - FSU likely has a better defense and offensive skill position players than Bama. They played a similar schedule (SEC > ACC maybe but FSU OOC > Bama OOC) and had 1 fewer loss. That’s setting aside the fact that the ACC has a winning record vs the SEC this year. In common opponents, FSU outperformed Bama. Yes, Travis is out. But Milroe is not a nationally good QB - he is athletic but is a poor passer.
It’s not far fetched to think FSU could hang with or even beat Bama (or any other playoff team).
Don’t think anyone is surprised lol we are frustrated. I’m annoyed this is going to cost UVa $1 million (when factoring in the Louisville knock on). I’m concerned it likely guarantees FSU and Clemson will try to break the GOR this offseason and we won’t have a few years of stability. I’m gutted for the FSU players who were never beaten on the field and yet were eliminated by suits in a conference room
You’re not wrong at all. Luckily most of the euros I interact with have a working understanding of American sports so they can accept the whole college thing. But that also make it more humorous when you see their head explode trying to comprehend the CFP
The “eye test” is the stupidest way to choose anything.
Back to European sports for a second… and I know American football cannot run the home-home game model of most European sports leagues no matter what the sport… crowning the champion on the end of season standings on a balanced schedule is the most fair thing I’ve come to believe in after living in Europe for 20-years.
Obviously can’t do it in American football due to not physically being able to have that many games, but EVERY other sport could do this. Baseball would not be under the scrutiny it is under today after the playoffs and random 8-seeds getting hot in other sports wouldn’t ruin the team with the best record.
Clearly this won’t happen because of MONEY… but I do like the balanced schedule and just crowning a champion after it is complete.
I would’ve put UVA in the CFP with the eye test… clearly they have improved dramatically since the beginning of the season.
You can’t argue in favor of any of the other teams without a concoction of selected results and conjecture of how they would do in the hypothetical. But here’s a fact: it has been proven that Alabama and Texas can be beaten. It has not been proven that FSU can be beaten.
I’m gonna throw this into the mix for those arguing Louisville’s merits (admittedly suspect). Texas just jumped 4 spots in the CFP after beating Oklahoma State by 28. Sounds great until you realize that Oklahoma State lost to Central Florida by 6 touchdowns (45-3) and to South Alabama by 26 (33-7) this year. Maybe a win vs Oklahoma State isn’t so impressive to deserve such a CFP leap.
Washington and Texas aren’t one of the 4 best either. Vegas has Georgia, Michigan, Alabama and Ohio State as the four best teams. If that’s the criteria then fine but apply it consistently.
Idk it’s an interesting conversation. Even in soccer the champions league is a tournament rather than a home and home. Something special about that all or nothing moment and you see it in some of the champions league finals.
We would really miss the NHL and NBA playoffs and the ‘after 22 years..Raymond Bourque’ and Michael Jordan flu game type of moments. But you are probably right about the home and home being a better gauge of the caliber of a team
The committee itself had Louisville at #14 so it must have thought fairly highly of them. Plus that transitive property game can be played for every team. Auburn lost to NMSU by 3 TDs the week before outplaying Alabama.
I am not discounting the Champions League nor any in-season tournament… but those are tournaments intraleague in EVERY situation outside the United States (the NBA travesty being a poor try at replicating it due to not having another league to put in the tournament pool… as I’ve not so subtly written about on here multiple times since it has started).
If the US Sports could replicate a Champions League that wasn’t just redundant regular season game redux like the NBA version, think Hoosiers HS basketball tournament instead, then I would be all for it and I think it would be really exciting!
Good
Man United (Premier League) vs Real Madrid (La Liga) and Bayern Munich (Bundesliga) vs PSG (Ligue 1) is an amazing Wednesday night draw… teams that don’t play each other in their domestic leagues!
Bad
Sixers vs Nets & Knicks vs Celtics on a Wednesday night draw for the 6th or 7th time of the season only to be on a weirdly colored court is not exciting to me.
Alabama would beat FSU by three TDs right now. It wasn’t a close call.
#5 vs. #55 in schedule difficulty was the difference.
FSU had to play nine conference games against teams that simply weren’t good.
Alabama had to run a gauntlet and went undefeated vs. SEC teams — and handled the defending champs at a “neutral” site, if you can ever call Atlanta neutral for a UGA game.
It wasn’t close. And Texas being above Alabama was committee optics because they were locked in on their H2H statement.
ACC is ESPN, too. There’s no conspiracy.
If this were ESPN’s doing, they would have kicked Texas to the curb, as B12 isn’t ESPN, and let in FSU.
Yea just pointing out that even in soccer the most important competition ends up in a playoff (knockout round of the champions league). Unless I’m mistaken and teams/fans would rather win the EPL or La Liga title than the champions league?
Then again maybe that’s more due to practical schedule restraints than because they feel it’s the way they want to do it?
There’s no transitive property.
Committee didn’t watch the UVa-Louisville game, just saw a W.
But everyone who watched knew that the refs gave that game to Louisville.
Louisville was bad down the stretch. No one can argue otherwise. Louisville fans wouldn’t argue otherwise. They’re calling for the benching of their QB for the bowl game.
The best part of the NBA In-Season tourney was the random tie breaks that had teams trying to run up the score. And pulling a hack a Andre when up by 20
They are both weighted equally because they are tied together. You cannot be in the Champions League without winning your domestic league or being top 2 or 3 in the higher coefficient leagues the year before.
Yea I understand that but if you gave Real Madrid fans the choice at the beginning of the season: 2nd in La Liga and win the Champions League or win La Liga and lose in the Champions League final which do you think the majority would choose? Owners would surely choose the Champions Legaue title because of the bigger payout but I’d be interested to see what fans think
And maybe it genuinely is close enough that they wouldn’t be able to answer the question without knowing how they did against Barcelona and Athletico? They might take the La Liga and El Classico sweep over a Champions League title but take 2nd and Champions league title if they knew they were going to go 0-1-1 against Barcelona?
Honestly… based on conversations with all my European friends… as a fan… any hardware is good hardware… as a vested owner/employee… I’d probably say Champions League but ALSO high enough in the domestic league to qualify for Champions League for next season.
Sucks when you make the semi-finals in Champions League and don’t qualify for it the next year.
Do you remember when Liverpool won the Champions League years ago and didn’t qualify for it the next year due to their Premier League place? They had to change the rules to allow for the Champion to enter at a preliminary round just to allow them to defend their title… but the loser and everyone else are not guaranteed.