Yes, logic says that Bama is the team that should have gotten hosed...but that was never going to happen.

IMHO, the 4 teams in the championship would have a biogger television draw than the Noles. I agree that Florida should be in it, but again, the Golden Rule - the one bringing in the gold has the rule.

And that brings us back to hand-picking who the committee wants, rather than deserving. I read an article earlier that sums it up pretty nicely. The committee could have chosen the 4 best teams for the playoffs, or the 4 deserving teams for the playoffs - but they didn't get it right either way. The 4 best would be the field as it is now, but minus Bama and add Georgia. The 4 deserving is the same field, but minus Bama and add FSU.

But here we are. It will be interesting to see it play out.

I'm not sure i'm going to be a college football fan in 20 years. ESPN has tried their best to ruin the sport, and they're doing a good job. They aren't the only ones to blame, i get it, but they are most to blame IMHO.

Hook'em Horns and Roll Tide. That is all.

Right, wrong, or in between - the ACC failing to get a spot in the playoffs is almost poetic justice. I didn't bother with all the ins and outs of the expanded playoffs, just that it was starting in 24. So I've only recently learned that the ACC commissioner was against an expansion that could have started in 23. Well, Mr. Commissioner, with a 12-team playoff, you'd be in this year.

That's all true and well and good.....but the FSU players and coaching staff aren't responsible for that.

no matter how many teams are allowed in, there will alwys be the "next" team that had a similar or better record that feels they deserved a shot. i don't care if it is 4, 8, 12, 16, or 100 teams...

That's true, but the public outrage (or even the outrage from the excluded team) for an 8-4 or 6-6 team not getting in will never equal the outrage for an unbeaten power 5 conference champ not getting in.

Imagine if the Philadelphia Eagles went 17-0 and won the east and didn't make the playoffs. Now imagine the Tampa Bay Buccaneers going 7-10 and missing the playoffs by one spot. Not comparable.

If you want to use the NFL as an analogy, you can find better ones. There have been years when teams in a stacked division and good records (say 10-6) missed the playoffs while a team from a crappy division got in as division champ with an 8-8 record.

But here's the thing about FSU this year. They played in a conference that is worse than the SEC and the PAC 12 (and maybe the Big 10). They went undefeated but they had some close shaves against teams that were not that great, and they had one very impressive win against LSU in the first game of the season. At the end of the season, they simply don't look as powerful as Texas, Michigan, Alabama, or Washington. Going undefeated is something, but it's not everything.

As i've said many times already in this thread, whomever got left out was going to feel (and be) hosed.....because a 4 team playoff with 5 major conferences was and is simply stupid. If the ACC isn't a power 5 conference because they're not as good as the other 4, they should have been demoted. And my example above was responding to Happy.....the 8-8 division champ who got in over a 10-6 team from another division wasn't applicable IMO.... because my example was trying to point out that outrage from an undefeated team is always going to be way greater than if Northwestern at 8-4 doesn't get into a 32 team playoff. So, i've been saying throughout this thread that Bama, Texas, and FSU all deserved entry into the playoff. Let me ask this.....is there any demonstrable way to say that Bama, Texas or FSU is more deserving than the other (you can definitely put Texas in over Bama, but that's about as far as you can go)? We can talk about strength of schedule (which people talk about as if it's some sort of concrete, tangible thing...but it isn't....all strength of schedule talk centers around someone's rankings...influenced by ESPN). We can talk about head to head....but only Bama and Texas play into that. It's just a really stupid, flawed system currently.

There is really no way to say which conference was best, or 2nd best, or 3rd best this year. What criteria are you using?

ACC had a winning record against the SEC, so it sounds like you want to use the "the SEC is always great; everyone knows they're always great" argument.

There are lots of ways to slice it, but here's one: How many of the top 10 teams in the CFP rankings are from which conferences? How many from the top 25?

So, the SEC is the best conference because the committee says it is. Ok.

How many teams ranked behind the SEC in the committee rankings have the same or better records as the SEC teams ranked ahead of them?

I just want to add one last thing, because this has bothered me for a long time:

I'm old....my college football fandom goes back to the mid-1970s. Starting then and deep in the 90s, i have a couple of observations:

1) No one in 1978 was even having the discussion about which conference was best, and there certainly was no chanting of conference affiliations during games.

2) Individual teams (not an exhaustive list, but here are some--Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Notre Dame, Penn State, USC, Ohio State, Michigan, etc.) were highly valued as brands. Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and Ole Miss didn't receive any sort of respect because they played in the SEC.

3) The SEC was nothing like a dominant conference. Bama was perenially great. Others popped up occasionally--Florida, Georgia, maybe LSU. But again, no one cared or talked about conferences. Individual teams were respected (or not).

4) Here we are today, and like never before, conference affiliations are talked about ad nauseum. Why do you think this is so? And without question, the SEC has been the dominant conference for the last 20 years. What changed? Why was the SEC a good, but far from dominant conference, for 80 years.....then suddenly they win a lot more championships, and this "conference pride" or "dominance" narrative replaced the respect given to individual teams? Because in a vacuum, there's really no reason why the SEC should be playing better football today than they did 50 years ago.

Well, let's see:

Alabama is 12-1. Only 3 teams behind them had the same or better record: FSU (ACC) at 13-0 and Georgia, also 12-1 and Liberty (CUSA) at 13-0. (Are you going to tell me that Liberty should be ahead of AL?)

Georgia is 12-1. Only 1 team behind them had the same or better record: Liberty (CUSA) at 13-0.

Missouri is 10-2. 5 teams behind them had the same or better record: PSU (Big 10) 10-2, Ole Miss (SEC) 10-2, OU (Big 12) 10-2, Liberty (CUSA) 13-0 and SMU (AAC) 11-2

Ole Miss is also 10-2. 3 behind them had the same or better record: OU (Big 12) 10-2, Liberty (CUSA) 13-0 and SMU (AAC) 11-2

I stopped at the top 11.

I'm as old as you, probably a little older. I think you could probably also add UCLA and Nebraska to your list of fabled programs (currently suffering hard times). I don't think Vanderbilt or Kentucky get any respect right now just for being in the SEC, any more than Northwestern or Indiana get respect for being in the Big 10. Before the CFP, we had the AP and UPI polls and a "mythical" national champion. Maybe people didn't talk as much about conferences then, but they sure talked about strength of schedule - and the conference you're in affects that.

That's quite a few teams behind SEC teams with the same or better record who are ranked worse than those SEC teams. What does that tell us?


Why do you think the SEC is MUCH more respected and valued and more consistently has great teams than they did in 1975? Is t in large part because ESPN pays them millions (is it billions now? I honestly don't know) and as part of their investment, hypes them non-stop? It's a serious question.

And i wish you hadn't stopped at top 11......i'm of the belief that the top of the SEC is usually ranked about right. It's those teams from 10-25 that i believe are consistently, year in and year out, ranked too high, simply because they play in the SEC.

Although Ole Miss in front of OU is comical. OU has a much better win. Committee seems to be valuing a loss to Georgia, but they got absolutely drove in that game. That loss should have dropped them a lot, but of course, didn't.

Also have to mention.....it's way easier for SEC teams to have good records...only play 8 conference games, and replace the lost conference game with someone like Furman in November. Add to that the fact that the AP and the committee always ranks those good but no great SEC teams too high, and voila, you get support for the narrative that "Alabama's SOS is better than ___________________" because they beat this many "ranked" teams.

That one had me scratching my head, but I know nothing about Ole Miss. Looking at the schedules, OU had a better win, but its losses were much worse (OSU and freaking Kansas). Ole Miss's losses were to Georgia and Alabama. And yes, they played Mercer, Vanderbilt, and UL Monroe. But OU played Arkansas State, Tulsa, and BYU.