This looks visually awful I know... but I wanted to make a bracket that would be a straight ranking of teams.

 

In this bracket I threw out the auto bid for the top four conference champions getting a bye. I have however, included the top five conference champions as that is a core rule to the college football playoff. Therefore, the byes in this bracket go to the top four teams as ranked by the committee. 

 

8. Indiana
9. Boise State	1. Oregon
5. Notre Dame
12. Clemson	4. Penn State
6. Ohio State
11. Arizona State	3. Texas
7. Tennessee
10. SMU	2. Georgia

 

It is a drastically different set of match-ups. Oregon gets the winner of Indiana and Boise State! Now that feels like a far more favorable match up for the No.1 seed. The 5 and 6 seeds both have far more difficult roads to the semi-finals, which again feels right. 

 

I don't take issue with the committee's rankings as I do feel they really got them right. The problem is the format and the format treats conference champions as equals regardless of their roads. The B1G and SEC are far more difficult than that of the Big 12, ACC and Mountain West and yet two of the three's conference champions are given equal footing as the B1G and SEC champions. 

 

Thoughts? 

That is more like one would expect. I don’t understand why football had to deviate from basketball - they’ve been doing this for a little while. 

Edited December 9, 2024Dec 9 by OregonDucks

I am curious how good Boise State really is.  Oregon played them at a time when thus team had not jelled. My belief is that Oregon would probably beat them by two touchdowns. Oregon is not the same, after Ohio State they took their game to a different level.

A Great Way to Start the Day (not Ryan.) Dumping on Bama. And the Principal Architect of this PO Mess.

 

 

SEC and Greg Sankey kept Alabama out of the College Football Playoff

TROJANSWIRE.USATODAY.COM

---

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey was slow to adjust to the reality of the 12-team playoff. His lack of adjustments very clearly hurt Alabama and Ole Miss.

 

Perhaps you might want to give reasonable SEC schedules to Bama and Georgia and not Mizzou and Texas? Then again, Bama lost at Vandy and was Mugged in Norman. 😁

On 12/9/2024 at 9:56 AM, Jon Joseph said:

Bama lost at Vandy and was Mugged in Norman.

Gotta win those games. Not saying those were freebies, the SEC has enough of those on their schedule to begin with, but teams worthy of going to the playoff find ways to win games when they play badly. 

 

Oregon struggled against Wisconsin but still BEAT them! 

On 12/9/2024 at 12:41 PM, David Marsh said:

This looks visually awful I know... but I wanted to make a bracket that would be a straight ranking of teams.

 

In this bracket I threw out the auto bid for the top four conference champions getting a bye. I have however, included the top five conference champions as that is a core rule to the college football playoff. Therefore, the byes in this bracket go to the top four teams as ranked by the committee. 

 

 

8. Indiana
9. Boise State	1. Oregon
5. Notre Dame
12. Clemson	4. Penn State
6. Ohio State
11. Arizona State	3. Texas
7. Tennessee
10. SMU	2. Georgia

 

It is a drastically different set of match-ups. Oregon gets the winner of Indiana and Boise State! Now that feels like a far more favorable match up for the No.1 seed. The 5 and 6 seeds both have far more difficult roads to the semi-finals, which again feels right. 

 

I don't take issue with the committee's rankings as I do feel they really got them right. The problem is the format and the format treats conference champions as equals regardless of their roads. The B1G and SEC are far more difficult than that of the Big 12, ACC and Mountain West and yet two of the three's conference champions are given equal footing as the B1G and SEC champions. 

 

Thoughts? 

 

"LOGIC? If only we'd known how every other post-season tourney in the world works.

 

We ain't rocket surgeons!" Warde Manuel 🤪 😴 🤮 

Personally, I'm taking Lanning's approach of bring it on whoever we play. That being said the committee really blew it. With the automatic bids placing lower ranked teams into higher ranked seedings they should have acted like the humans in the room instead trying to be reality detached robots. Since three teams bumped up to much higher seeds in the automatic bid slots the number two team was simply dropped down three spots to No. 5. This is where the humans needed to show some situational awareness and not try to mimic AI. 

 

Four vs five would normally be four vs five with the lowest possible seed advancing to play No. 1 but this is not a normal format. Since No.5 is actually No. 2, it practically guarantees a 1 vs 2 match up in the quarter finals. To make matters worse, that game is scheduled to basically be a home game for the No 2. team putting the No. 1 team at a huge disadvantage. The humans really failed here. Also with the tree slot drop down, the 8 vs 9 game that determines No. 1's opponent actually features No. 5 vs No. 6. 

 

This means the No. 1 team will probably face the N0. 5 and No. 2 teams before even getting to the Championship game. The humans really dropped the ball here. It should have been their job to compensate for the fatal flaws in the system not just cement them into reality. With that said, this is OBD's opportunity to go on the most impressive championship run in history and achieve a legendary championship status unrivaled before and after for all time. In the end, I think that's exactly where Lanning prefers his team to be. 

On 12/9/2024 at 11:17 AM, DrJacksPlaidPants said:

The sad thing is that that could be the case... 

 

Clemson is NOT in the top 12 but is seeded 12. 

 

This playoff format is the problem.

On 12/9/2024 at 10:05 AM, The Kamikaze Kid said:

I think that's exactly where Lanning prefers his team to be. 

It is exactly where Lanning wants his team, we, and Klatt and pretty much everybody else know the Bracket is ridiculous, but Lanning isn't wasting a minute on it. 

 

In his interviews, Manuel was always careful to say that all the Committee was asked to do was rank the teams 1-25. It looks like they were able to do that. What happened afterwards was out of their hands.

Thanks, David, for showing what would have happened were the committee's rankings used for a standard tournament playoff bracket.  Playoff tournaments with a number of teams that are not divisible by the number 4, have a first round bye when there are from 9 to 15 teams, and that is what we have.  I knew when the conferences arrived at the number 12 that it would be a mess.

 

People keep saying the committee "blew it" or was influenced by the SEC or ESPN.  Simply not what happened.  As 30Duck says, their job was to rank the teams and nothing more.  And. they got that part right.

 

The bracket that makes the committee look bad was negotiated by the conferences.  The history is, at first, no playoff at all.  We went for several years with a Division II playoff and no NCAA Division I recognized champion for football.  It was a mythical champion by newspaper poll results.  Then for a few years, two Division I teams played off, then the BCS with four.  All this happened slowly because a substantial number of the Division I teams wanted to leave everything as it was, with bowl games being the end of the season.  And, the bowl committees lobbied to keep it that way, which was in their interest.  

 

The negotiated deal by the then six conferences included all conference champions getting into the playoff. The favored top four seeds happened because it was the only way to get  everybody to agree to go from a four-team BCS playoff to 12 teams playing off.  Some wanted 16, but that was a reach to far from where they were ar four.  The ACC, Big 12, at the time the PAC 12 and the Mountain West, I think, plus independent Notre Dame, feared the B1G and the SEC dominating the playoff structure.  They feared that their teams would not gett what they considered to be a fair shake.  So, to keep peace, everybody agreed to what we now have.  The committee had nothing to do with that agreement or to setting up the bracket.  The conferences did it over two years ago.

 

Nobody likes what we have, but if you think the other three conferences, or by the time the next negotiated aggrement happens should the PAC-2 become the PAC-8, four conferences are going to give up their automatic seeds into the quarter finals and let the B1G and the SEC roll over them, think again.  They have the numbers when it comes to a vote. 

 

And those posters who favor reseeding after the first round of games have no clue as to how that political can of worms would develop into someting "better".  It would be far worse.

 

Even worse than that would be getting Congress involved.

 

This sports political nightmare for determining the college football NCAA Divition I Champion has only just begun, and it's not going to end anytime soon.

 

I've written before about my dream of an 80-team Division I, eight conferences of 10 teams each, based on geographics, nine conference games with every team playing every other team in their conference.  Then the Championship is determined by the eight conference champions playing off in a  standard bracket.  No committee, no polls influencing, no political negotiated agreement.  That's not going to happen either.

 

Maybe we will have a 40 team super division made up of the B1G teams, the SEC teams, Notre Dame and five others from the other four conferences.  That number of teams could be worked into two conferences with two leagues of 10 team each.  Nine game league regular season and a playoff of four teams.

 

Whatever, but the structure must include a number of teams divisible by 4 to take the politics out of it.