That’s all to say that none of this makes a good deal of sense, and we should treat the first weekend in December as such. A championship game is not much more than a chance for schools to get more television revenue and stations to draw in millions more viewers. Divisions are artificial, and if the committee keeps up its current thought process, why shouldn’t Urban Meyer and Nick Saban start scheming complex scenarios whereby their teams earn a so-called extra bye weekend to start their bowl training early?
Ohio state going to the playoffs is a farce…They lost head to head with Penn State, who WON the Big 10…the old system was infinitely better…Penn state would be recognized champ of BIG 10, and Ohio State would hope to attract a bid to a new years game, while less important, still a chance to win an important game and end the year on a good note…
You know that I agree with you 99.99% of the time. When it concerns penn state I am sorry but they should have been given the death penalty. Yes, they paid a $ amount but this is absolute non sense. To think that SMU, U of H and others non P5 Schools suffered much more is disgusting. This was a cover up at all levels involving the State of Pennsylvania, the city and the School. If this did not deserve the death penalty then what should? Truly disgusting.The ncaa does not stand for anything.
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penn state should consider themselves extremely lucky to even have a football program.
The playoffs aren’t about conference champions. The playoffs are about putting the 4 teams that have had the best seasons into a final four matchup.
Penn State’s 3 point victory at home against Ohio State doesn’t mean Penn State is a better team than Ohio State. The only reason Penn State was in the championship game was because Michigan choked at Iowa and lost in double overtime to Ohio State. Before anyone replies with the quote “just because Penn State beat Ohio State doesn’t mean they are better than Ohio State” just answer this honestly. Are Michigan and Pitt better than Penn State? Are SMU and Memphis better than Houston?
Conference titles should be important but how you got to the conference title and what you did out of conference play are equally important. If Penn State had won on the road at Ohio State or if Penn State had crushed Ohio State then it would have made a better statement.
To say that Penn State’s 3 point victory at home to Ohio State is argument enough that Penn State should be in the playoffs over Ohio State is to ignore the results of Penn State vs Michigan, Penn State vs Pitt, Ohio State vs Michigan and Ohio State vs Oklahoma.
Why have a conference championship then? Because it’s reward for two teams that had the best division records to play one more game and declare a winner. It’s not to determine who had the best season.
Exactly Shaggy. People who are complaining about Penn St. not making it in act like The Lions and the Buckeyes had the same record. They didn’t. OSU had one loss, to a top ten team. Penn St. had two losses. Those resumes aren’t equal.
Except that the first two years, the playoff committee heavily stressed winning a conference championship as a criteria for inclusion. TCU and Baylor may both have been good enough, but neither had a good enough claim as One True Champion, which drove most of the bug 12 realignment effort (or lack thereof…), so they both got left out. Suddenly it doesn’t matter so much, which is why the bug 12 is complaining about having gone through all the agony and infighting to establish a championship game and change the rule about having 12 members and maybe expanding.
Don’t forget that bug 10 commissioner Jim Delany was the biggest obstacle to a playoff, going back to the early 90’s, and only supported it after years of watching the SEC dominate the BCS titles. 2011 was the last straw, because he thought that if two from the same conference played for the title, it should’ve been bug 10 teams, not SEC. The contracts for the BCS were expiring, so he led the charge to set up the playoff the way it is, and very nearly got two teams into the final four, when all five p5 conferences had a clear champion available.
Conference champs means conference champs…and i dont give a DAMN who had the best season! PENN ST won the BIG 10…no team who didnt win their own division has any business going to the playoffs! Who had the best team in the BIG? That would be Michigan…but they managed to fritter away 2 games they should have won…Boo hoo…You wanna be the champs? DONT lose those games…Ohio state lost their showdown game with Penn state and deserved to lose the Michigan game…NO CRYING from you either, Buckeyes. Champions should be rewarded, not penalized…This new system is stupid…Winning your conference is the most important thing you can do…ANY change in that skews the entire process…
I think it’s pretty apparent that wins and losses and strength of schedule matter more than nominal conference championships. And that’s the way it should be. An insistence on taking conference champions would be an explicit statement that the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the season, depending on your conference, is meaningless.
Oklahoma is being appropriately punished for losing to us and Ohio State. They, Western Michigan, and Alabama are the only teams to go undefeated in conference. The only message here is that it pays to be in the SEC or the bug 10, and the rest of the SEC sucked this year.
My issue is the lack of consistency. If conference championships don’t matter and don’t mean anything then why does the Group of 5 New Year’s 6 bid go the the highest ranked conference champion from the Group of 5. There was a very plausible scenario where Houston could have gone 11-1 with that one loss to Navy and still not have been eligible for the Cotton Bowl while Ohio State is in the playoffs for the National Championship under the very same circumstances. I would hope that Houston would have been selected as an at-large team for a New Year’s 6 Bowl but are we sure that would have happened?
If Houston had finished in the top 12, they would have likely been invited to an NY6 bowl anyway. The G5 rule was specifically for teams like WMU that have no chance of being ranked high enough to be considered.
Again, it’s not black and white. It’s not that conference championships don’t matter. It’s just that a conference championship doesn’t trump having a crappy OOC schedule or losing OOC games. If Penn State got in, why would teams like OU and Ohio State ever schedule each other OOC again?
No it doesn’t. Conference champions come into play for the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl the years those bowls aren’t designated for the playoffs. For each of those bowl games, the PAC, B1G, B12, or SEC champion is guaranteed a spot unless they are in the playoffs.
The highest ranked Group of 5 champion is also guaranteed a spot in one of the non-playoff bowls unless they are in the playoffs.
The playoffs go to the 4 highest ranked teams regardless of whether they are champions or even in P5 conferences.
It’s an automatic qualifier spot. It’s no different than the automatic qualifiers for many other bowls like fiveten just said. There is a huge difference between being an automatic qualifier for a bowl game and for a shot at the national championship. Besides that, the bowl games are the shadiest thing in college sports and you want to use them as an example of how things should be? lol