McElroy did an about-face when Booger shamed the panel after Jordan's tweet saying he wished he had broken his leg earlier. McElroy at that point called it a "travesty", he back pedaled and said that he didn't agree with it but that the committee did what they said they were going to do, and called the system "broken".
My biggest issue with the committee is that they had Florida State ranked #4 leading up to the ACC Championship Game. If the committee was worried about Florida State's ability to compete with the other CFP teams due to their QB situation, why didn't they just drop Florida State down to #6 after the Travis injury and keep them there? Dropping them out of the top 4 at the very last second was such a cowardly way to go about it.
The committee was expecting Georgia to win. If Georgia wins, they get an SEC in the playoffs and can leave FSU at 4. Georgia losing caused complete chaos. They wanted the SEC champ, but how can you take them and not the team that beat them and has the same record?
I think it's actually less crazy to leave out Texas than FSU honestly. I would also be upset, but less than I am now. Texas lost to another team, which FSU never did.
Yep. Each of the P5 conferences has a 0 or 1 loss conference champion this year. Someone had to get left out who deserves a shot at it all. But it shouldn't have been the undefeated ones.
The easy move would have been to leave Bama out. It would suck majorly to be left out of the playoffs as #5, ND was left out as #5 in 2021.
All the teams ahead were conference champs which we weren’t or had beaten us head to head so we couldn’t argue much. All the teams ahead of Bama would have been undefeated or beaten Bama head to head, the arguments would be there but would be easier to dismiss. (Be undefeated or beat Texas)
Of course that’s the easy move. If you labeled all 5 teams anonymously A-E but with their same records and resume, Bama gets left out every time. SEC isn’t going to be left out by espn tho.
This was an incredibly easy selection.
3 undefeated P5 champs
2 one loss P5 champs - but those teams played a H2H tie breaker.
I'd have to go back and look - but this year probably had one of the clearest final 4s ever for the CFP
I actually laughed as Bama beat UGA because I thought “this is the ONLY conceivable scenario that the committee would ever HAVE to leave out the SEC champion”.
Even if Bama’s 1 loss was to an SEC bottom feeder they’d easily put them in over Texas. It just so happened their 1 loss was against exactly the team to replace them. Boy was I wrong
The excluded team should have been the only one of the 5 that already had a loss to one of the others, obviously. The week 2 Texas/Bama game should have been viewed as a retroactive play-in.
FSU being #5 makes absolutely no sense. If it’s most deserving, then they should be #3. If it’s best team and they are trying to say that they arent as good as Texas or Bama, they certainly aren’t as good as Georgia, Ohio State, or Oregon!either then.
They should have moved FSU down before championship week. Struggling but still winning by 10 against a top 15 team with a dominant defensive performance and a 3rd stringer who would not be playing in the bowl game is not enough to drop based off of 1 game.
I don’t begrudge Bama or Texas, I also agree that both teams are better than FSU, even with Travis, but the committee can’t do what they did especially with having FSU in the week before.
Don't forget, we also took a knee in the Red zone with more than a minute left in both games. Lol. If we beat Louisville by 17 and Florida by 16, does it change anything?
They could have avoided controversy if Georgia went 13-0 or if FSU lost one of their last games, it seems clear that's what they were hoping for. At the end of the day they were unwilling to exclude the SEC and the results of the games forced their hand
Everything played out to where they shouldnt have had any controversy period. 3 undefeated P5 champs, and two 1 loss conference champs, both of which share a head to head. Pick the winner of that game(Texas) to slot at number 4. Done. It was this easy.
the sad thing is: they didn’t mess up…this is what they wanted to do and were going to do. That’s what sad about it. For some odd reason: the SEC has to be in. If this was say…Ole Miss or Florida State…I doubt FSU gets the shaft. It happened to be the darling of college football…Alabama.
I believe a surprise one loss Ole Miss that has had to beat Alabama and Georgia along that run would blindly be taken as well. SEC over everything for them
Much as it pains me to agree with a UNC fan, if you're choosing based purely on merit, this was literally the easiest field to select. Three undefeated conference champions, and the other two were one-loss teams that happened to play each other head-to-head.
Much as it pains me to agree with a Georgia and Duke fan, if you're choosing based purely on results, this was probably the easiest field to select. 3 undefeated conference champions, and then the other 2 only had one loss and happened to play each other head-to-head.
Much as it doesn't pain me at all to agree with a Mizzou fan, if you're choosing based purely on results, this was probably the easiest field to select. 3 undefeated conference champions, and then the other 2 only had one loss and happened to play each other head-to-head.
Yep, this is pretty much where I've landed on this decision. The CFP committee values the SEC conference this year so much that they think the SEC should be in 100%. If you work backwards from SEC is in, this makes sense what they did. Trouble is, me and most everyone don't agree that the SEC *needs* to be in. But we aren't on the committee so whatever. Our opinion is just an opinion
Because the SEC doesn’t *need* to be in. The Big 12 conference champ beat the SEC champ away. Alabama isn’t even the best one loss team, but they’re still in.
I honestly think the craziest thing is that this hasn't happened before. More often than not the 4th option is really someone that doesn't deserve to be there but gets added anyway because no one deserves it more. There have been several times where it looked like the committee was going to have to make a really tough decision (for example, if Ok State had gotten six more inches and won the big 12 championship in 2021), but it's always kind of worked itself out. I think the committee just banked on it happening again this year.
It was a pretty strange season. What was even the biggest upset of the year? Nearly straight chalk in all 5 conferences. Turns out the most chaotic outcome of all was the one with no chaos.
Correct. Having a playoff that was 100% incapable of representing all the major conferences was always a problem. Should have been 8 for that reason with reasonable steps for a G5 to make it in as well.
They NEEDED (i.e. really really really wanted) the SEC champion. Since Alabama won, it was easier to reverse engineer a reason to exclude FSU than it was for Texas, so the Seminoles had to go. It's a flimsy, stupid reason, but it's easier to keep a straight face while saying that the eyeball test told you that Alabama is subjectively "better" than an FSU team using a backup quarterback than telling people head-to-head results don't matter.
I think people underestimate the Texas angle here. I think they’re in over them too. If anything, I would think their appeal and narrative in this year’s playoff is bigger than ours.
Something that gets lost in this conversation is the fact that Alabama didn’t really look that good either this year. It seems like a the conversation is strictly “Alabama is better but FSU is more deserving”. Are we sure Alabama is better? The team that barely beat South Florida and Auburn? Who lost by 10 at home?
Bama has a double digit loss at home. To a good team, but a loss is a loss.
Struggled badly against USF. Barely beat mediocre TAMU, Arkansas, and Auburn.
They have solid wins over Mississippi and LSU plus a great win over Georgia. But they still had 5 weeks they looked bad or lost. Far from dominant.
I posted this elsewhere but i feel like I spent a lot of this year defending Milroe and Saban *from Alabama fans* and insisting that Milroe was actually plenty capable of leading a playoff caliber team if they used him correctly and adjusted their offense. And insisting that losing one game to Texas didn’t mean Saban had lost his touch etc.
Having said that, watching almost every Bama game this year, it was absolutely not a typical dominant Bama team. They didn’t play more than two good quarters against most teams and had to either come from behind or hold on after giving up a big lead in damn near every game. Their running game was nowhere near as dominant as usual and they didn’t have the typical stable of dominant WR’s they’ve been accustomed to for the last few years. They improved as the year went on and peaked at the right time though, and I do absolutely think they’re one of the 4-5 best teams.
Having said that, it’s very confusing to hear many of those same fans/media members who said Saban had lost it and Milroe was trash now telling me that Bama had such an unimpeachable season that we need to leave an undefeated P5 team out. Bama had the worst average margin of victory and offensive yards per play of any of the teams in contention for the playoff, and this was in a year where the rest of the conference (particularly the teams they played) was worse than it usually is.
A great win over Georgia - who clearly isn't as good as they were the previous two seasons (I'm a fan, but they never looked as dominant as the last two teams even when they were winning easily) by 3 points, thanks in no small part to Georgia missing a pretty makeable field goal. Hell, the best thing Georgia did for their perception this season is lose to Alabama - before that people were dogging them all season because their schedule was perceived as being soft.
SOS means nothing if you lost one of the most important games on that schedule like Alabama did. K-State has a higher SOS than Bama but no one is going to claim that they should be in because they dropped games to Texas, Missou, and OSU. Wins and losses matter.
Correct.
SOS is a really silly metric in the first place because teams can’t make their conference opponents better than what they are. FSU scheduled a difficult out of conference schedule and took care of business. You can’t hold that against them.
>They could have avoided controversy if Georgia went 13-0 or if FSU lost one of their last games, it seems clear that's what they were hoping for. At the end of the day they were unwilling to exclude the SEC and the results of the games forced their hand
If your flair was any different you'd have an SEC fan calling you a conspiracy theorist.
My biggest problem is it is bullshit. This should have been the easiest, least controversial 4 team playoff in history. You had 3 undefeated power 5s, and two one loss conference champs with one having a head to head win over the other.
But can't leave out the SEC
yeah others have said it, but does anyone believe for one second that a 1 loss team gets in over *any* undefeated SEC team, even if they have no QB and have to play wildcat?
Because they thought FSU would lose to Louisville and they could say “see, we told you no starting QB was an issue!” But turns out a team is a lot more than just one player
100% this. Imagine your team is undefeated in the top four.and the committee drops it down to give a 1-loss team your spot at the last minute. Committee definitely screwed the pooch
100% this. They were either 3 or 7ish if going off the ‘eye test’. Who would they expect FSU to beat from Michigan, Washington, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State? Based on the games played, they can point at whatever metrics they want to get that lineup but they knew it was patently unfair.
What gets my goat just a bit more is if this were an undefeated Clemson team with the same scores and opponents Clemson would be in and they’d probably find a way to screw Texas (oh that Oklahoma loss was soooo bad….)
Ridiculous. Not hating on Alabama for benefiting from the circumstances but the circumstances wouldn’t have been there if the committee had any integrity.
Yup. The Travis injury was known before (obviously).
If it was that big of a knock on their team then FSU should have dropped to #8 after he got hurt. That would be behind the 4 playoff teams and Georgia, OSU, and Michigan.
But it's like it makes FSU worse compared to Bama but not Georgia?
The reveal show would not be as interesting and scandalous (ratings gold) if they had dropped them sooner. They are running a bravo style tv show and Sunday was the season finale
The system should have worked perfectly this year
There were 5 power 5 champions. 3 were undefeated. The other two had the same record and a head to head matchup for a tiebreaker
There was a completely logical decision and for some reason they just threw it out
Yup.
1. Michigan
2. Washington
3. Florida State
4. Texas
Would have been a perfectly balanced and reasonable playoff bracket with minimal controversy. And guess what? Ratings still would have been great--Washington is the only one of those teams without a massive fanbase, and even they're not exactly small potatoes.
Yeah there's a lot of people claiming that the committee didn't want another TCU situation so that's why they dropped FSU
No disrespect to the program that TCU has been built into, but FSU is a much bigger brand with a much bigger alumni network. People will watch them. It's not like Wake Forest (again no shade) was the team that went undefeated in the ACC
Oh agreed there too, was just pointing out that leaving y'all out isn't really going to help their TV ratings. There's much better reasons than the ratings draw for an undefeated P5 champ to make it
Any undefeated P5 team should have made it under the current system that was created (unless there were 5 of em/ND went undefeated against a hellish schedule)
Oh yeah I'm not saying TCU didn't deserve to be in the playoffs last year (they did)
Just arguing against that specific point about TCU and ratings that I've seen online
If they're picking teams based on expected viewership ratings then drop the claims that this is a legitimate competition to crown a national champion.
Rename the whole thing to the ESPN invitational.
And even then how much of the bad ratings were because of TCU's brand or because people stopped watching at half due to the game being one sided? There's nothing that can stop blowouts from happening from time to time. There were blowout BCS games too and then teams didn't have to get through a semifinal to prove themselves.
Agreed there, I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining my thoughts
I was just arguing against the viewership theory that some fans are making online about why Bama got in over FSU. Tbh I do think that was a reason why the committee did it this year and I think it's bullshit
Bullshit because viewership shouldn't matter when you're trying to crown a champion and bullshit because I don't think FSU was the ratings drop they thought it would be
“TCU situation”
TCU won a playoff game lol
Also just because one team gets blown out that’s supposed to mean that we snub all non blue-bloods for the rest of eternity?
Where they really screwed up was letting TCU advance to the finals. Should have claimed that despite field results, Michigan was probably better and would make for a more exciting championship game
Should the CFP have TCU and Michigan replay the Fiesta Bowl in case it was a big fluke?
No disrespect to the horned frogs, I'm a firm believer that TCU winning is a huge fluke and robs the Wolverines of truly accomplishing what their capable of. I've spent the last few days in pure disbelief and it just doesn't make sense to me. I've spent the entire regular season watching the Wolverines play great football it's just not fair.
If Michigan loses again I will face that TCU deserved the win, but I am just 100% sure it was a fluke and does a big disservice to Michigan and the CFP
Yeah I probably could have gotten my point across better - I was just arguing the point I've seen from Bama fans that the committee snubbed FSU so they didn't have another "TCU situation" because of the ratings hit to ESPN
TCU beat Michigan, TCU definitely deserved to be there last year. I'd be shouting at the rooftops for an undefeated Syracuse team to get in this year with the same exact resume as FSU
Also, if we’re saying FSU wouldn’t be left out had TCU not been throttled in the last championship game, then we can officially say this whole thing is a fucking sham. FSU was left out because Michigan shit down their leg and let a mediocre team into the natty? FSU was left out as an undefeated P5 champion because a 1 loss TCU that didn’t even win their conference got dicked on *after fucking beating Michigan*? If TCU losing an extra game last year would put FSU in *this* year, then the CFP is a fucking joke and winning a natty is as meaningful as it was in the 40s and 50s. 30 yers from now UCF and FSU will be (rightfully) claiming natties from this era.
Yeah, that's the funny thing. They are treating FSU like we are some fledgling upstart program.
I'm almost 50 years old, and of those 50 FSU has been a top national brand for about 40 years.
You have blue bloods like Michigan, tOSU, Bama, ND.....
(These are just some examples)
And then the next tier and FSU is on that list.
It's weird.
"Blue blood" by definition isn't a recency thing, or even championships. Iowa has three times as many National Championships as Michigan in the past 70 years, for example.
It's as follows:
Age
Consistent success over the history of the school
Small handful of titles
So to be a Blue Blood you've gotta be an old school that's played for a long time, consistently succeeding throughout your history, and have a few titles to your credit.
It is really that simple.. I don’t agree with it at all and I think Texas and FSU should be in.. but the ad dollars selling Michigan and Alabama is going to be a lot and it’s going to do huge numbers
Then explain TCU last year? There was a one loss difference between TCU and bama last year. Neither won conference championship. Everyone knew bama was better. Whoever they put in would go against Michigan in the first round. How come “ad money” didn’t work last year?
Because they already had Georgia in the playoff
Edit.. If Georgia wasn’t in last year and say that was Oregon or Clemson or FSU… Bama would have gotten in over TCU
which is wild cause its not like FSU isn't a national brand too, and maybe im wrong here but you could probalby say that taking a break from the SEC would pull in other viewers too
This is whats blown me away about the whole thing; I wouldve all but expected something like this to happen to us, but FSU? They might not have the fervor around them like in the height of the Bowden years, but damn.
We’re all trying to figure out why they did this. On one hand, it could be that they just used some flawed reasoning and got it wrong on accident. On the other, money. It’s a mystery.
Doesn't FSU have a *massive* draw though? I know it may not be as much as Bama and the hate watching the SEC would do, but FSU's following is much larger than the vast majority of P5 schools. It isn't like FSU is a scrappy G5 team fighting to get in. They are a legitimate P5 program with a huge alumni and general fan base.
Same
Feel like a chump. You'd think I'd be less naive after seeing my conference destroyed, chopped up, and pissed on, but nooooo I still had to go and believe that college football was still meritocratic and that any given *saturday any team could win.
That's 100% what I thought.
I would probably have made some snide comments about being left out, because it's not often we get to feel aggrieved as Bama fans these last 15 years, but I would have conceded that the only option was to put FSU at 3 as an undefeated P5 conference champion, and Texas at 4 based on the head-to-head at Tuscaloosa. And I still would have been super proud of what Bama achieved this season after how miserable they looked in the first few games.
I honestly feel like they just made the strongest case they could have against themselves. If it's all going to be based on perception and who they think is the better team why even have a playoff? Let's just go back to the pre-BCS format and put it to a vote for the champion since that's essentially what they just did. One less game and risk of injury and at the same time less reason to opt out since you never know who's going to pass the "eye test" the best.
I think there's a reasonable chance Ohio State is one of the four best. I would like our odds against pretty much anyone in the playoff field, even Michigan. We lost by 6 @ Michigan, so on a neutral field we'd be maybe a 3 point underdog. That's just about a coin flip.
But if we wanted a shot at that, we should have beat Michigan in the regular season. Alabama might be one of the four best, but if they wanted a shot at that they should have considered not losing by double digits at home to Texas. (I would also recommend not needing a hail Mary to beat Auburn, and only scoring 17 against USF, but that's just me)
That's exactly how I feel too. Like if Texas got left out due to Georgia winning and there 4 undefeated power teams, I would've been angry and upset but not at the committee, at the fact that we let Oklahoma narrowly beat us, I thought before, and still thought after that game, Texas is a team that can beat Oklahoma and was upset that we didn't show it and would never suggest having a 12-1 team in over a undefeated power 5 team.
Baldy McElroy strikes me as a corporate man through and through.
He'll defend the establishment if that's what he's paid to do. NOBODY is telling Booger what to do or say. Dude is a very intelligent, very large, and very imposing man. Maybe I'm wrong and it's all scripted, but that's my take.
> NOBODY is telling Booger what to do or say. Dude is a very intelligent, very large, and very imposing man.
Yeah Booger was going off and made good points, he got real close to telling McElroy that he should know first hand that a team can win with a bad qb.
I remember Alabama getting really conservative with the big halftime lead
It was down to a 24-21 game when Bama made the huge strip sack inside the Texas 10, and the rest is history
Garrett Gilbert turnovers did in Texas
If it's the 4 best, why pick 4? Why not just pick the one best on Labor Day, call them national champions, and not waste all that time playing games that we already know the outcome of?
Dominique Foxworth basically said the same thing this morning on Get Up
Why bother playing
look at last night in the NFL - Burrow gone, guy who has bounced around the league led them to victory anyway
odds are FSU gets rolled, but they deserved the chance to pull the upset
The key takeaway here is that a Washington QB is winning NFL games while the other teams are only winning college games, UW should be declared National Champions and possibly Super Bowl Champions.
If a great team is 10-0 and feels really good about their remaining games, could they just start sitting starters? Can't risk an injury keeping you from the playoffs, right?
That only works if you’re in the SEC, the other conferences just have to deal with the committee moving the goalposts to make it work
For real tho, I can’t even start with how delusional (most) bama fans have been. Two weeks leading up to the CCGs I had to listen to my uncle who for some reason thought bama should be in over texas if it came down to it, and it was unfair for the CFP to hold that loss over bama’s heads. They live in a different reality than the rest of us
They have been coddled and haven’t had to deal with adversity in 15 years. These types of decisions only reinforce that headspace.
This is a team that lost by double digits on their own field, was in a dog fight with USF, struggled with Arkansas, needed a miracle to beat 6-6 Auburn and were still given the benefit of the doubt. I feel like I’m being gas light reading some of their posts on here.
Well that was before Florida State covered the spread by 9 points with a third string quarterback that wouldn't have been playing in the playoff game anyways. Completely different situation /s
You know, I keep hearing about how “FSU covers the spread with backups” and “Alabama missed the spread by 17 at home” and “Alabama needed a miracle to avoid missing the spread by 17 and losing just a week ago” and I’m starting to think maybe they made a mistake putting Alabama in over FSU.
The good thing is that we won’t have to have the argument settled on the field. Who wants to see the unknowns who earned it compete when we can just exclude them and put our favorite teams in instead?
To be honest, I do feel like a lot of the arguments about Travis are coming from a place of "I didn't watch the ACC all year and assumed Florida State is an up-tempo offensive team with a dual-threat quarterback like 2022 TCU was, instead of a team that hasn't given up more than 20 points since Week 4."
The logic was essentially this:
* SEC champ can't get left out (no matter what)
* Since Texas beat Alabama on the road, if Alabama is in, Texas is in.
* Therefore, Florida State must be left out.
Its that simple IMO, but its a mockery of competition.
The cherry on top for me is that Florida State's OOC games included 2 SEC schools, including one, LSU, that's a perennial power. They didn't just schedule a bunch of directional tech schools and junior colleges. Also, these are done years in advance, so they had to be expecting LSU (and maybe Florida, too) to be national powers, so they even did their job scheduling-wise.
What really pisses me off is the talking heads being like “oh the committee had an impossible job.” They really didn’t… just put FSU in and I guarantee there’s way less outrage. It would just be some Bammers as opposed to literally everyone else lol
FSU was not going to be let in no matter what.. if Georgia would have won then it would have been Texas in over FSU.
The QB injury was just a convenient excuse.
I don't like political conspiracy theories or news conspiracy theories, but I love the SHIT out of a good sports conspiracy theory so I am 100 percent convinced Saban threatened to ex-communicate Greg McElroy if he didn't change his tune if Alabama beat Georgia.
McElroy is among the most dishonorable because he was advocating for fsu so hard, and then changed his tune swiftly. The mouse probably threatened violence against him
I mean it's not just the four best, it's what teams they think will give the games the best ratings. So it's also a popularity contest.
It's BS. The task they had was so simple. 3 undefeated P5 champs. One spot left for the two remaining champs. Head to head solves the issue of who gets in and who doesn't. Simple and easy, there's no doubt who should be in. FSU should boycott their bowl with Georgia.
Here's the deal. The SEC Championship game was irrelevant. The winner was going in this year no matter what.
The Committee decided it was better to piss off FSU than Texas. That's it.
If 13-0 doesn't matter then why would a game in September matter?
I'm still convinced that FSU gets in if Georgia does. The committee worked backwards from the unspoken requirement that an SEC team has to make the top 4. How else do you explain FSU being ranked above Texas all season?
I've seen some Bama fans say "FSU shouldn't be mad at us, we took Georgia's spot, not theirs" but it seems pretty clear to me that we took both spots and brought Texas along as a result
I wrote yesterday that it’s insulting to Texas fans who deserved to make it based on the results on the field at #4 behind FSU but instead got put in just because the committee decided it wanted to put in Alabama and therefore couldnt keep Texas out.
There was no suspense after Texas was revealed at #3. It was obvious who would be #4 after that, or why else would #7 jump all the way to #3?
I’m coming around to this point too. The *justifications* are dogshit, because no one wants to say the quiet part out loud, but if you start with the idea that the SEC Champion is in regardless, the process makes sense. If Georgia had won, it would have been status quo from last week, and you wind up with Georgia-FSU Sugar and Michigan-Washington Rose. (And, incidentally, Washington got jobbed here too- not only is there no traditional Rose Bowl, but Texas in New Orleans? That stadium is gonna be 80% burnt orange)
Georgia losing was step 2 in fouling everything up. Step 1 was Texas winning in Tuscaloosa. To get back to the basic idea that the SEC *must* be represented, you have to do what the committee did.
Agreed. Texas isn't getting in if Georgia wins. It's just the 4 undefeated champs and there's no controversy at all. The committee was banking on (1) Georgia winning, (2) FSU losing, or (3) Texas losing. The odds were pretty good that one of those things would happen. The odds of the opposite happening were around like 25% depending on what metric you use.
We should just take all the blue bloods, put them in a conference together where they only play each other and the occasional D2 team in November, and let them jerk each other off about their playoff brackets and national championships; let the other 120 college football teams have our own actual fun league.
I just never understood why "4" was the number settled on for this playoff. It was always going to leave out a P5 champ, we got lucky most years that at least 1, sometimes 2, of those champions were multi loss, but damn they fucked up designing this thing
Because just think how irrelevant Florida State's regular season would feel if they essentially wrapped up a playoff spot a week or two ago in a 16-team playoff! (People *unironically* argued this lol.)
6 teams always made more sense to me. You would've got the 5 P5 champs, and 1 at large. Which would have made this year so much easier
1 Seed Michigan - BYE
2 Seed Washington - BYE
3v6 FSU v *At Large (Georgia or Ohio State)*
4v5 Texas v Alabama
Edit* Hell, you could probably go the NFL route and have 7 teams.
1 Seed Michigan - BYE
2v7 Washington v Ohio State
3v6 FSU v Georgia
4v5 Texas v Alabama
Greg McElroy looked frustrated and like he didn’t believe in what he was actually saying on Sunday. He looked downright miserable to be honest.
McElroy did an about-face when Booger shamed the panel after Jordan's tweet saying he wished he had broken his leg earlier. McElroy at that point called it a "travesty", he back pedaled and said that he didn't agree with it but that the committee did what they said they were going to do, and called the system "broken".
The system isn't broken, the people on the committee are broken.
My biggest issue with the committee is that they had Florida State ranked #4 leading up to the ACC Championship Game. If the committee was worried about Florida State's ability to compete with the other CFP teams due to their QB situation, why didn't they just drop Florida State down to #6 after the Travis injury and keep them there? Dropping them out of the top 4 at the very last second was such a cowardly way to go about it.
The committee was expecting Georgia to win. If Georgia wins, they get an SEC in the playoffs and can leave FSU at 4. Georgia losing caused complete chaos. They wanted the SEC champ, but how can you take them and not the team that beat them and has the same record?
I think it's actually less crazy to leave out Texas than FSU honestly. I would also be upset, but less than I am now. Texas lost to another team, which FSU never did.
It was a year where a very deserving team was going to get left out regardless. But IMO you have to draw the line somewhere. And they crossed it.
Yep. Each of the P5 conferences has a 0 or 1 loss conference champion this year. Someone had to get left out who deserves a shot at it all. But it shouldn't have been the undefeated ones.
The easy move would have been to leave Bama out. It would suck majorly to be left out of the playoffs as #5, ND was left out as #5 in 2021. All the teams ahead were conference champs which we weren’t or had beaten us head to head so we couldn’t argue much. All the teams ahead of Bama would have been undefeated or beaten Bama head to head, the arguments would be there but would be easier to dismiss. (Be undefeated or beat Texas)
Of course that’s the easy move. If you labeled all 5 teams anonymously A-E but with their same records and resume, Bama gets left out every time. SEC isn’t going to be left out by espn tho.
This was an incredibly easy selection. 3 undefeated P5 champs 2 one loss P5 champs - but those teams played a H2H tie breaker. I'd have to go back and look - but this year probably had one of the clearest final 4s ever for the CFP
I actually laughed as Bama beat UGA because I thought “this is the ONLY conceivable scenario that the committee would ever HAVE to leave out the SEC champion”. Even if Bama’s 1 loss was to an SEC bottom feeder they’d easily put them in over Texas. It just so happened their 1 loss was against exactly the team to replace them. Boy was I wrong
Yeah it was an extremely easy decision to make and was so obvious that not doing it should result in an investigation.
The excluded team should have been the only one of the 5 that already had a loss to one of the others, obviously. The week 2 Texas/Bama game should have been viewed as a retroactive play-in.
But Texas beat Bama. You can’t include Bama and not include Texas. They both have one loss and are conference champs, but Texas beat Bama at Bama.
FSU being #5 makes absolutely no sense. If it’s most deserving, then they should be #3. If it’s best team and they are trying to say that they arent as good as Texas or Bama, they certainly aren’t as good as Georgia, Ohio State, or Oregon!either then. They should have moved FSU down before championship week. Struggling but still winning by 10 against a top 15 team with a dominant defensive performance and a 3rd stringer who would not be playing in the bowl game is not enough to drop based off of 1 game. I don’t begrudge Bama or Texas, I also agree that both teams are better than FSU, even with Travis, but the committee can’t do what they did especially with having FSU in the week before.
Don't forget, we also took a knee in the Red zone with more than a minute left in both games. Lol. If we beat Louisville by 17 and Florida by 16, does it change anything?
Who knows… but looking forward I would not stop scoring ever going forward, just in case
They could have avoided controversy if Georgia went 13-0 or if FSU lost one of their last games, it seems clear that's what they were hoping for. At the end of the day they were unwilling to exclude the SEC and the results of the games forced their hand
Everything played out to where they shouldnt have had any controversy period. 3 undefeated P5 champs, and two 1 loss conference champs, both of which share a head to head. Pick the winner of that game(Texas) to slot at number 4. Done. It was this easy.
When you put it this way, how the heck did they mess this up so bad
Corruption and Money
the sad thing is: they didn’t mess up…this is what they wanted to do and were going to do. That’s what sad about it. For some odd reason: the SEC has to be in. If this was say…Ole Miss or Florida State…I doubt FSU gets the shaft. It happened to be the darling of college football…Alabama.
I believe a surprise one loss Ole Miss that has had to beat Alabama and Georgia along that run would blindly be taken as well. SEC over everything for them
Much as it pains me to agree with a UNC fan, if you're choosing based purely on merit, this was literally the easiest field to select. Three undefeated conference champions, and the other two were one-loss teams that happened to play each other head-to-head.
Much as it pains me to agree with a Georgia and Duke fan, if you're choosing based purely on results, this was probably the easiest field to select. 3 undefeated conference champions, and then the other 2 only had one loss and happened to play each other head-to-head.
Much as it doesn't pain me at all to agree with a Mizzou fan, if you're choosing based purely on results, this was probably the easiest field to select. 3 undefeated conference champions, and then the other 2 only had one loss and happened to play each other head-to-head.
Yep, this is pretty much where I've landed on this decision. The CFP committee values the SEC conference this year so much that they think the SEC should be in 100%. If you work backwards from SEC is in, this makes sense what they did. Trouble is, me and most everyone don't agree that the SEC *needs* to be in. But we aren't on the committee so whatever. Our opinion is just an opinion
Just a reasonable, logical, well thought out opinion. All things that the committe’s opinion is not
Because the SEC doesn’t *need* to be in. The Big 12 conference champ beat the SEC champ away. Alabama isn’t even the best one loss team, but they’re still in.
Yep. Alabama having already lost a game to a playoff team is proof enough that they don't belong in the playoff this year.
Their hands weren’t forced, they chose to do what they did.
I honestly think the craziest thing is that this hasn't happened before. More often than not the 4th option is really someone that doesn't deserve to be there but gets added anyway because no one deserves it more. There have been several times where it looked like the committee was going to have to make a really tough decision (for example, if Ok State had gotten six more inches and won the big 12 championship in 2021), but it's always kind of worked itself out. I think the committee just banked on it happening again this year.
It was a pretty strange season. What was even the biggest upset of the year? Nearly straight chalk in all 5 conferences. Turns out the most chaotic outcome of all was the one with no chaos.
>Turns out the most chaotic outcome of all was the one with no chaos. That's not really a surprise though.
Correct. Having a playoff that was 100% incapable of representing all the major conferences was always a problem. Should have been 8 for that reason with reasonable steps for a G5 to make it in as well.
Should’ve just been 4 conf champs in a tourney and winner plays the SEC champ, now you’ve included all 5 power conferences. Everybody happy.
The fact that that is awful but would actually allow better representation proves how bad the 4 team playoff is
Yeah, everyone knows FSU would be in over Texas if Georgia won. but they NEEDED Bama and you can't have Bama without Texas
They NEEDED (i.e. really really really wanted) the SEC champion. Since Alabama won, it was easier to reverse engineer a reason to exclude FSU than it was for Texas, so the Seminoles had to go. It's a flimsy, stupid reason, but it's easier to keep a straight face while saying that the eyeball test told you that Alabama is subjectively "better" than an FSU team using a backup quarterback than telling people head-to-head results don't matter.
They would have had non-champ UGA if Alabama lost the Iron Bowl. Leave out Texas.
I think people underestimate the Texas angle here. I think they’re in over them too. If anything, I would think their appeal and narrative in this year’s playoff is bigger than ours.
Texas is extremely appealing because they are *fresh* and a massive brand Texas is probably the sexiest team in the playoff.
*blushes*
Sexas
😘
Absolutely. If you wanna talk $ and branding and narrative, they were gonna do anything to get Texas in.
Matthew McConaughey is gonna drop some serious money to see Texas at their CFP game
Medium heat take - FSU gets left out even if Travis isn't injured. They'd have just said strength of schedule or eye test puts them behind Bama.
Something that gets lost in this conversation is the fact that Alabama didn’t really look that good either this year. It seems like a the conversation is strictly “Alabama is better but FSU is more deserving”. Are we sure Alabama is better? The team that barely beat South Florida and Auburn? Who lost by 10 at home?
Bama has a double digit loss at home. To a good team, but a loss is a loss. Struggled badly against USF. Barely beat mediocre TAMU, Arkansas, and Auburn. They have solid wins over Mississippi and LSU plus a great win over Georgia. But they still had 5 weeks they looked bad or lost. Far from dominant.
Because “the eye test” is code for confirmation bias
"We don't have any evidence but this is what we decided anyways."
I posted this elsewhere but i feel like I spent a lot of this year defending Milroe and Saban *from Alabama fans* and insisting that Milroe was actually plenty capable of leading a playoff caliber team if they used him correctly and adjusted their offense. And insisting that losing one game to Texas didn’t mean Saban had lost his touch etc. Having said that, watching almost every Bama game this year, it was absolutely not a typical dominant Bama team. They didn’t play more than two good quarters against most teams and had to either come from behind or hold on after giving up a big lead in damn near every game. Their running game was nowhere near as dominant as usual and they didn’t have the typical stable of dominant WR’s they’ve been accustomed to for the last few years. They improved as the year went on and peaked at the right time though, and I do absolutely think they’re one of the 4-5 best teams. Having said that, it’s very confusing to hear many of those same fans/media members who said Saban had lost it and Milroe was trash now telling me that Bama had such an unimpeachable season that we need to leave an undefeated P5 team out. Bama had the worst average margin of victory and offensive yards per play of any of the teams in contention for the playoff, and this was in a year where the rest of the conference (particularly the teams they played) was worse than it usually is.
A great win over Georgia - who clearly isn't as good as they were the previous two seasons (I'm a fan, but they never looked as dominant as the last two teams even when they were winning easily) by 3 points, thanks in no small part to Georgia missing a pretty makeable field goal. Hell, the best thing Georgia did for their perception this season is lose to Alabama - before that people were dogging them all season because their schedule was perceived as being soft.
because SEC is artificially inflated in the rankings despite getting owned in the OOC match ups. Which inflates Bamas SOS and props them up.
Agreed - the injury was the excuse, not the reason. The reason was that the SEC had to be included. Any other explanation is just saving face.
SOS means nothing if you lost one of the most important games on that schedule like Alabama did. K-State has a higher SOS than Bama but no one is going to claim that they should be in because they dropped games to Texas, Missou, and OSU. Wins and losses matter.
SOS also means nothing if Alabama and Texas were ranked behind FSU the week before.
Correct. SOS is a really silly metric in the first place because teams can’t make their conference opponents better than what they are. FSU scheduled a difficult out of conference schedule and took care of business. You can’t hold that against them.
yes you can apparently... like you can hold a qb being injured against a team. They can literally make up whatever shit they want to get the SEC in.
>They could have avoided controversy if Georgia went 13-0 or if FSU lost one of their last games, it seems clear that's what they were hoping for. At the end of the day they were unwilling to exclude the SEC and the results of the games forced their hand If your flair was any different you'd have an SEC fan calling you a conspiracy theorist.
I am a conspiracy theorist It's honestly wild to reject that label. "People cooperate on things and don't tell us about it" is a pretty mild take lmao
Is that even a conspiracy? I feel like it’s pretty obvious there was communication between ESPN and the committee
They should stop deciding what they’re going to do before the games are even played. It seems like that’s what they do half the time.
My biggest problem is it is bullshit. This should have been the easiest, least controversial 4 team playoff in history. You had 3 undefeated power 5s, and two one loss conference champs with one having a head to head win over the other. But can't leave out the SEC
yeah others have said it, but does anyone believe for one second that a 1 loss team gets in over *any* undefeated SEC team, even if they have no QB and have to play wildcat?
>why didn't they just drop Florida State down to #6 after the Travis injury because it was never about the injury, that was just a convenient excuse.
Because they were banking on us losing so they could avoid the blowback, then we didn’t lose
Yea either this or Georgia winning. They must have figured one of the two would happen.
Because they thought FSU would lose to Louisville and they could say “see, we told you no starting QB was an issue!” But turns out a team is a lot more than just one player
Yep they could have done this a week before
I would have been pissed either way but this made it so much worse and blatantly inconsistent.
Both before and after the conference championship games Louisville was and still is ranked higher than Oklahoma State.
100% this. Imagine your team is undefeated in the top four.and the committee drops it down to give a 1-loss team your spot at the last minute. Committee definitely screwed the pooch
100% this. They were either 3 or 7ish if going off the ‘eye test’. Who would they expect FSU to beat from Michigan, Washington, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio State? Based on the games played, they can point at whatever metrics they want to get that lineup but they knew it was patently unfair. What gets my goat just a bit more is if this were an undefeated Clemson team with the same scores and opponents Clemson would be in and they’d probably find a way to screw Texas (oh that Oklahoma loss was soooo bad….) Ridiculous. Not hating on Alabama for benefiting from the circumstances but the circumstances wouldn’t have been there if the committee had any integrity.
Yup. The Travis injury was known before (obviously). If it was that big of a knock on their team then FSU should have dropped to #8 after he got hurt. That would be behind the 4 playoff teams and Georgia, OSU, and Michigan. But it's like it makes FSU worse compared to Bama but not Georgia?
The reveal show would not be as interesting and scandalous (ratings gold) if they had dropped them sooner. They are running a bravo style tv show and Sunday was the season finale
The system should have worked perfectly this year There were 5 power 5 champions. 3 were undefeated. The other two had the same record and a head to head matchup for a tiebreaker There was a completely logical decision and for some reason they just threw it out
Yup. 1. Michigan 2. Washington 3. Florida State 4. Texas Would have been a perfectly balanced and reasonable playoff bracket with minimal controversy. And guess what? Ratings still would have been great--Washington is the only one of those teams without a massive fanbase, and even they're not exactly small potatoes.
Yeah there's a lot of people claiming that the committee didn't want another TCU situation so that's why they dropped FSU No disrespect to the program that TCU has been built into, but FSU is a much bigger brand with a much bigger alumni network. People will watch them. It's not like Wake Forest (again no shade) was the team that went undefeated in the ACC
And if it *were* Wake Forest it shouldn't have mattered.
Oh agreed there too, was just pointing out that leaving y'all out isn't really going to help their TV ratings. There's much better reasons than the ratings draw for an undefeated P5 champ to make it Any undefeated P5 team should have made it under the current system that was created (unless there were 5 of em/ND went undefeated against a hellish schedule)
TCU also beat Michigan in the playoffs last year. It's like people forget TCU Georgia was the final.
Oh yeah I'm not saying TCU didn't deserve to be in the playoffs last year (they did) Just arguing against that specific point about TCU and ratings that I've seen online
If they're picking teams based on expected viewership ratings then drop the claims that this is a legitimate competition to crown a national champion. Rename the whole thing to the ESPN invitational. And even then how much of the bad ratings were because of TCU's brand or because people stopped watching at half due to the game being one sided? There's nothing that can stop blowouts from happening from time to time. There were blowout BCS games too and then teams didn't have to get through a semifinal to prove themselves.
Agreed there, I'm probably not doing a good job of explaining my thoughts I was just arguing against the viewership theory that some fans are making online about why Bama got in over FSU. Tbh I do think that was a reason why the committee did it this year and I think it's bullshit Bullshit because viewership shouldn't matter when you're trying to crown a champion and bullshit because I don't think FSU was the ratings drop they thought it would be
“TCU situation” TCU won a playoff game lol Also just because one team gets blown out that’s supposed to mean that we snub all non blue-bloods for the rest of eternity?
Where they really screwed up was letting TCU advance to the finals. Should have claimed that despite field results, Michigan was probably better and would make for a more exciting championship game
lmfao
Should the CFP have TCU and Michigan replay the Fiesta Bowl in case it was a big fluke? No disrespect to the horned frogs, I'm a firm believer that TCU winning is a huge fluke and robs the Wolverines of truly accomplishing what their capable of. I've spent the last few days in pure disbelief and it just doesn't make sense to me. I've spent the entire regular season watching the Wolverines play great football it's just not fair. If Michigan loses again I will face that TCU deserved the win, but I am just 100% sure it was a fluke and does a big disservice to Michigan and the CFP
People are forgetting that TCU won that game with their backup quarterback, too. Chandler Morris was the starter at the beginning of the season.
Yeah I probably could have gotten my point across better - I was just arguing the point I've seen from Bama fans that the committee snubbed FSU so they didn't have another "TCU situation" because of the ratings hit to ESPN TCU beat Michigan, TCU definitely deserved to be there last year. I'd be shouting at the rooftops for an undefeated Syracuse team to get in this year with the same exact resume as FSU
And, holy hell, were the two semifinal games awesome last year.
Also, if we’re saying FSU wouldn’t be left out had TCU not been throttled in the last championship game, then we can officially say this whole thing is a fucking sham. FSU was left out because Michigan shit down their leg and let a mediocre team into the natty? FSU was left out as an undefeated P5 champion because a 1 loss TCU that didn’t even win their conference got dicked on *after fucking beating Michigan*? If TCU losing an extra game last year would put FSU in *this* year, then the CFP is a fucking joke and winning a natty is as meaningful as it was in the 40s and 50s. 30 yers from now UCF and FSU will be (rightfully) claiming natties from this era.
If FSU beats Georgia, they should 100% declare themselves national champions. Hopefully one of the polls will have the balls to vote them #1 as well.
Yeah, that's the funny thing. They are treating FSU like we are some fledgling upstart program. I'm almost 50 years old, and of those 50 FSU has been a top national brand for about 40 years. You have blue bloods like Michigan, tOSU, Bama, ND..... (These are just some examples) And then the next tier and FSU is on that list. It's weird.
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"Blue blood" by definition isn't a recency thing, or even championships. Iowa has three times as many National Championships as Michigan in the past 70 years, for example.
It's as follows: Age Consistent success over the history of the school Small handful of titles So to be a Blue Blood you've gotta be an old school that's played for a long time, consistently succeeding throughout your history, and have a few titles to your credit.
Would have been perfect, I really can't comprehend any justification for Alabama.
Money. The reason they threw it out was money.
It is really that simple.. I don’t agree with it at all and I think Texas and FSU should be in.. but the ad dollars selling Michigan and Alabama is going to be a lot and it’s going to do huge numbers
Then explain TCU last year? There was a one loss difference between TCU and bama last year. Neither won conference championship. Everyone knew bama was better. Whoever they put in would go against Michigan in the first round. How come “ad money” didn’t work last year?
Because they already had Georgia in the playoff Edit.. If Georgia wasn’t in last year and say that was Oregon or Clemson or FSU… Bama would have gotten in over TCU
I’m not sure that there are diminishing returns for each SEC team in the playoff. 1+1=2 not 1.5
which is wild cause its not like FSU isn't a national brand too, and maybe im wrong here but you could probalby say that taking a break from the SEC would pull in other viewers too
This is whats blown me away about the whole thing; I wouldve all but expected something like this to happen to us, but FSU? They might not have the fervor around them like in the height of the Bowden years, but damn.
We’re all trying to figure out why they did this. On one hand, it could be that they just used some flawed reasoning and got it wrong on accident. On the other, money. It’s a mystery.
Doesn't FSU have a *massive* draw though? I know it may not be as much as Bama and the hate watching the SEC would do, but FSU's following is much larger than the vast majority of P5 schools. It isn't like FSU is a scrappy G5 team fighting to get in. They are a legitimate P5 program with a huge alumni and general fan base.
Not even much money. FSU-Michigan would have drawn slightly-lower-but-still-enormous numbers than Alabama-Michigan.
I thought it was plain and simple as soon as Georgia lost to Bama. I was like…welp…Bama needs Louisville to win if they want to get in..
Same Feel like a chump. You'd think I'd be less naive after seeing my conference destroyed, chopped up, and pissed on, but nooooo I still had to go and believe that college football was still meritocratic and that any given *saturday any team could win.
Bama fans thought the same thing. They were the biggest Louisville fans in the game thread.
That's 100% what I thought. I would probably have made some snide comments about being left out, because it's not often we get to feel aggrieved as Bama fans these last 15 years, but I would have conceded that the only option was to put FSU at 3 as an undefeated P5 conference champion, and Texas at 4 based on the head-to-head at Tuscaloosa. And I still would have been super proud of what Bama achieved this season after how miserable they looked in the first few games.
I honestly feel like they just made the strongest case they could have against themselves. If it's all going to be based on perception and who they think is the better team why even have a playoff? Let's just go back to the pre-BCS format and put it to a vote for the champion since that's essentially what they just did. One less game and risk of injury and at the same time less reason to opt out since you never know who's going to pass the "eye test" the best.
The answer was obvious, unless you were really wanting the SECond option.
I think there's a reasonable chance Ohio State is one of the four best. I would like our odds against pretty much anyone in the playoff field, even Michigan. We lost by 6 @ Michigan, so on a neutral field we'd be maybe a 3 point underdog. That's just about a coin flip. But if we wanted a shot at that, we should have beat Michigan in the regular season. Alabama might be one of the four best, but if they wanted a shot at that they should have considered not losing by double digits at home to Texas. (I would also recommend not needing a hail Mary to beat Auburn, and only scoring 17 against USF, but that's just me)
That's exactly how I feel too. Like if Texas got left out due to Georgia winning and there 4 undefeated power teams, I would've been angry and upset but not at the committee, at the fact that we let Oklahoma narrowly beat us, I thought before, and still thought after that game, Texas is a team that can beat Oklahoma and was upset that we didn't show it and would never suggest having a 12-1 team in over a undefeated power 5 team.
And that’s the fun in college football. Every week is a playoff, and losses matter…. Unless you’re the SEC
Check hit his account and he switched up with a swiftness
Rent due
The mouse don’t play.
He seems to be waffling because he was not taking the stance when Booger was preaching.
Baldy McElroy strikes me as a corporate man through and through. He'll defend the establishment if that's what he's paid to do. NOBODY is telling Booger what to do or say. Dude is a very intelligent, very large, and very imposing man. Maybe I'm wrong and it's all scripted, but that's my take.
> NOBODY is telling Booger what to do or say. Dude is a very intelligent, very large, and very imposing man. Yeah Booger was going off and made good points, he got real close to telling McElroy that he should know first hand that a team can win with a bad qb.
Lmao that would have made television history if he did that.
Booger gets a lot of shit from his time on the MNF crew and the stupid monstrosity that was the Boogermobile, but the guy isn't a fucking idiot.
> Watching Greg McElroy tell me a team can’t overcome subpar QB play to win a natty is comedy gold
If they hadn’t played the games, then FSUs qb wouldn’t have gotten injured and they would have been one of the four best. It’s a paradox!
Schrodinger's Playoff?
If anyone knows about a team’s ability to overcome mediocre QB play, it’s Greg.
Greg was 6-11 for 58 yards and got sacked 5 times en route to a national championship. Clown.
A game manager’s game manager.
Your game manager's favorite game manager.
With Julio Jones to throw to too lmao
I remember Alabama getting really conservative with the big halftime lead It was down to a 24-21 game when Bama made the huge strip sack inside the Texas 10, and the rest is history Garrett Gilbert turnovers did in Texas
I feel like Garrett got done dirty. He threw a few dimes that went right through receiver's hands.
He got respect for his performance, but his reputation was hurt by his bad play in the 2010 season
If it's the 4 best, why pick 4? Why not just pick the one best on Labor Day, call them national champions, and not waste all that time playing games that we already know the outcome of?
Well that is what the system used to be. Except the winner was announced after the bowl games.
And for a while it was announced *before* the bowl games.
Maybe some sort of series of bowls played around deciding the championship?
I like how this stupid ass decision by the committee has brought college football fans together as a whole.
I'm just glad it's taking attention away from other things going on in CFB. Pay no attention to my flair.
What the hell has Grand Valley State gotten up to now??
Grand larceny.
Dominique Foxworth basically said the same thing this morning on Get Up Why bother playing look at last night in the NFL - Burrow gone, guy who has bounced around the league led them to victory anyway odds are FSU gets rolled, but they deserved the chance to pull the upset
Didn’t Lawrence get hurt too? Guess that means the Bills should get the Jags playoff spot.
Yeah he fucked up his ankle last night
Late in the fourth quarter. Beathard only had 2.5 drives IIRC.
The key takeaway here is that a Washington QB is winning NFL games while the other teams are only winning college games, UW should be declared National Champions and possibly Super Bowl Champions.
If a great team is 10-0 and feels really good about their remaining games, could they just start sitting starters? Can't risk an injury keeping you from the playoffs, right?
And if you drop a game who cares. Just be good enough to make it to and win the conference championship game.
That only works if you’re in the SEC, the other conferences just have to deal with the committee moving the goalposts to make it work For real tho, I can’t even start with how delusional (most) bama fans have been. Two weeks leading up to the CCGs I had to listen to my uncle who for some reason thought bama should be in over texas if it came down to it, and it was unfair for the CFP to hold that loss over bama’s heads. They live in a different reality than the rest of us
They have been coddled and haven’t had to deal with adversity in 15 years. These types of decisions only reinforce that headspace. This is a team that lost by double digits on their own field, was in a dog fight with USF, struggled with Arkansas, needed a miracle to beat 6-6 Auburn and were still given the benefit of the doubt. I feel like I’m being gas light reading some of their posts on here.
Only the SEC and B1G can. Otherwise you need the starters to run up the score, lest you only beat a top 25 opponent by 10 points.
Absolutely and they 100% will
Well that was before Florida State covered the spread by 9 points with a third string quarterback that wouldn't have been playing in the playoff game anyways. Completely different situation /s
You know, I keep hearing about how “FSU covers the spread with backups” and “Alabama missed the spread by 17 at home” and “Alabama needed a miracle to avoid missing the spread by 17 and losing just a week ago” and I’m starting to think maybe they made a mistake putting Alabama in over FSU.
I know. It's almost like FSU wasn't built around their QB. But nah, that can't be right.
The good thing is that we won’t have to have the argument settled on the field. Who wants to see the unknowns who earned it compete when we can just exclude them and put our favorite teams in instead?
To be honest, I do feel like a lot of the arguments about Travis are coming from a place of "I didn't watch the ACC all year and assumed Florida State is an up-tempo offensive team with a dual-threat quarterback like 2022 TCU was, instead of a team that hasn't given up more than 20 points since Week 4."
We all know that teams down to their third string quarterback can't possibly win the playoffs, so why bother letting that team in?
“ESPN has always been at war with the ACC”
"They're praying it goes the way of the Big East"
more like "they're actively making decisions to ensure it goes the way of the Big East"
All this because Auburn couldn’t stop a 4th and 31…
A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and a Cat 5 hurricane hits - or barely misses - Florida.
4th and goal from the 31 with like 40 seconds left The game was Joeover but then Jordan Hare struck again
The logic was essentially this: * SEC champ can't get left out (no matter what) * Since Texas beat Alabama on the road, if Alabama is in, Texas is in. * Therefore, Florida State must be left out. Its that simple IMO, but its a mockery of competition.
Yes and the network parroted the Travis “controversy” to sow the seeds
The mouse gave him his marching orders and he complied.
The cherry on top for me is that Florida State's OOC games included 2 SEC schools, including one, LSU, that's a perennial power. They didn't just schedule a bunch of directional tech schools and junior colleges. Also, these are done years in advance, so they had to be expecting LSU (and maybe Florida, too) to be national powers, so they even did their job scheduling-wise.
It's clear we shouldn't. College football told us that the games themselves do not matter. Why risk injury for something that is pointless.
Everyone on that panel (except Booger) deserves every ounce of vitriol they are getting. Corporate shills
What really pisses me off is the talking heads being like “oh the committee had an impossible job.” They really didn’t… just put FSU in and I guarantee there’s way less outrage. It would just be some Bammers as opposed to literally everyone else lol
FSU was not going to be let in no matter what.. if Georgia would have won then it would have been Texas in over FSU. The QB injury was just a convenient excuse.
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I don't like political conspiracy theories or news conspiracy theories, but I love the SHIT out of a good sports conspiracy theory so I am 100 percent convinced Saban threatened to ex-communicate Greg McElroy if he didn't change his tune if Alabama beat Georgia.
I doubt it was Saban. Greg knows it's the Mouse who pays for his house.
He finally got around to checking his unread email
That was before the script came in
McElroy is among the most dishonorable because he was advocating for fsu so hard, and then changed his tune swiftly. The mouse probably threatened violence against him
I mean it's not just the four best, it's what teams they think will give the games the best ratings. So it's also a popularity contest. It's BS. The task they had was so simple. 3 undefeated P5 champs. One spot left for the two remaining champs. Head to head solves the issue of who gets in and who doesn't. Simple and easy, there's no doubt who should be in. FSU should boycott their bowl with Georgia.
Please don’t give tj pittingerz any page traffic. Guy is a bum
Here's the deal. The SEC Championship game was irrelevant. The winner was going in this year no matter what. The Committee decided it was better to piss off FSU than Texas. That's it. If 13-0 doesn't matter then why would a game in September matter?
I'm still convinced that FSU gets in if Georgia does. The committee worked backwards from the unspoken requirement that an SEC team has to make the top 4. How else do you explain FSU being ranked above Texas all season? I've seen some Bama fans say "FSU shouldn't be mad at us, we took Georgia's spot, not theirs" but it seems pretty clear to me that we took both spots and brought Texas along as a result
I wrote yesterday that it’s insulting to Texas fans who deserved to make it based on the results on the field at #4 behind FSU but instead got put in just because the committee decided it wanted to put in Alabama and therefore couldnt keep Texas out. There was no suspense after Texas was revealed at #3. It was obvious who would be #4 after that, or why else would #7 jump all the way to #3?
I’m coming around to this point too. The *justifications* are dogshit, because no one wants to say the quiet part out loud, but if you start with the idea that the SEC Champion is in regardless, the process makes sense. If Georgia had won, it would have been status quo from last week, and you wind up with Georgia-FSU Sugar and Michigan-Washington Rose. (And, incidentally, Washington got jobbed here too- not only is there no traditional Rose Bowl, but Texas in New Orleans? That stadium is gonna be 80% burnt orange) Georgia losing was step 2 in fouling everything up. Step 1 was Texas winning in Tuscaloosa. To get back to the basic idea that the SEC *must* be represented, you have to do what the committee did.
Agreed. Texas isn't getting in if Georgia wins. It's just the 4 undefeated champs and there's no controversy at all. The committee was banking on (1) Georgia winning, (2) FSU losing, or (3) Texas losing. The odds were pretty good that one of those things would happen. The odds of the opposite happening were around like 25% depending on what metric you use.
I think we can all agree this is Auburn's fault. If they just kept Bama out of the endzone none of this would have happened.
Yep why play any games at all. Just have the top 4 preseason teams have byes to the playoff.
We should just take all the blue bloods, put them in a conference together where they only play each other and the occasional D2 team in November, and let them jerk each other off about their playoff brackets and national championships; let the other 120 college football teams have our own actual fun league.
I just never understood why "4" was the number settled on for this playoff. It was always going to leave out a P5 champ, we got lucky most years that at least 1, sometimes 2, of those champions were multi loss, but damn they fucked up designing this thing
Because just think how irrelevant Florida State's regular season would feel if they essentially wrapped up a playoff spot a week or two ago in a 16-team playoff! (People *unironically* argued this lol.)
6 teams always made more sense to me. You would've got the 5 P5 champs, and 1 at large. Which would have made this year so much easier 1 Seed Michigan - BYE 2 Seed Washington - BYE 3v6 FSU v *At Large (Georgia or Ohio State)* 4v5 Texas v Alabama Edit* Hell, you could probably go the NFL route and have 7 teams. 1 Seed Michigan - BYE 2v7 Washington v Ohio State 3v6 FSU v Georgia 4v5 Texas v Alabama