That would be ridiculous when you have such a disparity with Strength of Schedule. If Liberty runs the table, they have a better resume than a one-loss Big Ten or SEC team, even if they don't play a single top 75 team?
Updated CFP Poll - Dec. 3
- Thread starter RyanSnyder
- Start date
Agreed
It is all subjective - there is zero ability to even consider removing "subjectivity", nor should one even try.
What "objective rule" does one put in place that determines whether Tennessee or Ohio State get a higher seed? (Or any of hundreds, literally, of other permutations)
FWIW:
I did say a "cogent" argument, up front (I know you were just "for instancing"... but just to illustrate in real terms).
Here is the current 12 team playoff - by W-L record
Oregon, then:
7-way tie for second through eight (how do you sort them out?)
Texas
Boise
Notre Dame
Penn State
Indiana
SMU
Army
And then a 10-way tie for spots 9-12:
Memphis
Miami
Arizona State
Iowa State
BYU
Ohio State
UNLV
Georgia
Tennessee
U of Louisiana
Who is in? Who is out? What are the "seeds"?
Flip coins? Draw straws? Rock-Paper-Scissors Tourney?
Boise State and smu in the top four with first-round byes. For f*ck’s sake.
An upset or two this weekend, and the teams will be even worse.
Do you think it matters how good teams like Vanderbilt, Syracuse, Northern Illinois, BYU, UCLA, Northern Illinois, etc. are?
I'm fine with "weaker" teams having byes. Winning your conference means something. If a team is complaining about not getting a bye then they should go and win their own conference (or join a conference).
I get it. But if you are trying to call it down the middle, the only thing you can fairly go by is the total wins and losses. What can teams do, the schedules are made years in advance and teams improve or regress after every season. Indiana is suddenly good, Michigan isn't so good. It's not the NCAA basketball tournament where 64 teams get to go so you can overlook a few blemishes on resumes. What do you do with Indiana this year anyway? Beat Michigan, lost to OSU. Michigan beat OSU. OSU ranked higher than Indiana, but have more losses, Michigan not going to the playoffs because of their overall record. Who is the best team out of those three? I have no idea. Just have to look at the total records and seed accordingly.
If the records are the same, then I would do an NBA draft lottery with them for seeding. Better odds based on strength of schedule, based on win/loss records of the teams played. What else can you really do?
Seems pretty easy to rank those 3 teams...
1 Ohio St
2 Indiana
3 Michigan
We've got 12 games from each team (and all of the games that their opponents played) that tells me that pretty clearly.
We've got a pretty good system today of identifying the right at-large teams, it's the byes/seeds that I have an issue with. But simply looking at Wins/Losses completely ignores Strength of Schedules, which is a huge item to determine those wins and losses. Does an 11-1 Army team that beat absolutely no one really have a better resume than some of the 2 and 3 loss SEC/Big Ten teams that played 5-8 games that are tougher than Army's second toughest game?
Exactly.
All of which is "eye test".
Even if you use some algorithm - the algorithm is subjective based on what someone feels is meaningful (one could, if they wanted to, develop an "algorithm" to elevate or drop whomever they wanted).
It is simply a logical impossibility to take 130 teams that all play completely different schedules, and have dozens of parameters that one may feel are (based on subjectivity) either very important, mildly important, or not important at all) and have it be anything but subjective, and have the results be anything other than subjective.
Is it more important to beat good teams (however one wants to - subjectively - define that) or to avoid losing to bad teams (however one wants to - subjectively - define that)?
Should teams that are playing better later in the season (however one wants to - subjectively - define that) be given extra weighting... if so, how much?
Etc Etc Etc. One could go on forever.
It is what it is.
As much as many folks hate it, if there is a better system than having a group of folks who ostensibly know a bit about the game, and pay attention, get together and hash out who they feel are the best.... I haven't seen it.
Not saying it is perfect - but have certainly not seen any magic pill that would be even 1/2 as good.
Now, the structure of the playoffs (this new 12 team fiasco)? That is a SYSTEMIC failing, of huge proportions, IMO.
A LOT could be done to improve upon that. Just about every aspect of how that thing was put together - seeds, byes, home field, etc etc- is FUBAR, and that is fixable (and I expect we will see multiple changes there in short order).
But getting the X teams that are included in the tourney is probably done as well as it can be.
But, on the plus side, it fills up gigantic numbers of hours of TV and Radio air time of pseudo-experts jibbering jabber. So there is that
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Big 12's Yormark: CFP favoring 'logos vs. résumés'
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark clearly expressed his displeasure about the College Football Playoff rankings while insisting Wednesday that his conference's champion should get a first-round bye over any Group of Five champion.
www.espn.com
Big 12's Yormark: CFP favoring 'logos vs. résumés'
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark clearly expressed his displeasure about the College Football Playoff rankings while insisting Wednesday that his conference's champion should get a first-round bye over any Group of Five champion.
www.espn.com
I'm so sick of all the complaints around the rankings, but this one might take the cake. He goes on and on about how the Big 12 winner deserves the bye over the Group of 5 winner (it's not a bad argument as trying to separate Boise St's awful schedule from Arizona St's bad schedule with an extra loss isn't easy), but plays the "they should be paying attention to resumes and not logos" care, as if Boise St is this blue blood that they are favoring over Arizona St.
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