College Football Week 15 Championship Week

[TDX27]

Penn State got totally ****** in the rankings and bowl selection. They easily should have been in the top 10 with one of the top 3 or so schedules. They only lost to an unbeaten Minnesota (at the time) and the No. 1 team in the country, at the time. How they could have actually lost ground and then got a **** bowl against Memphis in the Cotton Bowl is crazy. As usual, the Big Ten gets zero respect for having a bunch of ranked teams beat up on each other. Penn State absolutely should have been in a New Years day bowl and ahead of Wisconsin. Penn State should have easily been the highest ranked Big Ten team behind OSU. Wisconsin plays on the very weak side of the conference and lost 3 games. They should have been somewhere between 10-15 in the final rankings with Penn State easily in the top 10 with only 2 losses to undefeated teams when they played them.

 

[tapeANaspirin2it]

Perfect example. You see SEC bias around every corner. But have no issues with the Big 10 being put above other teams with the same record. Why is Wisconsin #8? They've lost 3 games and just lost a game. Why are they ahead of a 2 loss Utah team? How do they have a 1 loss conference champion team (Memphis) behind a 3 loss Michigan and a 3 loss Iowa team? Big 10 bias?

I do think Wisconsin is overrated. I’m not a big 10 fan. I hate the big 10. I’d love to see Ohio State lose by 50 and Michigan by 100 in these bowls. But because conference rankings have all but obscured analysis of individual teams, I am FORCED to root for these **** heads to at least some extent. Because somehow if Michigan loses to Bama, it means Penn State isn’t any good by extension.

You have to know that’s how rankings have worked for years now.

Here’s what everybody misses about my college football takes. My overall criticism is that conference affiliation has become factor #1 in ranking and the actual skill of the team is a distant second. The SEC without question gets the most hype and by extension it means rankings of SEC teams are most impacted by what I feel is a lazy and inaccurate analysis. I think Georgia is a perfect example this year. What the hell have they done to warrant such a high rankings.

It trickles down as well. Non Power 5 schools will always get screwed. UCF got screwed badly and I was on here arguing they should have been in the playoffs a few years ago. Memphis probably should be ranked higher.

I believe Clemson is the best team right now. Why are they 3? Has anybody said a word about their talent or skill? No, it’s all about how the ACC isn’t as good as SEC of Big 10, etc. As I’ve said, that reasoning is lazy.

I want to get back to evaluating individual teams and not just slotting teams in based on a ranking of conference strength. LSU looks great but why should LSU looking great lift up perception of Texas A&M?

Does anybody think Georgia is better than Alabama? I sure don’t. But rankings go by this slotting system and Georgia finished 2nd in the SEC so you gotta have them as the 2nd highest ranked SEC team.


This is why I feel strongly that the 4 teams in the playoff must be conference champs. Because college football does not have near enough games vs common opponents to really compare these teams. Oregon basically dominated Auburn this year, but they kept making mistake after mistake and kept Auburn in it and choked it away at the end. I felt Utah would beat Oregon because I didn’t think Oregon was physical enough to handle a power run team lie Utah. I was wrong. Now my perceptions of Oregon and Utah are totally different.

I feel it is arrogant to exclude a conference champ in favor of a second team from a particular conference because it is built on too many assumptions and not enough data.

 

[tapeANaspirin2it]

Penn State got totally ****** in the rankings and bowl selection. They easily should have been in the top 10 with one of the top 3 or so schedules. They only lost to an unbeaten Minnesota (at the time) and the No. 1 team in the country, at the time. How they could have actually lost ground and then got a **** bowl against Memphis in the Cotton Bowl is crazy. As usual, the Big Ten gets zero respect for having a bunch of ranked teams beat up on each other. Penn State absolutely should have been in a New Years day bowl and ahead of Wisconsin. Penn State should have easily been the highest ranked Big Ten team behind OSU. Wisconsin plays on the very weak side of the conference and lost 3 games. They should have been somewhere between 10-15 in the final rankings with Penn State easily in the top 10 with only 2 losses to undefeated teams when they played them.

The matchup with Memphis sucks but the Cotton Bowl is one of the "New Year’s 6" bowls chosen by a committee so getting the Cotton technically is the equivalent of getting a New Year’s day bowl. Since ESPN bought most of the bowls, the date of the game has less to do with the prestige of the game than it used to. Now they spread the games out for TV so you have better bowls being played before crappier ones.

I don’t get the Wisconsin love either for losing to Ohio State. They got handily beat twice. Both times, they started hot then got smoked in the second half. It’s funny because they hold Penn State’s second half vs Michigan against them. A second half where Penn State did have a TD taken off the board on a penalty and PSU never relinquished the lead. They ding PSU for holding on for a close win. Shouldn’t LSU similarly get dinged for letting Bama back in the game? Shouldn’t Wisconsin get dinged for getting smoked twice in the second half vs Ohio State?

It’s why I hate these committees. They keep trying to tell us about data points and other nonsense and then they just rank based on who they want playing where. They do nonsense like ranking Clemson 5 in their initial ranking just so they can jump them up the next week. They put Ohio State 1 just to set up LSU jumping them in the final poll. It’s just a TV show. And it becomes more obvious every year if you listen to their ever changing criteria.

You have to remember that these committees are made up of Conference commissioners not football people. In other words, it’s money people making the calls and they set up the matchups they think will deliver the most money.