College Football - Championship Week

[Andy]

American Championship Game (8 pm Friday, ABC)
Tulane at (24) Army

Mountain West Championship Game (8 pm Friday, FOX)
(20) UNLV at (10) Boise State

Conference USA Championship Game (8 pm Friday, CBSSN)
Western Kentucky at Jacksonville State

Big 12 Championship Game in Arlington, TX (12 pm, ABC)
(16) Iowa State vs (15) Arizona State

MAC Championship Game in Detroit (12 pm, ESPN)
Ohio vs Miami (OH)

Sun Belt Championship Game (3:30 pm, ESPN)
Marshall at UL Lafayette

SEC Championship Game in Atlanta (4 pm, ABC)
(5) Georgia vs (2) Texas

Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis (8 pm, CBS)
(3) Penn State vs (1) Oregon

ACC Championship Game in Charlotte (8 pm, ABC)
(17) Clemson vs (8) SMU

Dec. 14
Navy vs (24) Army - in Landover, MD (3 pm, CBS)

Edited December 4, 2024 by Andy

[Derwood]

Let’s go!

[Brian707]

How is Oregon only a FG favorite over PSU? I was thinking 10 at least. What am I missing? Other than PSU is a lot closer to Indy than Oregon

[Andy]

51 minutes ago, Brian707 said:

How is Oregon only a FG favorite over PSU? I was thinking 10 at least. What am I missing? Other than PSU is a lot closer to Indy than Oregon

For whatever it's worth, that line tracks with what the SP+ and Sagarin computer ratings believe about the two teams.

[Derwood]

PSU has the best defense Oregon has seen outside of Ohio State.

[soccer10k]

So we’ve basically got the field, outside of the 1-bid leagues like the Big 12 and Group of 5. Bama is in unless Clemson beats SMU. And even then they probably get in over SMU.

[Andy]

Notre Dame getting the 5/6 spot everybody wants and then drawing Alabama anyway would be the most Notre Dame thing ever. This isn't Nick Saban Bama but advanced numbers still like them an awful lot, and Jalen Milroe can either be awful or the most unstoppable player in the country depending on the day.

[CubColtPacer]

I'm interested to see how the committee handles the conference championship game losers.  Is it a regular penalty for a loss, a reduced penalty, or no penalty at all?  Oregon/Texas losses would be pretty easy to figure out where they would slot in, but Penn State/Georgia losses are more uncertain, other than they would both be in the field no matter what.  For personal reasons I would love for a couple matchups to be shaken up!

And that's doubly so for the SMU debate if they were to lose.

I wish I could have more outrage over Alabama still being in, but their metrics suggest it's probably the right move.  It's at least close between them and the teams right behind them.

 

[Derwood]

1 hour ago, CubColtPacer said:

I'm interested to see how the committee handles the conference championship game losers.  Is it a regular penalty for a loss, a reduced penalty, or no penalty at all?  Oregon/Texas losses would be pretty easy to figure out where they would slot in, but Penn State/Georgia losses are more uncertain, other than they would both be in the field no matter what.  For personal reasons I would love for a couple matchups to be shaken up!

And that's doubly so for the SMU debate if they were to lose.

I wish I could have more outrage over Alabama still being in, but their metrics suggest it's probably the right move.  It's at least close between them and the teams right behind them.

 

They claim that "making the championship game is important", but we don't know to what extent that's true

[Rex Buckingham]

It seems like the committee basically doesn't consider who you lost to, just how many losses you had and who you beat

[soccer10k]

3 hours ago, CubColtPacer said:

I'm interested to see how the committee handles the conference championship game losers.  Is it a regular penalty for a loss, a reduced penalty, or no penalty at all?  Oregon/Texas losses would be pretty easy to figure out where they would slot in, but Penn State/Georgia losses are more uncertain, other than they would both be in the field no matter what.  For personal reasons I would love for a couple matchups to be shaken up!

And that's doubly so for the SMU debate if they were to lose.

I wish I could have more outrage over Alabama still being in, but their metrics suggest it's probably the right move.  It's at least close between them and the teams right behind them.

 

If teams played a similar/the same schedule (like if everyone played every other team in their conference) I would lean towards it not mattering much and not punishing a losing team. But I think in this case it should become a data point.

SMU, as you mentioned, hasn’t beaten a team that’s currently ranked. Didn’t play Clemson, Miami or Syracuse during the regular season. So if they lose to Clemson, they wouldn’t have a bad loss but they wouldn’t have a good win either. Would they be 11-1 if they had played all three of those ranked teams? Maybe. Indiana would have been in a similar boat. If they had made the title game and gotten handled by Oregon, I would have been fine leaving them out.

A team shouldn’t avoid punishment for a championship game loss if they potentially only made the championship game in the first place because they had a lucky schedule draw.

[CubinNY]

It's a mess, Maybe this will be a thing moving forward, but if history is a guide it won't be like this every year. It's great that it's happening in the first year of the thing. 

[soccer10k]

2 hours ago, CubinNY said:

It's a mess, Maybe this will be a thing moving forward, but if history is a guide it won't be like this every year. It's great that it's happening in the first year of the thing. 

There will be imbalanced schedules every year just because of how many teams are in each conference. I’m sure there will be some years where the top teams in each conference have relatively similar strengths of schedule. But I bet most years, at least one conference will have a team in the title game that got there in part because of a soft schedule.

And I know that happened in the old system (often the Big 10 West) but the difference is before if the underdog pulled off the upset, they were virtually guaranteed a playoff spot like they are now.

[Andy]

7 hours ago, soccer10k said:

A team shouldn’t avoid punishment for a championship game loss if they potentially only made the championship game in the first place because they had a lucky schedule draw.

I was against the 'no risk, only reward' way some people tend to view conference title games even before this season, but this is really the big thing. With these ridiculously bloated conferences, there are going to be several teams even within the B1G and SEC (like Indiana and, to be honest, Texas) who play one, maybe two of the other actually good teams in the conference and otherwise mostly beat up on the flotsam of their league. Given that knowledge, it seems perfectly fair to treat these games as actual data points and not just default to 'they earned it, they can't be penalized'.

[Andy]

In a semi-related story, B1G title game prices are dirt cheap right now. Some of that, it seems like, is that Ohio State fans had bought up a lot of the tickets before getting knocked out of the game, but it's funny how pointless these title games look when the only stakes are whether your next game is in 2 weeks or 3.

[soccer10k]

6 hours ago, Andy said:

I was against the 'no risk, only reward' way some people tend to view conference title games even before this season, but this is really the big thing. With these ridiculously bloated conferences, there are going to be several teams even within the B1G and SEC (like Indiana and, to be honest, Texas) who play one, maybe two of the other actually good teams in the conference and otherwise mostly beat up on the flotsam of their league. Given that knowledge, it seems perfectly fair to treat these games as actual data points and not just default to 'they earned it, they can't be penalized'.

And this is where the eye test/margin of victory matters. If Indiana had lost by 10 points or less to OSU, made the Big 10 title game and did the same against Oregon, okay, I think that would at least somewhat prove they were legit.

I didn't realize how many good teams Texas missed either. Didn't play Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Ole Miss, LSU or Missouri. Of their 8 conference games, 6 were against the bottom 7 teams in the SEC. I mean, they brought back a ton of talent and made the 4-team playoff last year so I'm pretty sure they're good. But if we're evaluating based on who you beat this year, that resume isn't great.

[Derwood]

There is a potential for:

a PAC 12 team winning the Big Ten (Oregon)

a Big XII team winning the SEC (Texas)

an AAC team winning the ACC (SMU)

 

[soccer10k]

And a PAC 12 team winning the Big 12 (Arizona St).

[Derwood]

3 hours ago, soccer10k said:

And a PAC 12 team winning the Big 12 (Arizona St).

I knew I forgot one

The auto-byes for conference champs is already looking like a bad idea (though that was probably a demand from the SEC/Big 10 when they negotiated the rules). The committee has very little flexibility with this thing, even pending the outcomes of these championship games

[soccer10k]

This Georgia-Texas game is thrilling. 6-3 at the half. 

[soccer10k]

Georgia gets more yards on one drive with the backup than they had the entire first half.

[Derwood]

Penn State insists on pissing down their legs when they play a good team. Two unnecessary roughness penalties in the first quarter+

[Tryptamine]

Oregon laying it on Penn St 28-10 right now.

[javy knows my name]

This game is officially awesome 

[Derwood]

19 minutes ago, Tryptamine said:

Oregon laying it on Penn St 28-10 right now.

Penn State sticking around. Some halftime adjustments on defense and this could come down to the wire