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But if you have 4 big, full conferences, that is fat, by definition. 14 is already fat. You can't play everyone. Why even have conferences? You want the SEC at 18 teams so it can play 8 conference games?

Hell, UW played Michigan in Madison this year for the FIRST TIME SINCE 2009!! We're talking about two charter members here, in a "conference" that was founded in 1895, for F sake. What the hell would it look like if there were 18 members? It would look like crap, that's what.

F it and just have all schools be independent. Then all the helmets can play with themselves and everyone will be "happy" or something.

I agree with you Badge and will repeat again:  Auburn may not be as good as we thought they were, but the UCF win was no fluke if you break down the numbers as Auburn did NOT dominate with size at the line nor did they dominate with SEC speed. Every prediction on this game looked like this: The Tigers have beaten two of the four members of 2017’s College Football Playoff. That’s just too much for the best UCF team in program history to compete with.  Well, that was NOT true and now we will never know how far they could have gone.  What I see happening if the CFP does not expand is teams like this will move to a Power 5 conference in order to compete at the big dance and that will devastate the smaller conferences.  In fact, it has already happened!  Due to most of the conference's football-playing members leaving the WAC for other affiliations, the conference discontinued football as a sponsored sport after the 2012–13 season.  The WAC's demise didn't occur in one fell swoop. Rather, its fall from grace began in 1999, when the WAC was a swollen 16-team conference. That year, eight teams split off to start the Mountain West Conference.  Conference realignment and expansion remodeled the NCAA landscape forever.  If your team is in a Power 5 conference--that's great--but the super conferences growing bigger means that the smaller conferences cannot compete and grow smaller.  "Individual institutions chase more prestigious conferences, and there's a hierarchy that's always existed. WAC teams always wanted to elevate to the Mountain West because there's a perception that it's more prestigious. The club that they're currently in doesn't have the social status that perhaps another club has. As a result, they want to be part of this other club. ... That's just as important as money."  "It's virtually impossible to generate any sponsorship dollars and any long-term television opportunities when you have a constant change in membership, and that goes back 15 years. "When you try to negotiate a better or new deal, the issue [with television providers] always is, 'What are we buying? What's the commitment on the part of the conference?'" Restructuring a media deal for the WAC was impossible because there was no idea what the conference membership would be.  The WAC was able to live with its revolving door ethos for more than a decade, but universities are not a renewable resource, and the conference in the Intermountain West already had a shortage of programs from which to choose. After the Mountain West was established, the WAC had to expand its footprint from Louisiana to Hawaii. Even though the conference widened its swath, teams continued to leave, and the WAC pipeline of universities ran dry as there just aren't as many FBS or even FCS level institutions in the western third of the country as there are in the eastern third.  I see a proliferation of smaller conferences going away as the super conferences take the best of those teams from those smaller conferences if the CFP doesn't expand.  That's not good for the game overall.

I'm still not going to watch the game tonight.....  I just see no value in watching it and all the ESPN hype and spin has done just the opposite of their intentions. 

I won't be watching, not out of protest or anything, just because I don't find it compelling.  I have regular commitments on Monday nights and this game isn't nearly interesting enough for me to bother with rearranging my schedule.

I feel similar to AAA, the timing of this game is really anticlimactic and it's not just this season. I think I've only caught one of the three so far.  Honestly, unless my team is involved, it's not likely I'll ever be that interested in a game occurring this far after the NYD bowls.

Posted by: ELA
« on: Today at 09:31:23 AM »

I'll definitely watch, but I'm not looking forward to it.  I don't think it's an SEC thing, I think just it all feels anti-climatic after NYD.  At least in the BCS era you had a couple BCS bowls played in those evenings on like January 2 and 3, and then the title game a couple days later, so it sort of extended the bowl season.

I've just sort of mentally moved on after NYD, and it's been a continuous problem in the whole CFP era, with the schedule structure.

i couldn't agree more.

the title game needs to be on or around nyd.

if they aren't going to do that, they need to at least make is a saturday game instead of a monday game.

i couldn't agree more.

the title game needs to be on or around nyd.

if they aren't going to do that, they need to at least make is a saturday game instead of a monday game.

Yeah, and I'm not sure what the answer is, since obviously you need time in between.  I would think the only solution would be to not make the semifinals part of the bowl system.  Play them on campus 2 weeks after the CCGs, and then have your national championship game on NYD, and still let the semifinals losers go to bowls?  While that makes sense for the fan watching at home, I'm not sure it make sense otherwise.  What Clemson and Oklahoma fan is going to travel to a bowl game after they just lost a semifinal game?  Plus at least as it is now, no matter how you feel about bowl games in general, 2 of the 6 are "meaningful," and this would truly make them all of them exist outside of the Championship Game.  Although, that's what we had until a couple years ago anyway.  You would probably have to scale back from 6 to 4 again, because 12 teams, once you remove the National Title participants, is starting to really push it on how good the teams in the selection pool are.

The final AP poll is out. I don't know if the coaches or playoff committee release a final anymore, but this kinda pisses me off. How many teams could administer a beating on a top-10 team playing at home in a NYD6 bowl game, and still drop a spot in the rankings?

Probably just the one that went from #6 to #7. WTF. No respect whatsoever.

Associated Press Top 25

1. Alabama

2. Georgia

3. Oklahoma

4. Clemson

5. Ohio State

6. UCF

7. Wisconsin

8. Penn State

9. TCU

10. Auburn

11. Notre Dame

12. Southern California

13. Miami (Fla.)

14. Oklahoma State

15. Michigan State

16. Washington

17. Northwestern

18. LSU

19. Mississippi State

20. Stanford

21. South Florida

22. Boise State

23. NC State

24. Virginia Tech

25. Memphis

It’s an interesting case. UCF was gonna get a bump going undefeated and beating a higher-ranked team. OSU doesn’t fall by throttling USC. 
Not dropping the playoff teams was interesting. UCF also got a boost from statement makers. In either case, polls are not serious. They are amalgamations of general feeings with numbers next to them.  Ain’t a measure of respect and ain’t worth being pissed over. 

2nd-best ratings for a NCG....