Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I've said it before, but I'll repeat.

There is no sport like American Football, whether NFL or college, as it relates to fan engagement. The reason for this is twofold:

• The seasons are short.
• [Almost] All games are played on weekends.

That is the reason we think so much about the "regular season" mattering. That is why so many games are "important" games--because we can arrange our week around watching them.

Football is a body-destroying sport. You can't have 3 games a week over a 6-month season. It just doesn't work. The only thing I can think of offhand that are worse are boxing and MMA, and those guys go months between bouts to recover.

If someone asks you what you're doing on a Saturday, you might answer "watching football." If they ask what you're watching, it might be "well Florida plays at 3:30, but I'll probably catch a few early games at noon while I'm puttering around the house and I'm having buddies over for the big 'Bama-LSU matchup on in prime time." It's a day, and you watch whatever the best football game is on that day.

If Purdue and Michigan State are playing a hoops game on a Tuesday in February, you'd be damn sure I'm watching that. I'll bet a lot of the other hardcore college basketball fans in the Big Ten might watch that too, especially if both teams are in the hunt for the conference championship. Those games are still important--to the teams playing.

The difference is that a college football fan sees a limited number of days called "Saturday" in the fall as appointment television. It's just hard to do that on a random Tuesday night in February. And then it's hard to sustain it through the entire week and weekend because games are played EVERY day. I'd also have a tough time getting "up" for a random Wednesday night game between #1 Bama and #5 LSU as well--it's in the middle of the work week and I have crap to do. Just as even the NFL, which successfully created "Monday Night Football", continues to fall flat on its face with "Thursday Night Football" because fans just don't have time--they're getting ready for the weekend rather than recovering from their first day back at work.

The lack of engagement isn't due to the playoff structure or games "not mattering". It's more due to schedule and number of games.

Your point is valid but so is OAM’s.  We obviously can’t watch 4 hours of college basketball every night but we also know we can sorta tune it out until March.

Let me ask you though... Based on what you knew of both teams, would you have projected Northwestern to beat Ohio State on a neutral field?

If you were pick'em odds (basically a -110 money line on the game), would you have felt comfortably dropping whatever your "big enough to care" betting amount on Northwestern at that point?

Because if you were going to rank Ohio State below Northwestern but didn't trust with your own money that they'd lose to Northwestern in a straight up bet, then I question your rankings...

No, of course not. I rank teams below a team I think they would beat all the time.  Why? What I “think” has been proven wrong a lot in the past.  I had Iowa like 2 or 3 in 2015 right up until they lost to Michigan St.  I probably would have picked most of my top 10 to beat them on a neutral field.

Your point is valid but so is OAM’s.  We obviously can’t watch 4 hours of college basketball every night but we also know we can sorta tune it out until March.

I think we can partially tune it out until March because the Tournament is one of the most awesome things in all of sports. It's an event. Even the CFP never really managed that, partly (IMHO) due to doing their championship game on a weeknight. 

I'd venture to say that the Tournament, and the Super Bowl, carry the same thing for most fans--you really don't care who wins the whole thing. For the Super Bowl it's a party and a communal watch event and about the food and about the commercials and drinking way too much on a Sunday and feeling it the next day at work. Hell, it's the only real "holiday" (as in something you celebrate with others) between New Year's Eve and Memorial Day. For the Tournament it's brackets and Cinderella stories and who get into [or misses] the Final Four. Who actually wins? I mean, for the most part who cares? Unless it's your own team, obviously. But out of 32 NFL teams only two fan bases are represented in the SB, and out of 300+ NCAA teams only 4 are represented in the Final Four. 

No, of course not. I rank teams below a team I think they would beat all the time.  Why? What I “think” has been proven wrong a lot in the past.  I had Iowa like 2 or 3 in 2015 right up until they lost to Michigan St.  I probably would have picked most of my top 10 to beat them on a neutral field.

Sorry, I got caught up in the ranking of a 4-0 OSU vs 5-0 NU and didn't really extrapolate wider.

I guess the better question...

You're on the committee. You have selected three of the four [obvious] CFP choices, and you're down to the last one. By whatever manner of hell that brought you there, your two best choices are that 4-0 Ohio State team and that 5-0 Northwestern team. Your job is to pick the best team between those two for the playoff. 

Who do you pick and why? 

so, your buddy Dabo voted Ohio St. at #11?

apparently, he doesn't want to face them on the field

Who TF here likes Dabo like that?

I agree with what you said about the NFL/SB but lets ignore that for a minute and just compare CFB/CBB:
The differences are ingrained and, I guess, "baked in" to our viewing of the sport.  I don't think that fans "hate" great CBB programs as much as they "hate" great CFB programs simply because they aren't conditioned by YEARS and DECADES of rooting against the top teams where it mattered and this is true regardless if you are a fan of a major helmet program like me or a fan of a team that hasn't been seriously in the NC conversation in years. 

If Purdue and Ohio State were NC contenders in CBB this year neither your team nor mine would "need" UNC/Kansas/Kentucky/Dook et al to lose.  It wouldn't matter if they all went undefeated (I know they can't ALL go undefeated but that isn't the point).  So what.  No matter how good those blue-bloods are, each of our teams can still get into the postseason tournament.  In fact, both of our teams can still get in the postseason tournament. 

In CFB it is (and certainly was) different.  If Purdue and Ohio State were NC contenders in CFB this year there are only four spots.  Our teams can't get in unless they are in the top-4.  If our teams have to play each other (which, with the CG they necessarily would if both were NC contenders) then in order for both to get in we NEED Bama/Clemson/Oklahoma/USC to lose a game or two.  This was even more of an issue prior to 2014 when only two teams made the playoff and a bigger still issue prior to 1998 when there was no playoff.  For decades we have been conditioned to ALWAYS root against the top teams because we needed them to get cleared out to make room for our team to win the final poll (then make the final top-2, now make the final top-4). 

That's true. But with a 31-game season + conference tourney and undefeated UNC/Duke are playing each other on a random Wednesday night in late February, am I going to tune in to that game even if I'm rooting for both teams to lose? 

I get that individual games are more important for the MNC/BCS/CFP. And for the 6-7 teams each year in the sport that have realistic aspirations of being there, I can see why they might root against other helmets. I've never been in that position, but I suppose it's nice on that perch. 

As a fan of a program that will never sniff the CFP in its current form, I also get that individual games are ALSO more important for conference standings and bowl placement even if you're not in the CFP. That's what you get when you only have 12 games. 

I think that most of us when we have a CBB team that is REALLY good, we absolutely ARE sweating out our own wins/losses and opposing top teams' wins/losses though. Tournament seeding is HUGE for your chances to get into both the FF and win the championship. The difference between a 1 seed and a 2 seed is pretty significant. If you're a 2-seed, you're facing a 1-seed in the EE almost 70% of the time. If you're a 1-seed, you're only facing a 2-seed in the EE 47% of the time.
If you're a 2-seed, you're facing a 1-seed in the EE almost 70% of the time. If you're a 1-seed, you're only facing a 2-seed in the EE 47% of the time. I've seen arguments on H&R where fans are hoping that Purdue (in a middling year) are hoping that Purdue slips from a 5 to a 6 seed simply to avoid the 1-seed in the S16--they'd rather face a 3-seed in the R32 and a 2-seed in the S16 and hope that someone else has broken that 1-seed in the bracket before the EE. 

Hardcore CBB fans are looking at resumes and seed lines and what's going on in the rest of the sport all through late Feb and early Mar when everything is firming up. Because those games in Feb and Mar matter when it comes to how far you might advance in the tourney, which is dependent on your seed line. 

Who TF here likes Dabo like that?

OAM for sure