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Imagine a year where five teams went 12-1 and won their P5 conference.  That fifth team goes on to demolish some highly regarded SEC team (Alabama) who was 11-1 and ranked 6th.  Team 4 manages to slide by Team 1 in an ugly game and then beats the winner of 3-4 in a game marred with turnovers etc.

There is no final CFP committee poll, so we COULD in crazy years still have a split.

Possible, but unlikely.

If nothing else, team 4 just got two marquee wins, even if they barely slid by, while team 5 got one semi-marquee win, even if they won in a landslide.

The voter would use hindsight and suddenly team 6 wasn't all that good to begin with, or perhaps team 6 was just "disinterested" because they didn't make the playoff, or whatever other narrative that they'd have to employ to justify voting for team 4.

I could see team 5 getting some first place votes, but I think groupthink would prevail to where they didn't get enough to finish in the top spot.

Agree 100% with everything you said on seeding.

But on your statement here, I mean, I get it, I certainly care less about regular season college basketball games than I do the postseason.  But I also care less basketball in general,than I do football.  And it seems like you do, too?

You state that tOSU football games are "can't miss" events for you, and although I didn't attend the 2005 UT-tOSU game in Columbus, from what my friends who did tell me, it's an enormous gameday even for folks that don't have a prayer of getting into the stadium.  Do you really think that would change all that much simply knowing that a loss doesn't kill your season?  I mean, to be honest, it's ALREADY that way for tOSU and Alabama and Oklahoma.  All three of those teams have been admitted to the CFP having already lost a regular season game.  And that's WITHOUT an auto-bid for P5 champs.  I don't think it would change the scenario much at all, to be honest.

Contrast that with my perspective, where Texas has not once-- EVER-- been allowed to play for the national championship without having a perfect undefeated season.  I sure would have loved to receive a tOSU/OU/Alabama -style mulligan in that 2008 season when I think Texas was the best team in the country but got caught out by the B12 tiebreaker rules.

And also, as you point out a couple posts later, there are just SO MANY MORE basketball games, that comparing the relative meaning of one game in a season isn't really appropriate.  I just don't think it'll EVER feel like basketball and I don't think the "safety net" of an auto-bid is enough to make ANY fanbase feel relaxed about losing a regular season game.

My hope is that giving the top-4 HFA combined with the seeding issues described above would maintain the importance of individual regular season games as much as possible.  

I do care less about CBB than CFB but part of that is where my team generally falls in the pecking order.  Ohio State is pretty good at CBB historically but in CFB we are one of the bluest of the bluebloods.  

You are right that tOSU, Bama, and OU have gotten in with regular season losses (as have a whole bunch of others) but tOSU has also been held out with just one regular season loss.  As it stands now, there is a potential mulligan but it is NOT guaranteed.  

I attended the 2005 UT-tOSU game in Columbus and part of the intensity for me, as a fan, was the fact that I KNEW that the loss substantially damaged tOSU's NC chances.  It was HUGE.  Once the Buckeyes lost that game they needed all kinds of help and they needed to be perfect the rest of the way.  Neither of those things happened.  One game totally altered the course of the season for tOSU and it did for UT as well.  If UT had lost would they have made the BCSNCG?  I doubt it.  Ohio State would have finished with the same record and a H2H win.  

That 2008 season was screwey in your league.  That said, Texas is a big helmet too but I think the bigger issue as to getting a mulligan is simply luck.  If Texas had lost to OkSU instead of TTech, the Longhorns would have been in the B12CG and probably the BCSNCG.  There are two components to what I am calling "luck" here:

One is having your bad game at the right time.  Ie, Ohio State missed the CFP in 2015 because they lost to MSU in a game that they clearly should have won.  It wouldn't have cost them much except that MSU happened to be good enough to end up tied with tOSU in the B1G-E and thus win on the H2H tiebreaker and go to the B1GCG.  The bad "luck" here was having a bad game at the wrong time.  If Ohio State had lost to IU (an oddly close one-score win that year) instead of MSU, the Buckeyes would have gone to the B1GCG and likely the CFP.  Same for Texas losing to OkSU instead of TTech in 2008.  

The other component is what happens in other leagues.  The best example of this is LSU in 2007.  They managed to make the BCSNCG with not just one, but TWO losses.  They were just REALLY lucky that they happened to have that season that particular year.  Every other year of the BCS that wouldn't have been enough.  That year it was.  That is just dumb luck.  An example of bad luck is tOSU and Michigan in 1973.  The Buckeyes and Wolverines played to a 10-10 tie in Ann Arbor.  Ohio State got voted into the Rose Bowl where they blew out #7 USC 42-21.  The Buckeyes and Wolverines both finished 10-0-1 with Ohio State #2 and Michigan #6.  USC played an unbelievably hard schedule that year and that makes them the common opponent by which you can judge the top teams:

• USC lost 24-13 to #1 Notre Dame in South Bend
• USC lost 42-21 to #2 Ohio State in Pasadena
• USC tied 7-7 with #3 Oklahoma in SoCal

Looking at how USC did against tOSU compared to how they did against ND and OU, I have always thought that tOSU and M were the two best teams in the country that year.  Their bad luck was two-fold.  First having those seasons in the same year.  If it had been sequential instead maybe they each would have won an NC.  It wasn't so neither did.  Second, having those seasons in a year when ND went 11-0.  If the Irish had lost a regular season game then 10-0-1 might have been enough for Ohio State.  They didn't and it wasn't.  

Imagine a year where five teams went 12-1 and won their P5 conference.  That fifth team goes on to demolish some highly regarded SEC team (Alabama) who was 11-1 and ranked 6th.  Team 4 manages to slide by Team 1 in an ugly game and then beats the winner of 3-4 in a game marred with turnovers etc.

There is no final CFP committee poll, so we COULD in crazy years still have a split.

As far as I know the AP poll is still free to vote for whomever they like as the #1 team.  And I don't consider it any more or less valid than it ever was, nor do I consider the CFP's trophy any more valid than the AP's trophy,

So yeah, we could still get a split.  It'd be fun to see it happen.

I think it is REALLY unlikely mostly for this reason:

Possible, but unlikely.

If nothing else, team 4 just got two marquee wins, even if they barely slid by, while team 5 got one semi-marquee win, even if they won in a landslide.

The voter would use hindsight and suddenly team 6 wasn't all that good to begin with, or perhaps team 6 was just "disinterested" because they didn't make the playoff, or whatever other narrative that they'd have to employ to justify voting for team 4.

I could see team 5 getting some first place votes, but I think groupthink would prevail to where they didn't get enough to finish in the top spot.

The CFP winner, by definition will have just picked up two HUMONGOUS wins.  Even if they were both close, they are still HUMONGOUS wins and there are two of them.  The absolute best #5 could hope for is one pretty big win and that just isn't going to overcome what the CFP winner is guaranteed to have.  

I really think that is just dumb luck.  Remember that for most of that ~80 years we had a bowl system where Texas just played whoever ended up on the other side of the field in the Cotton Bowl.  It wasn't very likely to be #1 or #2 because most years those teams were going to be locked into the Orange, Sugar, or Rose Bowls. 

another reason the Big 12 was formed

We've only had a BCS/CFP for 22 years now (1998-2019).  In that time Texas has played for the NC twice as an undefeated team (2005, 2009).  Once every 11 years is something that @bwarbiany could only dream of so it isn't that bad.  The other 20 seasons, at the end of the regular season Texas was:

LOL... 


I'm just glad that the one year that Purdue made the Rose Bowl just happened to be a week after I graduated and drove from Chicago to start my job in San Jose, so I managed to actually attend the game. The weird thing about it was that I drove from San Jose to Los Angeles, managed to find all of my Purdue friends somewhere off Wilshire Blvd despite the fact that I'd never been to LA before and didn't own a cellphone, and didn't think anything of it. I even called them from a payphone in Ventura and asked the guy at the gas station how to get to where they were directing me, and he didn't have a clue (because Ventura isn't LA lol), and yet I still made it. Now that we're all in the hyper-connected world, the fact that I managed to find people in a massive city that neither I nor they had ever been to without a cellphone, Google, etc is remarkable. I don't know how I could do that again.

As much as love the idea of Purdue seeing the CFP in my lifetime, what I really want is for Purdue to go to the Rose Bowl again while I live here. The googles say that the Rose Bowl stadium is 57.5 miles from my driveway. Regardless of the year, Purdue has a better chance of winning the Rose Bowl than becoming the national champion in either a 4-team or 8-team playoff. And Purdue is more likely to qualify for the Rose Bowl than the CFP in the current model, because winning the B1GCCG would be unlikely to put them into the playoff unless they're 13-0 which will never happen.

So yeah... Screw this whole playoff thing. Just give me Purdue in the Rose Bowl, and I'll be a happy man. 

I fundamentally disagree with the statement that Purdue (or any other non-helmet) "will NEVER make the current CFP without a 13-0 season."  In the old days Purdue's big problem was that they were usually going to start out ranked behind the helmets of the world.  That didn't matter much with regard to Ohio State and Michigan because Purdue will get a shot at them but it was a major problem with regard to Bama and Texas because Purdue wasn't going to get a shot at them and in the old days almost nobody dropped unless they lost.  Thus, Purdue needed all of the teams that started ahead of them to lose.  In the BCS era PU only needed all but one of the teams that started ahead of them to lose.  Now Purdue just needs to end up in the top-4.  Even if nobody above them dropped without losing, that is a LOT more likely.  In the CFP era there haven't been that many 12-1 P5 Champions left out.

Look at this year.  If Purdue had finished 12-1 with a B1G Championship they would have been in no questions asked.  Granted, they probably would have been #4, but they would have been in along with LSU, Clemson, and OU. 

Now the issue of whether PU CAN go 12-1 is a whole other question and not really the CFP's issue. 

If the committee is trying to find the four best teams, I think 11-2 Georgia and 11-2 Oregon would be selected over 12-1 Purdue. We didn't play a ranked team OOC, our crossovers were PSU, Maryland, and Indiana, and some of the teams we would have beaten such as Minnesota might not have been ranked with an additional loss to Purdue. And then you have to look at our loss. If it's PSU or Wisconsin, there's a knock that we can't beat the top teams. If it's anyone else, there's the knock that it's a bad loss. 

To be honest, I think given how bad the PAC-12 is, Oregon would have been out despite still having some helmet appeal, but I think Georgia would have gotten the nod.

Oh, and we don't move the needle at all regarding money, so if you ascribe to the idea that CFP selection takes money into account, you know Georgia will attract more eyeballs, ratings, and dollar$ than Purdue.

Now, maybe I was being overly dramatic. I will say that in nearly any world of 12-1 conference champions, 12-1 Purdue is bottom of the pile. We may be selected ahead of SOME 11-2 conference champions, but I think there are some 11-2 conference champs that would be selected over 12-1 Purdue. 

So, twice in 20 years a worthy Texas team-- certainly at least as worthy as several of the 1-loss tOSU and Alabama teams that have gotten to play for and actually WIN the NC in the past decade-- has been "just bad lucked" out of that chance.

You seem to believe you're refuting my point, but you've actually made my point for me.  Thanks!


Also, I'm not willing to throw out the previous 7 decades of college football, because that's still plenty of "just bad luck" that happened to Texas.  The Cotton Bowl only had one tie-in, unlike the Rose that was forced to take the reps from both B1G and PAC and there were plenty of times that game didn't involve MNC aspirations, especially because of the B1G's challenging tie-break rules for many of those decades.

So, anyway, thanks for proving my point.  Deserving Texas teams were left out twice in just the past 20 years, while Alabama has received the benefit of a multltude of mulligans in order to secure their current unprecedented trend.

Disagree. The 2008 season, Texas didn't get the opportunity to represent their division in the CCG due to tiebreakers defined by your own conference. Are you saying Texas at 11-1 should have been selected over 12-1 Oklahoma, that despite losing H2H to Texas won the conference? Maybe you can argue that your division tiebreakers were bad, and that Texas should have had the opportunity to play in the CCG, but it was dumb luck that they didn't. And I don't think you can easily argue that 11-1 Texas that didn't win their conference should have been selected over 12-1 Florida who won the SEC, right?

Then in 2004, again your own conference mate was 12-0 and beat you. USC was 12-0. It wasn't a matter of a mulligan. It was a matter of there being two undefeated teams ahead of you. 

In my 8-team system, it's likely that both of those Texas teams would get an opportunity as at-large. But in neither of those seasons did Texas have a very strong argument for inclusion despite that they'd potentially be deserving with that resume in other seasons.