Playoff Picture heading into Week 8 - Does M control their own destiny?

[Kris60]

Same.

It was still a fierce debate all the way down to the wire. It wasn't as though the H-H was viewed unanimously as the be all, end all.

What I meant by that was in the hypothetical scenario we were discussing between a helmet and non-helmet a H2H win/loss really does change the situation drastically.  You have a real, tanglible result between two teams you are comparing.  

[medinabuckeye1]

If you would have have asked me who I thought was the better team I would have said TCU.  If you would have asked me who I would have ranked higher I would have said Baylor.
H2H may not be the end all, be all but you better have a pretty compelling case to overcome it and I don’t think TCU’s case was strong enough it.  I don’t think “better loss” is enough or a win over Minnesota as compared to Buffalo is either.

Well I disagree mainly because I think that if you are asked to rank teams then you are being asked to rank the team that you think is better ahead of the team that you think is not as good.  You already said you thought TCU was the better team and to me that ends the debate.  
Wading a little deeper into it, Baylor's H2H win was almost as weak as possible.  It was a one score win by the home team.  If Baylor had won by 14 or won in TCU's stadium then I would agree but that isn't what happened.  Baylor beat TCU at home by a FG.  

[Kris60]

Well I disagree mainly because I think that if you are asked to rank teams then you are being asked to rank the team that you think is better ahead of the team that you think is not as good.  You already said you thought TCU was the better team and to me that ends the debate.  
Wading a little deeper into it, Baylor's H2H win was almost as weak as possible.  It was a one score win by the home team.  If Baylor had won by 14 or won in TCU's stadium then I would agree but that isn't what happened.  Baylor beat TCU at home by a FG.  

I think when ranking teams you have to balance what you think with what you know. I think TCU was better but I know Baylor beat them and had the same record against nearly identical schedules.
I probably lean a little more on what I know than what I think.
A couple years ago when Iowa was 12-0 I thought several teams were better than them but I couldn’t rank those teams above them.

[OrangeAfroMan]

People need to stop placing head-to-head on some kind of pedestal.  



If we're both 11-1, and I lost to you, but you lost to some crap team, then I have the better resume.  Period.

[OrangeAfroMan]

A couple years ago when Iowa was 12-0 I thought several teams were better than them but I couldn’t rank those teams above them.

Why the hell not?  A 4-year old can rank teams by record.  If a zero-loss team is automatically ranked higher than a team with a loss, then you're failing as an adult.

[Brutus Buckeye]

People need to stop placing head-to-head on some kind of pedestal.  



If we're both 11-1, and I lost to you, but you lost to some crap team, then I have the better resume.  Period.

That's simply not how sports are supposed to work. 

[OrangeAfroMan]

You're the arbiter of what sports is supposed to be?  


If sports were 2-dimensional, you'd have a point.  But it's so context-heavy, that my post is true.  
We know the better team doesn't always win.
We take resume into account, but we do not ignore the eye test.
When 2 teams are nearly even, we like to believe the H2H is a distinguishing characteristic.  But if the H2H winner has shown the fault of a loss to a much worse team, are we to ignore it?  THAT loss is the distinguishing difference between the similarly-talented teams with similar resumes.

[Kris60]

Why the hell not?  A 4-year old can rank teams by record.  If a zero-loss team is automatically ranked higher than a team with a loss, then you're failing as an adult.

I didn’t say I ranked teams strictly by record.  I would have LSU above a few undefeated teams right now. But record does play a part in it.  And as far as being “adult” I think you have to be adult enough to realize that just because you think something doesn’t make it so.
At what point do actual results trump what you think?  In 2015, I probably would have taken an 8-3 LSU team to beat that 12-0 Iowa team on a neutral field.  So, should I rank them like that?  I think the 2015 Ohio St was still better than the Michigan St team that beat them.  Does my opinion matter more than the actual game result?
Tell me where the magical line is that record starts mattering and I’ll be sure not to cross it.  I would submit that any 4 year old can wipe their nose on their sleeve and tell you what they think without worrying about facts or logic.

[ohio1317]

I think they would have.  At the end of the day it wasn’t really a OSU/TCU/Baylor debate.  It was an OSU/Baylor debate.  The committee had ranked OSU ahead of Baylor for several weeks and just kept them there at the end.  Ohio St had more going for them than just helmet too.  They had a 12-1 record vs. 11-1, more ranked wins, and a stronger overall SOS.
The best test of this would have been if Baylor lost in the regular season finale against KSU that year.  That would have made TCU the outright Big 12 champion.  I think the committee really liked TCU from an eye test standpoint better than Ohio St.  They had ranked them ahead of the Bucks from the very first poll that year.  But when Baylor and TCU tied for the Big 12 title the committee recognized Baylor as the Big 12 champ because they had the H2H over TCU.  
And by doing that it really became an Ohio St/Baylor debate and the committee just kept Ohio St above them.  A TCU/Ohio St debate would have been much more interesting, IMO.  I’ve always thought if you could have had a beer with some individual members of that committee with their full confidence they would have confided they thought TCU was the best team but Ohio St was more deserving.

Fully agree here and been arguing this a long time.   The committee consistently toward the end was ranking it TCU, then Ohio State, then Baylor.  They clearly liked TCU and said that at the time Baylor wasn't ahead of TCU despite the head to head win because they were not putting them in the same tier.  TCU was in a higher tier than Baylor until Baylor got wins to put them in the same one.  That happened in the final weekend.  Once Baylor and TCU were considered close enough, then and only then was the head to head important.  That meant Baylor went ahead of TCU.  Ohio State was already ahead of Baylor though and what they did to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship only further cemented that spot.  If Baylor had lost their last game and the decision was between TCU and Ohio State, I have never been at all confident that the Buckeyes would have got in.

[ohio1317]

I've always kind of agreed that head to head is over valued.  It's a good metric, but is too much the end all be all. 

Example:  Two teams are fighting for a division.  Team A blows away everyone else but loses a close one on the road to Team B.  Team B has several close games and drops one of them to a so-so team.  They both finish with 1 conference loss.  Which is better?

In that situation team B gets the tie-breaker and I am not saying I disagree with that per-se, but Team A's resume overall is clearly better to me too.  That's why I never had a problem with co-champs.  If you can't finish with a better record, don't complain about having to share just because you got the head to head.

[MarqHusker]

Medina, you should've been an appellate lawyer.  You have a way with commanding old facts and relitigating .

[OrangeAfroMan]

I didn’t say I ranked teams strictly by record.  I would have LSU above a few undefeated teams right now. But record does play a part in it.  And as far as being “adult” I think you have to be adult enough to realize that just because you think something doesn’t make it so.
At what point do actual results trump what you think?  In 2015, I probably would have taken an 8-3 LSU team to beat that 12-0 Iowa team on a neutral field.  So, should I rank them like that?  I think the 2015 Ohio St was still better than the Michigan St team that beat them.  Does my opinion matter more than the actual game result?
Tell me where the magical line is that record starts mattering and I’ll be sure not to cross it.  I would submit that any 4 year old can wipe their nose on their sleeve and tell you what they think without worrying about facts or logic.

That magical line is undefined, hence the variability of rankings.
I think we start out at 50/50 between resume and "who would win", but each of us leans away from that even ratio.  Automatically ranking the unimpressive 11-0 Iowa team over the 8-3 LSU one is a safe play, but is ultimately dishonest.  
At the same time, there's no real reason to rank an ultra-talented 6-6 USC squad over an obviously less-talented 10-2 Arkansas team.  Splitting that difference is the challenge, of course.
I just hate the voters who blindly rank teams by losses.

[Kris60]

That magical line is undefined, hence the variability of rankings.
I think we start out at 50/50 between resume and "who would win", but each of us leans away from that even ratio.  Automatically ranking the unimpressive 11-0 Iowa team over the 8-3 LSU one is a safe play, but is ultimately dishonest.  
At the same time, there's no real reason to rank an ultra-talented 6-6 USC squad over an obviously less-talented 10-2 Arkansas team.  Splitting that difference is the challenge, of course.
I just hate the voters who blindly rank teams by losses.

Right.  Record and actual results play a part in rankings too.  So if that’s the case I don’t feel it’s dishonest if I put a 8-3 team below a 12–0 team even if I feel they are probably a better team.  It’s only dishonest if my rankings are based solely on my opinion.  They aren’t.  

[TyphonInc]

 I also think that they might end up behind at least some 2-loss P5 Champions.  

I don't.