Stirring the Pot

[SFBadger96]

Wisconsin would be 11-2 in that scenario, not 12-1.

Not to put too fine a point on it:

One of these teams would be Ohio State, the other would be Wisconsin.

Plenty of reason to think 11-1 non-conference champ helmet school would go over the 11-2 conference champ non-helmet school.

[medinabuckeye1]

Wisconsin would be 11-2 in that scenario, not 12-1.

Not to put too fine a point on it:

One of these teams would be Ohio State, the other would be Wisconsin.

Plenty of reason to think 11-1 non-conference champ helmet school would go over the 11-2 conference champ non-helmet school.

I didn't think through his post.  He said "Wisconsin wins the West with one loss" and I read that to mean one loss total.  I was wrong because he said that Wisconsin loses in Ann Arbor and they already have an OOC loss so you are right, Wisconsin would be an 11-2 B1G Champion.  
That would make it a MUCH tougher call.  I think a lot of it would depend on how tOSU's SoS looked.  In that case, TCU winning the B12 and finishing 11-2 would be HUGE for the Buckeyes.  
I don't see the committee's pro helmet team bias that apparently everyone else sees.  From what I have seen so far they just rank based on number of losses which really isn't any different that it has always been.  As I laid out above, in both cases when a non-Champion got in, it was a 1-loss non-Champion that got in over 2-loss Champions.  There was also at least one  additional reason for the 2-loss non-Champions to get left out:

• 2017 tOSU got thumped by a mediocre Iowa team
• 2017 USC got thumped by Notre Dame
• 2016 Oklahoma lost H2H at home to the 1-loss non-Champion that got in ahead of them
• 2016 Penn State got thumped by Michigan

On this helmet issue note that the teams that got left out were tOSU, USC, Oklahoma, and Penn State.  They are ALL helmet teams.  It isn't like Bama/tOSU got in over a couple of nobodies.  It was Bama over tOSU/USC and tOSU over OU/PSU.  I don't understand how people see that as helmet vs non-helmet.  That is inter-helmet combat and the non-helmets have nothing to do with it.  

[847badgerfan]

Wisconsin was a 12-1 non-champion last year. Oh well.

[Cincydawg]

I try not to pine (much) for things never coming back, so the playoff is here to stay, and much more likely to expand than disappear.  I liked the old screwy bowl stuff myself, those bowl committee guys in weird sports coats wondering around seeing game, I'd like to be one of them.

I think it was 1969 when Nebraska had a really good team and was bound for a major bowl and got upset on the last weekend somehow, and fell all the way to the Sub Bowl because every other bowl was taken.  They beat the crap out of some southern team.

Anyway, I still like the sport and enjoy watching, so there's that.

[medinabuckeye1]

Wisconsin was a 12-1 non-champion last year. Oh well.

Forget the helemt, Bama was a better 1-loss non-champion because Wisconsin's SoS was complete crap.  Their toughest road game was . . . Indiana or perhaps Minnesota?  Their OOC was Utah State, FAU, and BYU and those teams were awful.  FAU did win the CUSA but they lost OOC to 7-6 Navy and 6-6 Buffalo in addition to Wisconsin.  
Allow me to point out one more thing about the two 1-loss non-Champions that have gotten into the CFP:  In both cases the team that got in was co-champion of their division and lost the tiebreaker due to losing a road game to the other co-champion.  

[847badgerfan]

OK then.



https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other?date=2017-12-15

[medinabuckeye1]

OK then.
https://www.teamrankings.com/college-football/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other?date=2017-12-15

I don't know what argument you are trying to make here.  Bama's SoS was #10, Wisconsin's was #20.  Both were 1-loss non-Champions and the one with the better SoS got in.  What do you want?  
As far as the list:

• Auburn had a really good SoS but they lost three games.  
• Ohio State had a really good SoS but they lost twice including an ugly blowout in Iowa City.  
• Oklahoma had a really good SoS and they got in.  
• Penn State had a really good SoS but they lost twice.  
• Clemson had a really good SoS and they got in.  
• Georgia had a good SoS and they got in.  
• TCU had a good SoS but they lost three games.  
• Notre Dame had a good SoS but they lost three games.  
• Iowa had a good SoS but they lost FIVE games.  
• Bama had a good SoS and they got in.  

Oklahoma, Clemson, and Georgia were obvious.  They were all 1-loss P5 Champions with top-6 SoS.  After that it gets tough.  The other two P5 Champions had two losses each including one blowout each.  Ohio State had a better argument than USC because the Buckeyes played a tougher schedule and the Buckeyes were ranked higher.  The only other two teams worth discussing were the two P5 1-loss non-Champions.  Of those, Bama's SoS was better than Wisconsin's.  

If it had been my decision, I would have eliminated USC and Wisconsin.   I would have eliminated USC because they were in the same boat as tOSU but with a worse SoS.  I would have eliminated Wisconsin because they were in the same boat as Bama but with a worse SoS.  

That would have left Bama and Ohio State.  I don't have any problem with the committee's decision.  The only thing the committee did that ticked me off was that the previous week they stated that #4 through #8 (UW, Bama, UGA, Miami, FL, and tOSU) were all very close.  As it turned out, that was obviously untrue.  If it had been true then the two of those that won (UGA and tOSU) would have joined Clemson and Oklahoma in the playoff while the three that lost or didn't play (UW, Bama, Miami, FL) would have missed.  

Prior to that statement I thought that tOSU's only chance was for TCU to knock off Oklahoma.  As it turned out, that was Ohio State's only chance because their statement that Ohio State was already very close to Wisconsin, Bama, Georgia, and Miami, FL was complete BS.  In fact there was a big and unbridgeable gap between the 1-loss teams (and Auburn) and the two-loss teams.  

[MarqHusker]

I think it was 1969 when Nebraska had a really good team and was bound for a major bowl and got upset on the last weekend somehow, and fell all the way to the Sub Bowl because every other bowl was taken.  They beat the crap out of some southern team.

Anyway, I still like the sport and enjoy watching, so there's that.

You mean 45-6.
Are we allowed to call Georgia "some southern team"?

[bayareabadger]

There have been rumblings that groups of players have not liked Frost's approach, especially around conditioning (tougher), practice times (early morning) and how many new guys were brought in (55).   What is sad is I don't doubt this is happening.   There are a lot of guys that seem more interested in the idea of being a football player at Nebraska than actually being one.   The cultural challenges are bigger than the skill set problems.   jmo

When I read something line this, I always take it with a big ole grain of salt. Every new coach shows up promising to be tougher, with harder practices, better lifting, all that. And if it doesn't work early, it's on the players (not buying in) rather than the coach (not finding a way to get his team to function).
It speaks to a certain deference a lot of new coaches get. They're still somewhat unblemished, unjudged in the moment. If Frost flames out (always possible), we'll be talking about how the UCF run was a mirage and the Oregon success was on the shoulders of others. 
I'm also interested, how does a coach add 55? You bring in 25 signees, maybe add a few more you count ahead. Did he just turn over every walk-on they had?

[847badgerfan]

I don't know what argument you are trying to make here.  Bama's SoS was #10, Wisconsin's was #20.  Both were 1-loss non-Champions and the one with the better SoS got in.  What do you want?  

You said Wisconsin's schedule was crap, and I showed you it wasn't crap at all. That's it. UW lost a very close game to a top team in a conference championship game. Bama lost, but not in a conference championship game. UW won 12 games. Bama won 11. 
Helmet > Non-helmet.

[bayareabadger]

Forget the helemt, Bama was a better 1-loss non-champion because Wisconsin's SoS was complete crap.  Their toughest road game was . . . Indiana or perhaps Minnesota?  Their OOC was Utah State, FAU, and BYU and those teams were awful.  FAU did win the CUSA but they lost OOC to 7-6 Navy and 6-6 Buffalo in addition to Wisconsin.  
Allow me to point out one more thing about the two 1-loss non-Champions that have gotten into the CFP:  In both cases the team that got in was co-champion of their division and lost the tiebreaker due to losing a road game to the other co-champion.  

When you get down to that kind of granularity, it turns out, everyone is awful.
Bama's best win was an LSU team people didn't think particularly highly of, 8-4 Mississippi State or Fresno State. This is the playoff resume?
I think Bama had a few things going in its favor. 
1. It was playing better by some metrics (though one was really high on UW)
2. The tendency to give a helmet and the SEC some extra love in this sort of situation (I'm usually talking down SEC bias complaints, but the BCS/playoff certainly had deference for it)
3. It didn't have a conference title game loss, which all post-1998 rankings have weighed heavily. 
4. UW didn't have that hammer point to get them in. If they beat some bear of a team in the non-conference and FSU had fizzled out like it did, maybe there's a chance. 

[847badgerfan]

Bama lost to Auburn, one week after playing... Mercer. They had to have been gassed by the time the Iron Bowl rolled around.

[medinabuckeye1]

@847badgerfan and @bayareabadger :

I think my objection here is that if you want to convince me that there is this major Helmet bias in CFP selections you are going to have to come up with a better example than Bama>Wisconsin in 2017.  Wisconsin's schedule might not have been crap but it was worse than Bama's even after playing in the B1GCG and that is according to your link.  

If you somehow did this blind where the committee did not know that the names were Bama and Wisconsin it remains obvious to me that I would pick Bama's resume over Wisconsin's resume.  There are a lot of people who argue that it should be Champions only but that doesn't even come into play here.  If it were Champions only then both Wisconsin and Bama would have been out and it would have been between Ohio State and USC.  

If there is some year in which a non-helmet has a clearly superior resume and gets beat out by some helmet then you'll have your evidence but for now, you don't.  What you have instead is Bama over tOSU and USC which is intra-helmet and tOSU over PSU and Oklahoma which is also intra-helmet.  

[847badgerfan]

Major helmet bias? I don't know that anyone ever said that. What was said was that if the decision comes down to helmet vs. non-helmet, the helmet wins.




Bama lost its last game of the season, to Auburn. Wisconsin lost its last game of the season, to Ohio State. Resumes are very similar, except for the 1 more win Wisconsin had.




I guess that means Bama (helmet) > Wisconsin (non-helmet). We'll see what happens this year.