The [American] Football Thread

[darrelljs]

Hottie toddy!  I went to Ga. Tech so unfortunately I have to follow the crappy ACC.

At least one 3 loss SEC team will make it into the playoff, so root for Alabama to lose one more time.  A&M and South Carolina would be 3rd and 4th in line IMO.

Darrell

[scooter]

The reality is it seems like the SEC has a lot of good teams, but it's very thin on truly great teams. The conference just doesn't have the top end it usually has.

At least one 3 loss SEC team will make it into the playoff, so root for Alabama to lose one more time.  A&M and South Carolina would be 3rd and 4th in line IMO.

A team that lost to Vanderbilt and a blowout loss to a 5-loss team on top of a 3rd loss is not making the playoff.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, you really can't see Alabama making it. 11 slots are already accounted for ahead of them (four Big Ten, three SEC, Notre Dame, three other conf champs), so you have to pick a 3-loss team (with two bad losses) over all of the ACC runner-up, B12 runner-up, and AAC winner (Army/Tulane).

As for the SEC, there's also the argument that all the top teams there are great, the equivalent of Oregon and Ohio State, but they keep beating each other so none stands out. The biggest game to compare outside the SEC was A&M-ND, but even that doesn't tell you much since ND hardly played anyone either. If there's anyone who's worse than Alabama to bump for them, it's Indiana, but the committee won't do that.

[scooter]

As for the SEC, there's also the argument that all the top teams there are great, the equivalent of Oregon and Ohio State, but they keep beating each other so none stands out. The biggest game to compare outside the SEC was A&M-ND, but even that doesn't tell you much since ND hardly played anyone either. If there's anyone who's worse than Alabama to bump for them, it's Indiana, but the committee won't do that.

I think if these teams wanted special credit like this, they should have scheduled some meaningful OOC games. There was a lot of hype around the September USC/LSU game that USC won. USC has proceeded to go 4-5 in Big Ten play despite avoiding the best two teams and often looks downright bad, and I'm supposed to take seriously teams that struggled with LSU, or even lost to them in some cases.


FWIW I totally buy Georgia and Texas as title contenders. I'm not really talking about them. And I think TN is probably in and deserves to be, but I don't think they have the ceiling to do much more. What I don't see this year for the second year in a row is an SEC team that looks downright untouchable. There's almost always been one, sometimes two of them. Last year and this year there have been none, and I think that's fairly interesting. IMO what's happened is the transfer portal and NIL has made it impossible to have bulletproof rosters at the top of the sport. For years Alabama/Georgia hoarded so much talent that it literally did not matter who they lost because there was another 5-star behind them. That is much less true than it was a few years ago. So here we are in 2024 where a very good Georgia team has 1) a shockingly shaky run defense and 2) a QB who looks liable to tank an entire game for you with picks, but they have to just ride with both and do their best to mitigate. It's pretty interesting.


My basic take is that the title winner will almost certainly be one of OSU, Oregon, GA, and TX, and nobody else from a major conference has much room to whine if they get left out because they're all clearly a cut or two below those teams.

[Cyneheard]

As for the SEC, there's also the argument that all the top teams there are great, the equivalent of Oregon and Ohio State, but they keep beating each other so none stands out.  The biggest game to compare outside the SEC was A&M-ND, but even that doesn't tell you much since ND hardly played anyone either.  If there's anyone who's worse than Alabama to bump for them, it's Indiana, but the committee won't do that.

I think if these teams wanted special credit like this, they should have scheduled some meaningful OOC games. There was a lot of hype around the September USC/LSU game that USC won. USC has proceeded to go 4-5 in Big Ten play despite avoiding the best two teams and often looks downright bad, and I'm supposed to take seriously teams that struggled with LSU, or even lost to them in some cases.


FWIW I totally buy Georgia and Texas as title contenders. I'm not really talking about them. And I think TN is probably in and deserves to be, but I don't think they have the ceiling to do much more. What I don't see this year for the second year in a row is an SEC team that looks downright untouchable. There's almost always been one, sometimes two of them. Last year and this year there have been none, and I think that's fairly interesting. IMO what's happened is the transfer portal and NIL has made it impossible to have bulletproof rosters at the top of the sport. For years Alabama/Georgia hoarded so much talent that it literally did not matter who they lost because there was another 5-star behind them. That is much less true than it was a few years ago. So here we are in 2024 where a very good Georgia team has 1) a shockingly shaky run defense and 2) a QB who looks liable to tank an entire game for you with picks, but they have to just ride with both and do their best to mitigate. It's pretty interesting.


My basic take is that the title winner will almost certainly be one of OSU, Oregon, GA, and TX, and nobody else from a major conference has much room to whine if they get left out because they're all clearly a cut or two below those teams.

Yeah, it's hard to feel too bad about whoever the bubble team is, they made their own bed. Giant conferences have weird scheduling quirks, an 11-1 Indiana could legitimately get left out - despite beating both the champ and runner-up from last season, because Washington and Michigan are both quite bad - because those 6-5 teams are their best wins. I think 10-2 Clemson gets in over Indiana if they beat South Carolina.

[scooter]

Personally I don't think there's any world where an 11-1 B1G team gets left out of a 12-team field. They definitely cracked the door open by losing so badly this past week, but then all of the marginal SEC teams lost too, and I just don't see a 3-loss team getting in over them. They're a few spots above them all right now, though you're right that there's a path for it still without that.

There's going to need to be some schedule normalization or something going forward to make this all work.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, 11-1 with your only loss to #2 isn't getting left out when everyone in the SEC has worse losses. Yeah Indy's schedule was a mirage, and at least half the SEC would beat them easily, and one of them is going to in the first round, but after getting screamed at for a year for (correctly) similarly leaving out FSU last time the committee won't leave out Indy.

Elsewhere, there's this hilarious situation in the Big 12: https://x.com/FbFlowchart/status/1860893949084217722

[scooter]

Yeah Indy's schedule was a mirage, and at least half the SEC would beat them easily

Oh I don't know if I would go this far at all. I think IU has a flaw that Michigan exposed and OSU exploited, which is that their offense is really downfield passing oriented. They're really good at this, but it does mean you have to be able to pass block a bit longer. They did this fine all year, but Michigan for all its flaws has an NFL DL and so does OSU, and they simply could not pass block either of them.


The good news for IU is those may be the best two DLs in the country right now. A couple playoff teams may be able to replicate that, but most of them cannot. When they played the ordinary Big Ten teams, they didn't just beat them, they largely blew them off the field. I think for them it'll mostly be a matchup thing. If they draw one of the ACC teams in the playoff for example, I think they'll have a good chance.

[Cyneheard]

Elsewhere, there's this hilarious situation in the Big 12: https://x.com/FbFlowchart/status/1860893949084217722

And somehow only 8 of the 9 teams that can get to 6-3 or better can make the title game. TCU can't make the title game under any circumstances. 4 teams at 6-2, 5 teams at 5-3, and there's just one 6-2 vs 5-3 matchup (Kansas State vs Iowa Statue) and one 5-3 vs 5-3 matchup (Texas Tech vs West Virginia).