Re: In the five year history of the CFP so far 2 questions

I am not sure how well my argument holds water, since the 2 teams that I am going to say should not have been there, both won the championship. The first year I think that TCU should have been in instead of O310 State and to some extent my argument is more with the committee's process than the team. TCU won by 30 or 40 points and dropped from 3rd to 6th. The argument then was that they didn't play a conference championship but at that time their schedule was set up where they still played on the week of the conference championships. Either they should not have been 3rd going into that week or they should have still been in the top 4 in the end.

The other team is Alabama in 2017 and I do not feel quite as strongly here because I don't feel like I have anybody that I can make a strong argument to replace them with. I know the committee's argument was that it was a 2 loss team compared to a 1 loss team, but I think that you have to almost mark another loss down almost as a forfeit if you don't even make your conference championship. The biggest argument came from O310 State, but somebody (I think Iowa) beat them all over the football field. In addition to that OSU's attendance of the 2016 CFP would have given the committee much confidence about going out on a limb for them. Regardless, I still have a little bit of an issue with a national champion that not only did not win their conference, but did not even win the division of their conference.

clemson2003

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Oct 18, 2019, 8:39 AM

Ohio State had a 15 point loss at home to Oklahoma that year, and Oklahoma was one of the other teams that made the playoff. Ohio State also had a 55-24 loss to Iowa who I believe finished 7-5 that year.

I do think conference championships should matter, but I don't believe they should be a 100% requirement either. Alabama and Ohio State both went 7-1 in their conferences that season, and for that matter, Georgia also went 7-1 and lost to the same team that Alabama did. The difference is that Ohio State and Georgia were in divisions that 7-1 was good enough to win which allowed them to still make their conference title game. So it's hard for me to take the "they weren't good enough to win their own division" argument when they had the misfortune of their 1 loss coming against another 7-1 conference team in their same division.

This is an extreme example to prove my point, but let's say we had a season like we'll see several years from now where we play LSU on the road, and let's say that LSU is a top 5 team that season with their only loss coming to us. Let's even say that we added another tough OOC game where Oklahoma comes to Clemson and we beat them too. Then let's say that we play FSU on the road(I'm not sure if we actually do that season or not, but that's not the point here) and we lose to them on a last second play in overtime or something. Let's say that FSU goes 13-0 and is the #1 team in the country that season, and we finish at 11-1 while picking up another win or two over top 25 teams in conference.

Now let's say Oklahoma wins the Big 12, but takes a 30 point loss to a 5-7 Kansas team along the way to finish the season at 11-2. Would you be in favor of Oklahoma getting the 4th spot over us due to them winning their conference, and us not being good enough to win our own division? We'd just ignore our several quality wins including a head to head win over them, and their blowout loss to a bad team in favor of them winning their conference?

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In the five year history of the CFP so far 2 questions