SEC Declares Top 4 Ranked Teams in Playoff Non-negotiable
With only three weeks until the June 20 deadline when conference leaders hoped to have a final playoff model to sell to television executives, the time for compromise draws near. Which is why it's so interesting that the chair of the SEC's presidents and chancellors group would draw a line in the sand on one of the most controversial issues. Florida president Bernie Machen said the SEC would not compromise on having the four highest ranked teams in the playoff rather than a group of conference champions.
"We won't compromise on that," Machen said at the SEC spring meetings. "I think the public wants the top four. I think almost everybody wants the top four."
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/andy_staples/05/31/sec.meetings/index.html#ixzz1wYPIRzPy
If Big 10 caves on this, I'll be pretty unhappy as it totally devalues the conference structure. Delany's had, in my mind, the best proposals since the beginning of this process. Home games with a preference for high ranked conference champs but still a space for at least one wild card seems the best way to introduce a playoff without destroying the meaning of the conference schedules and the regular season.
It's also interesting to see the different negotiating styles of the Big 10 vs. SEC in this process. Big 10 announces a proposal for home games and later abandons it publicly. SEC from beginning states preference for Top 4 ranked teams with no relation to conference champions, now they double down and say that it's an unconditional term for their participation. Unclear how they back off this without either losing face or saying that Machin didn't speak for the conference. This is also why the Big 10 shouldn't have abandoned the home game proposal without extracting some kind of concession.
If the SEC sticks to this plan as a condition of participation, I'd favor abandoning the playoff concept entirely and advocating a Plus 1, which would work well now that the Pac 12, Big 10, SEC, and Big 12 champs are all locked into "champion's bowls."
B1G should come out and say, top six (or even change to eight or twelve for negiotation purposes) champs are in, non-negotiable.
I'm not really sure it would make a difference either way.
A top 4 will benefit one conference just as often as a champs if top 6. For instance, the Big ten would have had 2 playoff teams twice with "top 4 only" in the past decade, but only once with champs if top 6
top four ranked or nothing is not much different from what we already have. If it's based on computer polls and rankings it clearly has favored the SEC the last number of years. If you make it conference champs you add substance to CONFERENCE championships and create better matchups in most cases. There is always a flaw with any plan in place but top four doesn't change much.
I see lot's of comments about the top 6 conference champs being selected for the 4 team playoff. I apologize for not reading all the playoff blogs but how does this work? Would it be like this:
1) Top four ranked conference champ teams among the top 6 ranked teams are selected (including Boise's conference)
2) If 3 or fewer conference champions are ranked in the top 6 teams, then the next highest ranked teams will be selected.
It makes winning your conference absolutely critical to getting to a playoff. This blog knows all the pros. At least make it the top 5.
The only way this isn't fair is if you run the SEC.
I'm also a fan of rotating east/west and north(midwest)/south semifinals with locations selected by bid. Money goes to conferences. Locations are fair. Every other year local fans will have a semifinal that may include their team. No worries about small college venues. Again we all know the pros.
The only way this isn't fair is if you run the SEC.
But of course this game it's about fairness. Leave fairness on the football field, in recruiting and scholarships and in not paying athletes...
Power, money, negotiations, and PR win the day. Let's see what Delaney has to offer.
In anyone in the BIGTEN or any other conference for that matter, has any backbone what-so-ever.
that said, isn't it slightly immature of the SEC to walk into the discussion saying that the topic up for negotiation is non-negotiable? kind of like, if you don't want to play by my rules, im taking the ball and going home... playground stuff.
because it's so close to crossing the /nopolitics rule, but... have you seen how public negotiations in this country work anymore? The side that is unwilling to budge on anything will prevail against the side that's willing to make concessions for the sake of negotiation. I agree that it's immature, but I can't say it's surprising.
like the B1G and Pac-12 did with the Rose Bowl?
have their way:
/ S
/s
the Big Ten has advocated a system with a top-six conference champion given an autobid, as opposed to a straight 1-4.
Personally, it's more a question of selection procedure than who gets ranked in what spot. Going by the BCS formula we have now, I'd wouldn't count on a one loss Big Ten champion getting in over a one loss SEC West runner up (and yes, I do believe a conference champion is more deserving than a team finishing second in their division, all things being equal). If the Big Ten agrees, they need to stand firm on this issue or advocate a new way of selecting the four participants.
"conference champions are more deserving" argument. A team should not be penalized simply because the best team in the country happens to be in its conference, or rewarded because its conference is a hot mess.
I haven't gotten over the fact that Alabama got another crack at LSU even though they already lost to LSU in a home night game.
Anyone who says they had a good idea whether Alabama or Oklahoma State was the better team is a liar. I wanted Oklahoma State because I thought it would be a more entertaining matchup, but picking Alabama wasn't wrong.
Voting them national champions over LSU was wrong though, and it's not particularly close.
The championship game is a pretty arbitrary way to pick the national champ right now. Why shouldn't LSU have had a chance to break the 1-1 tie by playing a game in Baton Rouge, for example? And even if they didn't (and as you obviously understand), they still had a better season overall.
FWIW, I agree with you re: Alabama and Okla. St. as far as who was better. I thought it was unfair, though, to give Bama another chance to beat a team that they already lost to under the most favorable (for them) of circumstances.
You don't know who's better between Bama and Okie St, so the teams that haven't played should get a chance to prove it, since you can't know with such different schedules. LSU and Bama did play, so we did know who was better. Now all we know is they're, what, equal? But one gets to be National Champ.
did not devalue the regular season either does not care about ensuring the primacy of the regular season because a playoff is more important (a legitimate stance, though I totally disagree) or is dumb. It is a fact that putting them in the game rendered meaningless a huge LSU victory on the road. IMO that is a terrible result. Others say that all that matters is the two best teams in the final game.
The "top 4" argument follows the same mistaken path. It is not a stretch at all to say that under that scenario many years could feature two teams out of four that did not win their conference. That again means that winning your conference, even a large major conference like the B1G, may not be good enough to get you into the playoff. If winning your major conference means nothing to chances of winning the NC, what exactly are you playing for? In the old days you were playing for the Rose Bowl because there was no NC, but now? You may not even get to the Rose Bowl! Regular season-meaningless, and that would be a tragedy for college football IMO.
I do think there is a compromise though. I would reluctantly be ok with one wild card team in the top four that did not win the conference, like Bama last year, because that means the majority of teams would have always won their conference.
if M and LSU both lose to only Alabama next year, M will be 13-1 while LSU will be 12-1 (with the additional win almost certainly coming against a top ranked team). For another, why even have a conference structure if winning your conference means nothing? I'd much rather see two champions play, even in a rematch, than see two divisional opponents match up again.
because they impose structure on what would otherwise be chaotic scheduling. Winning the Big 10 is great. I hope Michigan does it every year. But if two teams are 12-1, and one team won its conference and the other lost out to a 13-0 team, the fact that the first team is a conference champion doesn't tell you fuck all about which team is better or more deserving of being in the national championship game.
If it "doesn't tell you fuck", then why not have a default position of rewarding a team who won a championship, compared to one that, to use a Kork Coupons quote, "sat on the couch"? As others have pointed out, winning a conference title is important in every single other NCAA sport in terms of playoff inclusion and seeding; why not football?
I don't necessarily buy that it should be important in any sport. But, to the extent it should be, the importance of winning a conference championship should be at its greatest in sports where teams play the most regular season games, and least important in the sports where teams play relatively few games. College football is inherently a small sample size.
More fundamentally, giving weight to the fact that (hypothetically) Michigan wins its conference while Alabama loses to LSU or something, when, in the vast majority of years, the two schools will not have played a single team in common, does not make any sense, assuming the question we're trying to answer is "who is the better team?"
If so, I can think of a couple USC teams with 2-3 losses who should have been in the BCS title game. The argument is that, all things being equal, being a conference champion makes you more deserving than a team with the same amount of losses (not equal records, as I pointed out above).
Also, that wasn't begging the question; it might have been a bit loaded, but it certainly didn't give an impossible choice. Should a 13-1 champion be rewarded with a bid over a 12-1 division loser? I say yes, 100% of the time.
You say "all things being equal" but I think the issue is what to do when all things aren't equal. No one thinks Wisconsin and Alabama were equal last year, but Wisconsin was a conference champ and Alabama wasn't. I think if you compared Oregon and Arkansas, for example, who had similar resumes and were adjacent to each other in the polls, then you can give the edge to Oregon because they won their league. I'm fine with that. But what about when things aren't equal?
Is Oregon more deserving than Alabama, simply because Oregon's loss to LSU was out of conference, and Alabama's loss to LSU was a league game?
Because Wisconsin lost to Oregon? Well, then, why wasn't Oregon playing LSU? Because they lost to LSU? So did Alabama, so that can't disqualify them. You're saying the eye test tells you who's better. But if they don't play the same teams, you don't know, and the only way to figure it out is to have them play. The eye test in 2006 said Ohio State and Michigan should be playing each other. Both lost to Florida and USC, respectively. The eye test is great when it works (and last year, it's still debatable), and the Champion method is too...and they're both awful when they don't work. But neither one is more "right" every year than the other. Because eye tests can be wrong.
Edit to your edit: It could be argued that Oregon lost on a neutral site closer to LSU, and Bama lost at home. Or it could be argued that Bama lost a closer game than Oregon. The point is you can never know. So what are you going to value? The "feeling" that Bama was better, or value Conference Championships and make the regular season mean more for everyone?
Considering Oregon lost another game, at home, I think it's easy to say who's better. Oregon was a 2-loss team with a loss to LSU and Alabama was a one loss team with a loss to LSU. Oregon beat Stanford and no one else, Alabama beat Arkansas (and Florida, Auburn and Penn State).
My point was, and maybe I should have been more clear, that it's obvious whose season was better, before the bowls, between Alabama and Oregon. However, Oregon was a conference champion simply because their LSU loss was OOC and Alabama's was in their division (and because Oregon didn't have to play USC in the Pac-12 game, but that's another story). If their schedules are identical but LSU is in the Pac-12 instead of the SEC, Alabama is a conference champion.
And in defending Alabama's selection, you showed what is the real problem. You give Bama credit for beating a 7-6 team, an 8-5 team and a 9-4 team just because those teams had name cache., not that it really impacts Oregon vs. bama discussion but more the Okla St vs. Bama comparisons.
I'm not talking about the Bama vs OKSt comparison - that one is much closer and comes down to quality of wins vs quality of loss, for the most part.
But that's not the case with Oregon. If you looked at Oregon's non-Stanford wins, it makes those three Bama wins look incredible. Oregon beat Stanford and a bunch of teams that couldn't hardly sniff a bowl.
You seem to be of the opinion that the polls are worth more than feces that the bird puts on them when they line the bottom of the cage. On the other hand, I think the feces are worth measureably more.
Polls are the LEAST valid way to rank things. They are almost 100% subjective. There certainly isn't enough interleague play to make a valid ranking of teams. The only place where there is enough intra-play is within the conferences. As such, winning a conference provides a valid first tier of elimination for consideration.
You can't really determine who the "best" team in college football is, partly because there's not enough games to measure it meaningfully, but partly also because there really might not even be such a thing. In a game of such complicated positional and strategic matchups, it is entirely possible that 7 times out of 10, team A beats team B, team B beats team C, but team C beats team A. Who then is the "best" team?
What you can do is attempt to determine who the most "deserving" teams are, based on how they've scheduled, whom they've beaten, and by how much. I would argue that a conference winner is more deserving than a team that doesn't win its conference, all other things being equal. That being said, all other things are not always equal. Last year's Clemson outfit was not as deserving as Alabama was to play in a championship game because their body of work was not as strong. This is why absolutes like "only the top 4 teams get in" and "only the conference winners get in" are both foolish. If the #3 and #5 teams have the same record and the #5 team won its conference but the #3 team didn't (having lost to the #1 team) then the #5 team should get in: the #3 team had its shot already, whereas the #5 team still deserves one. OTOH, if one of your conference champions finishes the regular season at three losses and #15, it shouldn't get in over a 1-loss team that finished #4 but didn't win its conference.
The real problem is that, as has been demonstrated by several diarists on this blog, no one plan makes sense in every year. Which to me strongly suggests that the underlying principle (that there is a right way to pick a "champion") is probably suspect to begin with.
Asking seriously, how did you feel when Florida was picked over Michigan in 2006?
Not sure who this is asking because it's so crazy up there - but honestly, I honestly felt we got robbed when it happened, and I did a 180 once the games were played. Looking at our schedule against UF's schedule that year, it was very close, but I felt that had it not been a rematch scenario, we would have been #2.
Once Florida spanked OSU and we got beat up by USC, I thought it was certainly the right call.
The 2006 Mich/OSU situation I think is exactly the argument against having a non-conference-champion in over a top 6 conference champion. Hindsight is 20/20 and after both losing their bowl games it's clear the Big Ten was pretty weak that year and Michigan and ohio were merely the biggest fish in a little pond. Had Michigan and ohio played for the championship and had another great close game, I think the narrative would have been very different and similar to the LSU/Bama conversation this year. Conversely, had LSU and Bama not played each other and one or both lost their bowl game, we would be looking at the whole SEC dominance thing a little differently.
Given the nature of college football scheduling, that is, many teams with little cross-over common games, I think you have to error on the side of caution and let the play-off games get played by teams that didn't have any common opponents. Having highly ranked conference champs get auto-bids is a fair way to make that happen
it sucked because Bo died the day before the Game, the OSU turf, NCAA officials hadn't discovered that running quarterbacks should be tackled like running backs, (imagine the hits Denard takes back then - many would be roughing the passer), and our coach followed his midwestern values while their's promoted his team (thus supporting his players in addition to his own ambitions).
In the end though, we had our shot, lost outright to Ohio State, and did not win the B1G. Florida deserved a chance, just like Oklahoma State did.
The timing and the way it unfolded really sucked though. If we had waken up the day after the OSU game #3, we would have all been fine, and happy to go to the Rose Bowl. The way it occured totally killed all momentum going into the Rose Bowl.
So it sucked, but even before the games were played, it was fair.
It isn't penalizing them, it is obvious that they aren't the best team in the country (aka they lost their conference!). The purpose of a play off is to sort out the unknowns. You don't sort out the unknowns by rehashing the knowns.
Not the top six conference champions; conference champions in the top 6. So, if 1, 3, 5, and 6 are conference champions, they get into the playoff and 2 and 4 don't. That's why the SEC doesn't want it because it limits the chance that they send 2 teams. With all of the SEC bias out there, it's almost a guarantee that they get 2 teams selected every year unless teams start beating them, and that's not likely to happen if they continue to over-sign.
Maybe my wording wasn't the best, but this is the proposal I was referencing.
So you think the #6 team who won their conference is more deserving of going to the playoff than the #2 team who didn't win their conference? If so, it's merely a difference of opinion on our parts. I'd like to see the best four teams go, and if they are only from two different conferences because the other conferences couldn't field good enough teams, so be it.
My biggest problem with this is that "conference champion" is simply the winner of the conference championship game. What if LSU had lost to Georgia in the SEC champ game last year? Do you think they should have been left out of the playoff? Just because their only slip up was in the conference title game? Kentucky didn't win their conference tournament this year, what if they weren't allowed to play for the national title?
I don't think the SEC should be punished because they're the best conference right now. This could change in 5 years, but it shouldn't affect our view on what is the "right" proposal.
You're arguing about Conference Championship games. Which is probably valid...they're nothing of value but a money grab.
The issue I see with your argument is that is assumes that there is a way via a poll or BCS type scoring system to tell the four best teams in the country. Who is a better team -- a team that goes undefeated, but plays a very soft schedule or a team that plays in a (commonly believed to be) tough conference with a couple of very difficult OOC games who loses 1 (or 2)?
It does not assume that. I would propose a committee like in basketball, that uses things like polls, RPI-type metrics, and conference champions when deciding who gets in. I'm on board with a conference championship holding weight, just not all that much. Last year, the ACC, Big Ten and Big East didn't have a national championship worthy team - so they shouldn't get to participate.
I could get on board with the 3+1 rule, assuming the 3 were all in the top-5 or -6 or something like that.
Your last sentence is exactly the Big 10's proposal and it would have resulted in the displacement of exactly 3 teams since 2005, all of them ranked #4 in the final BCS standings.
1. LSU in 2006, a team that didn't win its division in favor of a USC team that Morgan Trent still has nightmares about. [Lose out to higher ranked wild card Michigan]
2. Alabama in 2008, who had just lost to Florida in the SEC championship by a USC team that curbstomped Illinois in the Rose Bowl (this is about the only controversial one, in my mind). [They lose out to higher rated wild card Texas].
3. Stanford by Oregon last year, objectively the right call.
There are two scenarios where this system is somewhat unfair:
1. An undefeated Notre Dame ranked #2 (take a minute, stop laughing .... ok) with an Alabama - LSU situation from last year with one team ranked #3, and two other conference champs in the top 6. In that case, Alabama gets left out.
2. A double Alabama-LSU situation. Similar to last year but in two conferences, with conference champs in the 5 and 6 slots, wherein the lower ranked of the two conference losers (the #4 team) is left out.
Yeah, I'm OK with either of those exceptions, because ND will never go undefeated (and if they do they should essentially be considered a conference champ so I'm OK with that) and a double LSU-Alabama would be unlikely, and someone always has to get left out so whatever. If you don't win your league, you need to look incredible (like Alabama did last year) and it would be really tough for that to happen twice in the same year.
The real problem wouldn't be an LSU-Alabama situation, as much as what would have happened if LSU lost in the SEC championship game to UGA. Georgia is the conference champ, and you have 12-1 LSU and 11-1 Alabama, and only one can get in, even though they're likely ranked #1 and #2 in the country.
But, you can dream up crazy scenarios for every situation, and things usually work themselves out on the field.
Why would only one get in if Georgia beat LSU last year? They were a 12 seed going into the SEC title game and tey most likely wouldn't have jumped in the top 6 to warrant inclusion in the 4 team playoff. The top 6 rankings would most likely have remained the same (LSU had beaten enough good teams to have still been a #1 even if they lost to UGa and you could argue the same when they lost to Alabama).
A) Georgia would have just beaten the top team in the country and would now have won 10 in a row. It's a long jump, but within the realm of possibility.
B) LSU may still have been above Alabama, but history has NEVER looked kindly on teams that lose their last game. Alabama can give the same argument LSU did in 2007--"we never lost a game in regulation." So now we have a situation where LSU has been punished for beating Alabama, winning its division, and going to the SEC title game. Georgia (who had an awful SEC schedule by the way) would now get to play for a national title.
A system that punishes teams for winning games is absolutely ludicrous.
Because with that rule, only one non-champ can get in, and since LSU and Bama would have both been non-champs, only one could go.
LSU in the SEC title game last year, the playoff participants are Oklahoma State, Oregon, Alabama, and LSU? Good thing winning the conference means so much.
Even worse, if Georgia snuck into the top 6 with the big win, the team left out is probably LSU which is now PUNISHED for winning the division and playing in the title game.
If the conference champion is SO important why is the cutoff at 6? Why not 8 or 10?
How come your analysis doesn't go back beyond 2005?
What about the Big XII of Big East that doesn't have a title game? If they have a tie atop the standings do they now have the option to send their highest-ranked team? They'd all technically be conference champions (albeit co-champs).
Do the non-BCS conferences get the same consideration? Does a 6th ranked Boise get in the playoffs despite playing one BCS conference team a year? Talk about taking advantage of a weak schedule. (No disrespect meant to Boise who deserves more consideration, but I don't think I'm spreading the news that their old conference wasn't America's toughest).
By that token is the Big East still a major BCS conference? Undefeated 2009 Cincinnati would have made the playoffs while 2009 Florida would have sat at home. They happened to play in the Sugar Bowl. Florida was a 14-point favorite and won 51-24 (in a game that was not that close). Tim Tebow threw for 482 yards. Read that last sentence again. If the BCS or a committee thought Cincinnati was better based on a body of work--fine. So be it. But why would we not include a team most thought was top 4 in the country because they didn't happen to win their conference?
Every playoff system in college is subjective. The basketball committee has to decide if 21-12 Team A should get in over 26-9 Team B. Why not use a committee to make a decision on who they believe the best 4 teams are? The argument seems to be that "best" is too subjective. So is winning the conference when conference strength and out of conference schedules are clearly not even across the board. Was Cincinnati really a top 4 team in 2009? Was Virginia Tech in 2007 (got drilled, and I mean drilled, by LSU in regular season and would have made playoffs by BCS standings--hell, they may have gotten a "home" game)?