Post-Saturday games bowl projections: Michigan vs Florida in Peach Bowl

Totally agree, Hatter. I just want a win to end the season on a relatively positive note. Losing The Game the way we did sucked, but ending on a win and completing an 11 win season would make it pretty hard to call this year anything other than a huge success. 

I don't understand why the committee doesn't make statements with how they slot 5+.  The bowl arrangements are important for all the players/teams, but they could do a lot of good for college football moving forwards.

-Drop SEC teams and say OOC schedule sucks.
-If OSU doesn't get in, keep them at 6 and have UCF leap them.  "Despite what conversations are initiated on telecasts, it is important if you lose by >21 points in a game, and you can't barely beat inferior teams all year and expect your resume to impress." 
-IF ND was 5, drop them to like 7 or 8 and say it's because they didn't play a conference title game.
-In reference to bullet #1, move a team up a couple of slots who scheduled good/great teams in the non conference.  Even make a comment about how the game was scheduled in June of 2016, and that effort was noticed.  If 1-loss 'bama had gotten in over a 1-loss conference champion Michigan, college football teams would be more incentivized to schedule baby seals pre conference. 

TL;DR - the playoff committee has 2 jobs.  Get the best ~4 teams with reasonable criteria and, in the process, try to make college football better moving forward. 

I agree with this for several reasons as well.

While they are undefeated, undefeated is not enough to get UCF in either... and while UCF played pretty much nobody, they are a conference champ. 

ND is not a conference champ, and had Georgia not had to play a conference championship, they would be in the CFP. (Read, had ND played Clemson last night they would have a loss, or Clemson would, but either way it is an extra significant chance at a loss). 2014 OSU leap frogged #3 non-conference champ TCU, for instance, and would not have gotten in in 2016 but for its win over Wisconsin. The committee has been pretty consistent over the last several years about how meaningful that conference championship game is.

Even though their schedule was not as strong as it could have been, they never really distinguished themselves like Bama and Clemson did through blow outs or clear wins. ND played many, many close games to the end to poor quality teams. For instance, ND played 4 poor quality teams within 1 score (Ball state, USC, Vandy, and Pitt). These four teams combined for a record of 22 wins and 27 losses over the season. Each of those four also had much worse losses, than to ND, from similarly poor quality teams. In short, ND may be undefeated, but it's mostly due to luck. 

Additionally, for ND to be out of the CFP completely, we have to compare them to OSU. Both teams played NW and Michigan. ND beat Michigan by 7, OSU by 23. ND beat NW by 10, OSU did it by 21. 

If we take the eye test, I'd guess most people would think that Oklahoma and OSU would both likely win against the ND team that has struggled so much this year. 

They can crunch all the numbers they want. I can't see the committee putting an OSU team that lost by 20+ to Purdue and struggled with a number of other crappy teams, sneaking in over an undefeated Notre Dame. Not happening

HB?

^^^This^^^

The Peach, Gator and Outback bowls are what you get when you are a middling Big Ten team. We didn't even win our division, much less the conference championship. At these bowls you play a middling SEC team with regional interest which are South Carolina, Florida and Mississippi State.

This is why we keep playing in the same bowls against the same teams.

Until we beat OSU and win the Big Ten we will always be in Bowl purgatory.

I'm not going to lie, I would lose my mind over the possibility of a 16 team December-November playoff (and several extra possible games to watch Michigan play in). 

Agreed. 

Other ludicrous things:

Divisions within conferences

Conferences still named for the number of teams they actually had in the 80’s

Five Conference commissioners who agreed to this stupid playoff format allowing 4 teams in knowing one P5, at minimum, would be left out as well as independents (their own fault)

Teams compelled to lobby for themselves like a beauty pageant instead of just playing in a playoff format. People can say “the whole season is a playoff”. Great, this is the only asinine level of football doing it this way and although I’m glad they ditched the voting system, do better. 

Give up on the idea of ND moving out of the playoffs.  They won't.  Nor should they - OSU did absolutely nothing to move up beyond #5.  The B1G Championship was actually in doubt in the 4th quarter.  If they had any chance to jump OU, they had to beat the living shit out of NW from start to finish.  And they didn't come remotely close to doing that.  

Georgia lost a second game - they have nothing to whine about.  The top 4 is set.

You're missing the point.  The problem isn't the Peach Bowl itself, the problem is the (probable) matchup with Floriduh for the 3rd time in 4 years.  It's stale, and nobody wants to see it.  Not even the diehard Michigan fans like us!  I doubt that hardcore UF fans are anymore interested than us.  And the general public won't give a shit about it...

Can't believe that there are people posting here who don't know this.