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If BCS setup wasn't changed which two teams would be in title game (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Willie Neslon
- Start date
It comes down to the Big 12 thinking they were at an advantage by not putting their top teams at risk with a championship game.
Turns out a 13th game against a highly rated team is actually an advantage, if you win.
Had any of those teams lost their championship game a Big 12 team gets in and their gamble pays off.
What the Big 12 did though was put their destiny in the hands of other teams. All those teams with Conference Championship games owned their own destiny. The Big 12 teams had to hope for another team to lose.
Turns out a 13th game against a highly rated team is actually an advantage, if you win.
Had any of those teams lost their championship game a Big 12 team gets in and their gamble pays off.
What the Big 12 did though was put their destiny in the hands of other teams. All those teams with Conference Championship games owned their own destiny. The Big 12 teams had to hope for another team to lose.
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Those other conferences just had to beat a team they should beat, just like TCU did. They call it a "championship" and I guess it gets a bunch of weight. Alabama is going to beat missouri 97 times out of 100. Wisconsin, arizona and Georgia tech are good teams but they are more than likely going to lose to BCS championship level teams. Florida state plays down to every opponent.
bentley
Footballguy
The thing is every time a team steps on the field they could lose. They may be favored but sometimes they lose. This is evident by only having 1 undefeated team. Every time you put yourself out there and you win you do more to prove your worth. When those teams are also top 25 teams you have a bigger chance of losing. Lets not pretend these are chump teams. They are all 1 loss from going to the playoff if they win the championship.
And if it is so easy to beat teams not in the playoff I guess TCU and Baylor don;t have any complaints as they both lost to non-playoff teams.
And if it is so easy to beat teams not in the playoff I guess TCU and Baylor don;t have any complaints as they both lost to non-playoff teams.
Insein
Footballguy
Mile High
Footballguy
Why is the Big 10 still the Big 10?
The Commish
Footballguy
Maybe the conference told ISU to take a dive too :tinfoil:
This really isn't all that mysterious if looking at it objectively
Foosball God
Foos
I think the Big 12 did themselves no favors by calling TCU and Baylor co-champions when Baylor had beaten TCU head to head. It seemed like they didn't want to diminish either team's chances at a trip to the playoff, but by doing it they just weakened both teams and opened the door for OSU
GoFishTN
Footballguy
The Commish
Footballguy
Though, clearly this is a wrinkle that's creating a lot of heartburn for some. I suspect it will take some a good while to get use to it. Perhaps they should go easy on that segment of the population and not release rankings until the end 
Insein
Footballguy
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
That's great that they have the conviction to move teams up and down a bunch but what sense does it make to do that after teams have played 12 games and the team you move down wins 55-3? If it was week 2 and a few teams had some impressive wins against great competition I could see the committee moving teams up a bunch of slots but this happened after the final week of the regular season. They sure put an awful lot of stock in TCU's opponents record in their final regular season game. ISU's record basically trumped everything that TCU had done up to that point according to the committee.The Commish said:B-Deep said:
The Commish
Footballguy
Yeah, I don't think the committee looked at it that way. I believe what the committee told us as their explanation. Really didn't have much to do with TCU's performance against a crappy team. The week before they had TCU three and FSU four but made it crystal clear, at the time they were nitpicking between the two. So TCU and FSU were really 3A/B. Once OSU added a dominating game against Wisconsin (that NO ONE expected) and a conference championship to their resume, one of those teams at 3A/B had to go. FSU had a conference championship and a win against a top 15 team as well. Not really hard to connect the dots here if looking objectively. Perhaps you are one that would benefit from not seeing the list until the last week of the season? I'd expect the most movement to be at the end of the season honestly. It's when conference championship games and SOS are finalized and you have a complete picture of the seasonThat's great that they have the conviction to move teams up and down a bunch but what sense does it make to do that after teams have played 12 games and the team you move down wins 55-3? If it was week 2 and a few teams had some impressive wins against great competition I could see the committee moving teams up a bunch of slots but this happened after the final week of the regular season. They sure put an awful lot of stock in TCU's opponents record in their final regular season game. ISU's record basically trumped everything that TCU had done up to that point according to the committee.The Commish said:B-Deep said:
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
TCU's one loss was to Baylor 61-58. Baylor finished the season 11-1. OSU's loss was to 6-6 Virginia Tech. TCU played a tougher schedule. RPI Big12 is 3rd and Big10 is 5th. TCU played 6 ranked teams and OSU played 3. OSU didn't have to play a ranked team until their 9th game. Let's forget about all that though because the last team on TCU's schedule was 2-9.
B-Deep
Footballguy
basically what they are syaing is TCU is not the fourth best team, we thought so last week and we were wrongThat's great that they have the conviction to move teams up and down a bunch but what sense does it make to do that after teams have played 12 games and the team you move down wins 55-3? If it was week 2 and a few teams had some impressive wins against great competition I could see the committee moving teams up a bunch of slots but this happened after the final week of the regular season. They sure put an awful lot of stock in TCU's opponents record in their final regular season game. ISU's record basically trumped everything that TCU had done up to that point according to the committee.The Commish said:B-Deep said:
you have never argued that they ARE the fourth best team, only that they should not have fallen. This committee does not care about that. Every week they start fresh. After seeing OSU beat the living crap out of wisconsin they decided this team is the 4th best team out there
B-Deep
Footballguy
Alonzo Mosely
Footballguy
This is assuming a normal delta between the teams involved. The committee was pretty up front that there wasn't much separating 3 and 6 in the previous ranking and the performance gave OSU enough of a boost, given the relative delta, to push them past TCU and Baylor.That's great that they have the conviction to move teams up and down a bunch but what sense does it make to do that after teams have played 12 games and the team you move down wins 55-3? If it was week 2 and a few teams had some impressive wins against great competition I could see the committee moving teams up a bunch of slots but this happened after the final week of the regular season. They sure put an awful lot of stock in TCU's opponents record in their final regular season game. ISU's record basically trumped everything that TCU had done up to that point according to the committee.The Commish said:B-Deep said:
B-Deep
Footballguy
to me TCU getting in over Baylor would have been a MUCH bigger travesty than OSU over both
and I freaking hate OSU
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Tom Servo
Nittany Beavers
This is the key takeaway. They look at the results to date, not on reputation, or who should beat whom, but their resume at that given time. Once OSU curb stomped Wisky with their 3rd string QB, OSU's total resume made a more substantial case to the committee than either TCU OR Baylor.
Oh, memo to TCU and Baylor - stop scheduling the tomato paste cans. If you're going to schedule tomato cans, at least try to get the diced ones.
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-final-college-football-playoff-rankings-contradict-history/
The Final College Football Playoff Rankings Contradict History
The field for the inaugural College Football Playoff (CFP) was finally set Sunday, but — in true college football style — it wasn’t without controversy. The 12-person CFP selection committee chose Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State, arguably snubbing Big 12 co-champions Baylor and (especially) TCU.
The last four teams standing are exceptional. The Ducks, Crimson Tide and Buckeyes rank Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively, in ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI). And although the Seminoles have been unconvincing throughout the season, it would have been difficult to justify leaving the undefeated, defending national champion out of the playoff — No. 10 FPI ranking be damned. So, the committee may well have made the best decision it could have, according to its mandate to select the nation’s four best teams.
But by ranking TCU third (ahead of both Florida State and Ohio State) the week before the conference championships, the committee also set itself up to violate the precedent of how college football rankings have always worked. That’s why, even after previous No. 5 Ohio State rolled over No. 13 Wisconsin 59-0, the FiveThirtyEight College Football Playoff model — which is based on a historical analysis of Coaches Poll voters’ tendencies — saw little chance that TCU would drop from third place to fifth or lower in the committee’s final rankings.
Using the traditional media polls as a guide, that was a reasonable assumption. Since the advent of the Bowl Coalition in 1992, only four times (in 214 opportunities) did the third-ranked team in the AP poll drop below fourth place the week after it won a game over an FBS opponent. All four of those teams (Florida State in Week 1 of the 2002 season, Ohio State in Week 3 of 2003, Tennessee in Week 1 of 2005 and Ohio State in Week 2 of 2008) posted victory margins that underwhelmed their pregame FPI expectations. By contrast, TCU beat its pregame expectations by 19 points in thrashing Iowa State. (And it bears repeating that none of those cases took place any later than the third week of a season, when you would expect voters to still be sorting out the order of teams.)
And yet TCU did drop in the committee’s rankings — from third place to sixth, below Florida State, Ohio State and even Baylor (whom the committee had controversially slotted beneath TCU in every previous edition of its rankings, seemingly ignoring the Bears’ head-to-head victory over the Horned Frogs on Oct. 11). It was a stunning fall that, for better or worse, seemed to contradict the way college football teams traditionally move in the rankings.
TCU’s exclusion also broke with tradition from another standpoint. Using poll data since 1992, I ran a logistic regression attempting to predict whether a team would finish the regular season in the AP’s top four based on various “résumé” statistics provided by ESPN’s Stats and Info Group. The factors that emerged as significant were a team’s winning percentage (modified slightly by Laplace’s Rule of Succession), its average points-per-game margin, its strength of schedule (according to the average FBS team’s expected winning percentage against its schedule using FPI), and whether it won its conference or not.
This year, those criteria would have yielded the following probabilities of making the top four (assuming the committee would follow the pollsters’ traditional logic):
(Note: Baylor and TCU were co-champions of the Big 12; for the purposes of the regression, they were each treated the same as a team that was sole champion of its conference.)
It’s not outside the realm of plausibility that historical voters would exclude TCU and include Ohio State on the basis of their résumés alone (this method shows there was a 16 percent chance that would happen). In fact, the real AP poll dropped TCU from fourth to sixth, with two teams (Baylor and Ohio State) hurdling the Horned Frogs.
It is, however, another way to underscore that the playoff committee may be rethinking the way college football teams have been ranked at the end of the season. As FiveThirtyEight’s editor in chief, Nate Silver, wrote in his final assessment of the committee’s selection, the sport’s old algorithm rarely entailed a top-to-bottom reassessment of the field this late in the year (voters usually just made slight adjustments to teams’ rankings after losses or big wins; otherwise the current rankings were basically enslaved to the previous rankings). The committee’s final rankings, on the other hand, suggest it sorted the teams from scratch after the conference championships, with no allegiance to its previous choices.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But, like the existence of a playoff in the first place, it’s a new thing.
The Final College Football Playoff Rankings Contradict History
The field for the inaugural College Football Playoff (CFP) was finally set Sunday, but — in true college football style — it wasn’t without controversy. The 12-person CFP selection committee chose Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and Ohio State, arguably snubbing Big 12 co-champions Baylor and (especially) TCU.
The last four teams standing are exceptional. The Ducks, Crimson Tide and Buckeyes rank Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively, in ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI). And although the Seminoles have been unconvincing throughout the season, it would have been difficult to justify leaving the undefeated, defending national champion out of the playoff — No. 10 FPI ranking be damned. So, the committee may well have made the best decision it could have, according to its mandate to select the nation’s four best teams.
But by ranking TCU third (ahead of both Florida State and Ohio State) the week before the conference championships, the committee also set itself up to violate the precedent of how college football rankings have always worked. That’s why, even after previous No. 5 Ohio State rolled over No. 13 Wisconsin 59-0, the FiveThirtyEight College Football Playoff model — which is based on a historical analysis of Coaches Poll voters’ tendencies — saw little chance that TCU would drop from third place to fifth or lower in the committee’s final rankings.
Using the traditional media polls as a guide, that was a reasonable assumption. Since the advent of the Bowl Coalition in 1992, only four times (in 214 opportunities) did the third-ranked team in the AP poll drop below fourth place the week after it won a game over an FBS opponent. All four of those teams (Florida State in Week 1 of the 2002 season, Ohio State in Week 3 of 2003, Tennessee in Week 1 of 2005 and Ohio State in Week 2 of 2008) posted victory margins that underwhelmed their pregame FPI expectations. By contrast, TCU beat its pregame expectations by 19 points in thrashing Iowa State. (And it bears repeating that none of those cases took place any later than the third week of a season, when you would expect voters to still be sorting out the order of teams.)
And yet TCU did drop in the committee’s rankings — from third place to sixth, below Florida State, Ohio State and even Baylor (whom the committee had controversially slotted beneath TCU in every previous edition of its rankings, seemingly ignoring the Bears’ head-to-head victory over the Horned Frogs on Oct. 11). It was a stunning fall that, for better or worse, seemed to contradict the way college football teams traditionally move in the rankings.
TCU’s exclusion also broke with tradition from another standpoint. Using poll data since 1992, I ran a logistic regression attempting to predict whether a team would finish the regular season in the AP’s top four based on various “résumé” statistics provided by ESPN’s Stats and Info Group. The factors that emerged as significant were a team’s winning percentage (modified slightly by Laplace’s Rule of Succession), its average points-per-game margin, its strength of schedule (according to the average FBS team’s expected winning percentage against its schedule using FPI), and whether it won its conference or not.
This year, those criteria would have yielded the following probabilities of making the top four (assuming the committee would follow the pollsters’ traditional logic):
(Note: Baylor and TCU were co-champions of the Big 12; for the purposes of the regression, they were each treated the same as a team that was sole champion of its conference.)
It’s not outside the realm of plausibility that historical voters would exclude TCU and include Ohio State on the basis of their résumés alone (this method shows there was a 16 percent chance that would happen). In fact, the real AP poll dropped TCU from fourth to sixth, with two teams (Baylor and Ohio State) hurdling the Horned Frogs.
It is, however, another way to underscore that the playoff committee may be rethinking the way college football teams have been ranked at the end of the season. As FiveThirtyEight’s editor in chief, Nate Silver, wrote in his final assessment of the committee’s selection, the sport’s old algorithm rarely entailed a top-to-bottom reassessment of the field this late in the year (voters usually just made slight adjustments to teams’ rankings after losses or big wins; otherwise the current rankings were basically enslaved to the previous rankings). The committee’s final rankings, on the other hand, suggest it sorted the teams from scratch after the conference championships, with no allegiance to its previous choices.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But, like the existence of a playoff in the first place, it’s a new thing.
xulf
Footballguy
Who are the ranked teams NOW that TCU beat? How many bowl teams did TCU beat? What was TCU's strength of schedule?
OSU beat them in every one of these.
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
ranked teams is 2-2 or 3-3 if you count Minnesota as ranked. TCU tougher strength of schedule in Sagarin and other rankings. OSU SoS is 52 to TCU 42. Too lazy to go through the bowl teams.
Alonzo Mosely
Footballguy
A lot of bad presuppositions by 538 IMO. I think they are just bitter that they made projections based on precedents that clearly didn't exist.
Moe.
Footballguy
I agree that h2h should be the tiebreaker in the event of the tie. If they're going to make that decision though, they need to do it during the offseason. They can't just add that in during the middle of the season because they are worried about what the committee might do. They've been doing the co-champ bs since the conference went down to ten. It happened a few years ago but nobody cared beause there were no implications on the national stage. I'm seeing a lot of people who are under the impression that the Big 12 had ulterior motives, which I don't believe is true.Foosball God said:
Big 12 teams need to understand that if the conference is going to stay at ten they need to be more aggressive with their non-conference scheduling. When you only have ten wins over FBS opponents you really don't have a leg to stand on, conference championship game or not.
The Commish
Footballguy
If we want to talk about the resumes and get away from the conspiracy theory bull####, I'm all for it
TCU's Resume (11-1)
Quality wins:
#11 KSU
#25 Minnesota
Losses:
#5 Baylor
Accolades:
"co champion of conference"
SOS: 27
MOV: 25.8
OSU Resume (12-1):
Quality Wins:
#8 Michigan State
#18 Wisconsin
#25 Minnesota
Losses:
VaTech
Accolades:
Outright Big Ten Champion
SOS: 38
MOV: 24.1
I don't know why conference "sos" was mentioned when we're talking about specific teams, so I ignored it. These are the resumes of the teams being compared. Given the fact we know how close TCU, FSU and #5 were the week prior (based on what the committee told us) I don't see the travesty here. It should tell us all how important an outright conference championship is going to be to the committee. The other thing not mentioned here is the loss of two QBs for OSU over the season and the lack of drop off in performance. I don't know how much it factored into their decision, but I think it probably did in some fashion. The only real "problem" here is the committee let us see rankings. I don't believe this faux outrage would exist if they just put this last list and this list only out at the end of the season. Long gone is the "hold serve and survive" kind of rankings that we're all accustom to
The Commish
Footballguy
xulf
Footballguy
I was going off of this: http://espn.go.com/college-football/playoffPicture which has been referenced a lot in discussion (well at least from ESPN discussions).
The Commish
Footballguy
And I was using team rankings dot com......they have a bit more to their SOS that I think makes things a little clearer, but to each his own. My rankings for quality wins came from the teams the committee listed as the top 25....don't really care about the AP, Coaches, USA Today and all those. They don't really matter in this discussion.
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
A shame this TCU team didn't even get a chance at the title. If only Iowa state had a better record..
Zow
Footballguy
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
Zow
Footballguy
dparker713
Footballguy
You do realize that Baylor and TCU had 10 common opponents including their head-to-head, both finished 11-1 as co-champions and Baylor beat TCU.
Das Boot
Footballguy
gianmarco
Footballguy
Then we can hear about the 9th and 10th ranked teams also with one loss complain about how they got screwed.
Frostillicus
Footballguy
Willie Neslon
Footballguy
You will never see a 9th or 10th ranked team like Texas Christian.gianmarco said:
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