I think the whole CFP blows.
I like Sankey's shot across the bow of the CFP with his tweet from yesterday. And he is 100% correct. The Schedules are not all equal.
First, as for Ole Miss, Bama and Georgia, the entire body of work should be considered. That includes losses to unranked teams (Vandy, Kentucky, LSU) as opposed to losses to ranked teams on the road. The overall strength of schedule should be considered. The number of top wins should be considered. Ole Miss and Bama didn't even have to play each other to have a possible three way tie (or Texas). One would think that Clemson might give us that one extra data point they are so fond of talking about, but not this year. IMO, Georgia should be the first ranked 8-2 team due to the Strength of schedule and number of quality wins to quality losses. BTW, Georgia beat then #1 now #3 Texas at their place. I get that Georgia shouldn't be ahead of this one loss team (Texas), but it shouldn't be far behind either. Clearly, for Georgia, the losses carry a lot more weight than the wins.
However, that really isn't my biggest complaint with the CFP, it's the disparate treatment of the SEC as a whole (Texas excluded). By virtually every metric the SEC plays a tougher schedule against higher ranked teams. It's not even debatable. So what we have is teams like Indiana, Penn State, Miami and Notre Dame who have played one tough game and most of them have lost that one. Some have only played one team in the top 25. What the committee is doing is pretending that all schedules are equal. All one loss teams in the BIG TEN are automatically ranked ahead of the SEC's two loss teams when the schedules aren't even close in comparison. Georgia, Bama, Ole Miss and Tennessee would all have the same or better record given the same schedule. If you took those four teams and paired them up against the next four SEC teams, I am not sure that every SEC team would be favored. They would certainly all be favored over Indiana and Penn State.
To have 4 Big Ten teams in the top 5 is a joke. It also sets most of them up for home games in the playoffs. That is a big deal. This is the real point of contention. I don't mind the teams currently in the playoffs (though a case could be made for Tennessee or Clemson, IMO), it is the order of the rankings that I take issue with. Indiana deserves to be in the CFP top 12, but should be closer to 8 at this point. Penn State should be about 6. Georgia should be in the 6-8 range, IMO. Bama and Ole Miss in that 3-8 range as well.
We might as well go back to the days of print media, the AP and UPI picking the top teams based solely on wins and losses irrespective of the strength of the competition, because that is where we are at. BYU, says thank you.
I like Sankey's shot across the bow of the CFP with his tweet from yesterday. And he is 100% correct. The Schedules are not all equal.
First, as for Ole Miss, Bama and Georgia, the entire body of work should be considered. That includes losses to unranked teams (Vandy, Kentucky, LSU) as opposed to losses to ranked teams on the road. The overall strength of schedule should be considered. The number of top wins should be considered. Ole Miss and Bama didn't even have to play each other to have a possible three way tie (or Texas). One would think that Clemson might give us that one extra data point they are so fond of talking about, but not this year. IMO, Georgia should be the first ranked 8-2 team due to the Strength of schedule and number of quality wins to quality losses. BTW, Georgia beat then #1 now #3 Texas at their place. I get that Georgia shouldn't be ahead of this one loss team (Texas), but it shouldn't be far behind either. Clearly, for Georgia, the losses carry a lot more weight than the wins.
However, that really isn't my biggest complaint with the CFP, it's the disparate treatment of the SEC as a whole (Texas excluded). By virtually every metric the SEC plays a tougher schedule against higher ranked teams. It's not even debatable. So what we have is teams like Indiana, Penn State, Miami and Notre Dame who have played one tough game and most of them have lost that one. Some have only played one team in the top 25. What the committee is doing is pretending that all schedules are equal. All one loss teams in the BIG TEN are automatically ranked ahead of the SEC's two loss teams when the schedules aren't even close in comparison. Georgia, Bama, Ole Miss and Tennessee would all have the same or better record given the same schedule. If you took those four teams and paired them up against the next four SEC teams, I am not sure that every SEC team would be favored. They would certainly all be favored over Indiana and Penn State.
To have 4 Big Ten teams in the top 5 is a joke. It also sets most of them up for home games in the playoffs. That is a big deal. This is the real point of contention. I don't mind the teams currently in the playoffs (though a case could be made for Tennessee or Clemson, IMO), it is the order of the rankings that I take issue with. Indiana deserves to be in the CFP top 12, but should be closer to 8 at this point. Penn State should be about 6. Georgia should be in the 6-8 range, IMO. Bama and Ole Miss in that 3-8 range as well.
We might as well go back to the days of print media, the AP and UPI picking the top teams based solely on wins and losses irrespective of the strength of the competition, because that is where we are at. BYU, says thank you.
