CFN: Florida State and the "Rigged" College Football Playoff: Daily Cavalcade

Bamabuzzard

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For a lot of fans and fortunately for the majority of the CFP committee the answer is yes, the 4 best are the most deserving. But some in the media (like Booger McFarland) think an undefeated team in the P5 is always more deserving over a 1 loss team regardless of the difference in talent. His argument is "Why play the season if teams like Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and Texas always have the most talent and thus are the best teams?" The simple answer of course is to see if those teams can play at a high enough level with the talent they have. If they have only 1 loss I think that's a high enough level of success IMO to justify taking the 1 loss team with more talent over the less talented team that happens to be undefeated.
Booger is not only an LSU fan (which I believe heavily influenced his opinion) but he's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier either. I think it was Joey Galloway who was on the same set when Booger had one of his many meltdowns tear holes in Booger's line of thinking like Swiss cheese.

One thing Booger never acknowledged, that was brought to his attention, is that "one loss" he keeps referring to was to a top power 5 team. The playoff committee from its inception has acknowledged over and over they would not heavily punish teams who scheduled tough OOC games and lost. He never wanted to acknowledge that for obvious reasons.
 

TIDE-HSV

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This is where I am at. The “world” didn’t care about how I felt last year, or 2019 (getting knocked out of a NY6 bowl though the Michigan Citrus Bowl was a fun match up).

This will all die down in a week.
No, it won't. If we win it all, they'll be saying "They shouldn't have been in, in the first place"...
 

TideEngineer08

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No, it won't. If we win it all, they'll be saying "They shouldn't have been in, in the first place"...
Perhaps. I don’t recall how it was in 2017. But a lot has changed in our culture in the 6 years since so maybe it wouldn’t be a good comparison anyway.

If Georgia stomps FSU, and we win it all, I doubt we hear much more than a whimper outside of Tallahassee.
 

selmaborntidefan

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Yep. And the whole foundation of the angst is that they thought "most deserving" and "four best" meant the same thing. It's an entitlement mindset. The same thing absolutely will happen with the expanded field. Probably not next year but sooner or later a G5 champ or runner up is gonna cry about being almost good enough.
Too many folks are making too much out of the misused term "most deserving."

All that ever meant was when you had a case like 2015 Ohio State, and they lost to Sparty. Everyone knew Ohio State was a better overall team, but the catch is, you HAVE to respect the results on the field, and Sparty won. Then they beat Iowa, and thus "deserving."

Ohio State in 2015 - at a minimum - was better than Sparty or Oklahoma, but they lost.

If we aren't going to respect what happens on the field, we may as well not even play any games.

Folks have used "most deserving" as a substitute for "hasn't had a chance," like 2011 Oklahoma State.
And if 2011 OSU had WON against Iowa State, guess what? They would have captured #2 in the BCS and played LSU, but they wouldn't have been better than Alabama.

Too many folks are getting too much like fundamentalist literalists over terms any more.
 

GulfCoastTider

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Seems to me the reverse is also true...if the Best teams are the Most Deserving, then the Most Deserving are also the best teams.
Not always. There's a degree of subjective judgment so not everyone will have the same criteria. One of mine is, "who would be favored in a head-to-head?" I think most people would agree that the gravest sin would be to include a sentimental deserving favorite over a clearly superior unit yet would most likely be a heavy underdog in a head-to-head matchup.

FSU is deserving of consideration. Who of the other candidates would they be favored to beat? Liberty is deserving and they'd be favored against no one. UGA would probably be favored vs all, and in my book would be in with Texas or Michigan out.
 
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selmaborntidefan

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For a lot of fans and fortunately for the majority of the CFP committee the answer is yes, the 4 best are the most deserving. But some in the media (like Booger McFarland) think an undefeated team in the P5 is always more deserving over a 1 loss team regardless of the difference in talent.
Texas was more deserving than Alabama by virtue of the head-to-head win.
Whether Texas OVERALL is better than Alabama? Something else entirely.
Whether Texas wins the national title? Also something else entirely.


His argument is "Why play the season if teams like Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State and Texas always have the most talent and thus are the best teams?" The simple answer of course is to see if those teams can play at a high enough level with the talent they have. If they have only 1 loss I think that's a high enough level of success IMO to justify taking the 1 loss team with more talent over the less talented team that happens to be undefeated.
I actually remember being jealous of Florida State and Nebraska in the 90s, because they were contenders pretty much every single year.

After that, it was USC, and we all go told, "You have to catch up."

Now it's "Alabama benefits unfairly."

One other point on deserving: a LOT of the verbiage (just like the term "precedent") goes back to the poll era. "Deserving" was a case like 1990 Georgia Tech, where nobody thought they were the best team in the country, but they did all you could ask of them. Most folks figured they'd lose to Miami or Notre Dame (at a minimum), but respected a team that didn't lose, knocked off #1, and blew out Nebraska in a bowl game.

Miami Coach Dennis Erickson sort of hinted at it after the Cotton Bowl, saying, "We're probably the best team in the country" but noting it was their fault for losing two games.

I don't know if Miami would have beaten Tech on the field in 1990, nor does anyone else.

But they were the BETTER team in that they had a ton more talent, while Tech was more DESERVING of a national championship in a scenario where teams can never meet and one is 1.5 games better than the other one.
 
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81usaf92

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Welp, that didn’t take long.
I take it that you haven’t been around many Michigan fans… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been around them and once the game gets out of hand the conversation usually shifts to how the south lost the civil war and comparing educational rankings. They generally are more of “smack” fan base as a whole. It’s why most people never root against Ohio St when they play Michigan.
 

selmaborntidefan

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I take it that you haven’t been around many Michigan fans… I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been around them and once the game gets out of hand the conversation usually shifts to how the south lost the civil war and comparing educational rankings. They generally are more of “smack” fan base as a whole. It’s why most people never root against Ohio St when they play Michigan.
This is not even an exaggeration.

In 2001, we played Detroit in the NIT, and the Michigan "newspapers" and websites at the time brought up the Civil War!!! I was thinking, "Are you SERIOUS?" This place, where I was a relatively new poster, about came unglued on that.
 

landonew

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Perhaps. I don’t recall how it was in 2017. But a lot has changed in our culture in the 6 years since so maybe it wouldn’t be a good comparison anyway.

If Georgia stomps FSU, and we win it all, I doubt we hear much more than a whimper outside of Tallahassee.
Georgia will whip FSU so bad it’ll make TCU jealous.
 

81usaf92

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This is not even an exaggeration.

In 2001, we played Detroit in the NIT, and the Michigan "newspapers" and websites at the time brought up the Civil War!!! I was thinking, "Are you SERIOUS?" This place, where I was a relatively new poster, about came unglued on that.
I know friends who went to the Tom Brady game in Miami and said Michigan fans made Georgia and Florida fans look like model citizens by comparison.

One of my best friends is a die hard Michigan fan… however he never grew up in the Michigan culture so he is not the normal Michigan fan. Seriously most of the True Maize and Blueers are everything you hate about frat boys and Yankees. It feels like you are in a constant battle over something that they feel they are better than you about.
 

dWarriors88

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Does anyone else find it funny that Tommy Tubberville (Ole Wingnut) is defending the committee's decision to put Alabama in the playoff?



The harsh criticism of the college football playoffs is being met with an eyeroll from Alabama’s senior senator, Tommy Tuberville (R), who had a long and distinguished career in college football as the head coach of Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati.

“Ahh, that’s a waste of time,” he said of the demands that the selection committee turn over its records of the decision to seed Michigan, Washington, Alabama and Texas in the playoffs.

“They went by the criteria of who played the toughest schedule — all the criteria that they had,” he said.

“There’s nobody more experienced to talk about this than me. I got left out in 2004 and we were undefeated,” he said, referring to the Auburn Tigers team that went 13-0 that year.

He said the committee did “what they thought was right.”

“You feel bad for Florida State. I do. I’ve been in their shoes,” he said.

But Tuberville said “there’s not reason” to raise a fuss with the selection committee now “because it all changes, goes to 12 next year,” referring to the format change for the 2024 college season when 12 teams will be seeded for the national championship football playoffs.
I don't know much, but it seems like Wingnut is right on the nose here, he really is the most experienced in these matters, as he is literally the only politic in washington to have been a College Football coach AND get his team to 13-0 and be snubbed by the championship game. No other politician can have that experience. So I find it funny that the former Auburn head coach defending, well then again based on that article not really defending but more-so condescendingly thumbing at the Senator from Florida.
 
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