The bowl, play off, post season is messed up. Were those bowl games? No? I guess I mistakenly thought the playoffs were going to be integrated into the bowl games. So UT and Indiana didn't get to play in neutral site post season games. In a bowl game, at a neutral site, each team is the toast of the town with friendly media coverage, interviews, parades. With the playoffs one team is in hostile territory and likely get booed wherever they go. And the home team has a huge advantage. And with the playoff committee's uncanny ability to create crappy match ups it's a recipe for lousy games just like we got. Snoozefests.
Please, stop with your attempt to assign everything that has happened in the SEC to me as if I have to defend one side over the other. It's my opinion Sankey and the SEC has been actively screwing the Florida Gators FOR YEARS. From scheduling to their dirty Alabama based and "educated" referees that consistently screw the Florida Gators' football program in particular. The 2020 reschedule... the SEC front office and Sankey screwed us over. Anytime we play Bama and Auburn the refs screw us and that's because Sankey and the SEC get many of their refs from the state of Alabama. But Sankey did one big mistake to the entire SEC by signing off on playing "play-off games" up north in the winter OUTDOORS. The brackets are dumb... just because were good during the year does NOT mean you are automatically worthy of a top bracket spot. The brackets should NOT be preassigned. After all the conference championship games are done being played, the playoff committee should re-rank all the teams (make NEW brackets) based on their relative rankings to each other, with SOS as a major consideration. No team should have to play in the northern winter elements. The games should be played in their nearest domed stadium. He lied about how our SEC schedules (after adding Texas and Okalahoma) would work by intimating that they would be made with crappyazz "pods" system, only to destroy the divisions, unbeknownst to the masses. And... on top of all his other crap, he made the SEC one homaginous group of teams with no divisions... and screwed us with the worst schedule two years in a row. I don't remember hearing much about that BS beforehand. And... in the process killing rivalries and making the SECCG nearly an afterthought that might even be unnecessary. Then he made our schedule worse by changing our usual September games with Tennessee, and Kentucky to some degree, by putting them near the end of our schedule. Why?
Undefeated #1 seed Oregon really got hosed by the bracket setup. This is the best matchup of the playoffs and might just be the championship game, imho. Arizona St & Boise St drew easier opponents in round two. I’m pulling for Oregon to win it all. Really like Dan Lanning.
The dirtiest thing Sankey did to us was when he just stood by and let LSU steal our home game in 2016. His job in that situation was to step in and say, "Oh no, you won't!"
Not seeing any validity to this part of your argument. Football is played outdoors and affects both teams equally. Which schools are practicing outdoors? Schools have temperature controlled IPFs. If that's not enough, it was 28F in Knoxville last night. UT lost because their QB is horrible.
I understand your sentiment, but the times were a changing. The SEC could lead the mega conference revolution or get left behind like the B12 and P10. The B10 was expanding, they’re at 18 now. They want to be at 20 for sure- they really want ND. They could end up at 24. For cold weather. First, that’s not an issue for Tennessee. I’ve frozen my butt off in Nashville a couple times. I think it’s gonna be like 18 degrees there on Christmas. Tennessee’s issue is they got beat by a better team with a better QB. If a team doesn’t want to travel for the first round of the playoffs for any reason, then just make sure you’re ranked in the top 6 by the end of the year.
OH St/Oregon in the quarterfinals is a heck of a game. GA/ND with an injured Beck is very interesting too. I’m thinking the winners of those games meet in the finals.
IMO expanding beyond 4 was really about the snubs for 5 and 6. I should have expected that it just moved the power-whining to 13 and 14.
On the surface that was surprising to me too. But I think the relative paths are skewing things. Oregon and OSU are just behind them and play each other, the winner of that will jump to be the betting favorite.
IMHO the issue with playoff home games is it only benefits northern teams weather wise. No northern team will ever have to play a playoff game in the south in September. There will always be the home field advantage but no real weather advantage for a team like UF. I also think Tennessee just couldn’t resist going all Tennessee and stinking the place up. That and it’s hard to beat a $20 million payroll.
Whatever my Millennial Snowflake. This is the lamest (softest) argument ever. I hope they expand the first round and we see more. . . and SNOW!!! God, what a bunch of soft losers we've become. Thankfully I'll be dead (hopefully) before every game in every sport is played in some climate controlled, pre-fab, SoFi flying saucer.
Byes are a ripoff. How much do you think OSU made specifically and for Columbus in general? I get a feeling things are going to change when people/schools see those numbers. I think 3-5 million per game was the number cited back in the day for why we wouldn't add UM (and give up a home game every other year). The numbers for a playoff game must be nuts. It also leads to these lame matchups where we are guaranteed teams like Boise St and ASU in the Quarterfinal round. I say go to 16 teams or expand hosting to the second round.
It is truly sad how soft we've become as a society. We're talking about football here, not some rec league.
Yes. When more teams get in, more teams bellyache about not getting in the playoffs/tournament. Look at the NCAA BB tournament. 68 teams get in, in and around 10 teams complain about not getting in. Moving forward maybe they tweak the 4 byes to 3 byes and the top at large team gets one. The UT/AZS game would settle that. For the at large bids, a little more emphasis on strength of schedule would be good. IMO, the only egregious mistake this year was Bama not getting in. I had bama at #11 and SMU #12. I thought Indiana was OK as a one-loss B10 team. However, once I heard about their schedule (OH St was their only game against the top of the conference and they got blown out), I would have picked Bama and SMU over them.