College football week 15 thread: The Low Sparky of High Heeled Boys

Not every state can be a football powerhouse like Indiana…

 

It would be so easy to solve the "problem" of the four byes and make the playoffs completely fair. Expand it to 16, give the 10 highest-ranked conference champions an automatic berth, and have six at-larges. Even a 9-and-7 plan would be better than having byes.

But the P4 don't want to share any money with the MWC, Pac-12, AAC, SBC, MAC or CUSA.

 

I remember reading in the 1990s that Arkansas lost a shit-ton of money by accepting a bid to the now-defunct Carquest Bowl. Frank Broyles saw it then as a loss leader perhaps, but modern ADs will balk at a similar arrangement.

 

A 1 vs. 16 upset in basketball at least has a theoretical chance of coming through because there are only five on the court and 13 scholarships per side.

In football? Nobody wants to watch Oregon vs. Jacksonville State in the regular season, much less the first round. Any microscopic chance of an upset that might have existed in September is long gone by December, when you can be reasonably assured the very top teams are no paper tigers. More importantly, roster attrition is a reality for everyone and the smaller schools feel it the most. You’ll be lucky if the spread isn’t 50 points.

Georgia-Marshall is the type of matchup you savage the SEC for playing in the regular season. And now you want them to have a national audience the weekend before Christmas?

 

I understand the long odds, and I understand it's more pronounced in football. But all it's going to take is one of these teams catching lightning in a bottle, and it's going to be an instant legend and a validation of the expanded format. You think UMBC over Virginia sent shockwaves? Imagine something similar happening in football.

If you have had FCS schools ring up the occasional upset of an FBS team, I would certainly think a conference champion can at least be competitive.

 

UConn's trip to the Fiesta Bowl was its high-water mark in the FBS.
It was also a financial debacle that I'm not sure the football program ever recovered from.

 

No, it's the FCS games in Week 13 as the # 4 OOC game that draw my ire. And that Jacksonville State-Oregon game "nobody wants to watch" sells out Autzen Stadium, just as Marshall-Georgia sells out Sanford Stadium. Somebody wants to watch those games.

And even if a 1-16 upset never happens, it evens the field. Nobody gets a bye. Everybody subjects their players to the wear-and-tear (and possible injury) of FOUR games. Why should Georgia (for example) get an extra week to get its QB healthy?

This year the CFP should have an independent doctor examine Beck. If he can't play, then the same logic used to drop FSU out of the playoffs last year should be used to make Georgia the # 12 seed this year, or the # 5 auto qualifier seed. They're clearly not the same team without him. Fair is fair, the precedent has been set.

 

Thanks Mustangs!

 

That had as much to do with the Big East imploding the following year as UConn.

 

Make it a 128 team tournament. Eliminate the regular season.

It would give everyone something new to complain about.

 

LMAO
Center Judge is looking right at it and missed it.
Again.
Americas
Crappiest
Conference
Eric Crouch winced. IYKYK.

 

The Big Ten Challenge is ... OH-vah.