2022 College Football Discussion & Pick'em Thread

[Del Tachi]

I’m picking Alabama.

[Del Tachi]

Goddamn it Bama.

The ONE TIME I wanted you to win more than any other...

Alabama needs to lose so that Mississippi State has a clear path to winning the West, with a cushion, if they win tonight and next week.

You never want to play Alabama after a loss. 

[Del Tachi]

I'll take my compelete guess at who the four playoff teams will be:

Ohio State (13-0), Georgia (13-0), Clemson (13-0) and Tennessee (11-1)

[Del Tachi]

So there's now a pretty plausible path to 3 SEC teams in the playoffs:

Tennessee beats everyone except Georgia to finish 11-1. They don't win the East, because...
Georgia finishes 12-0 in the regular season, but loses the SEC Championship Game to...
Alabama, who finishes 12-1.

Honestly Tennessee's probably the odd man out in this case. They'd be behind any undefeated P5 team, but if there are enough losses, they would probably be ahead of any non-SEC 1-loss team.

The kicker is, outside of Tennessee and Oregon, Georgia's schedule really is atrocious. I actually think they have to win the SEC to get in, otherwise it's Alabama and Tennessee, as Tennessee's played a superior strength of schedule, and Alabama also has a better strength of schedule (Texas is a better non-conference matchup than any of Samford, Kent State or Georgia Tech for Georgia, and Ball State Akron and UT Martin for Tennessee).

The kicker is, competition still means something.  Tennessee's strength of schedule means diddly squat if UGA beats them.  Head-to-head should always be the #1 tie-breaker.

The true chaos scenarios involve LSU winning-out and beating UGA/Tenn in the SEC championship.  That should be enough to get the 10-2 Tigers into the playoff. 

[Del Tachi]

Geaux Tigers!

[Del Tachi]

Bama is going to whoop up on Ole Miss this weekend. 

[Del Tachi]

Word is Hugh Freeze to Auburn LOL

[Del Tachi]

Just for fun, I'll predict USC and TCU both lose their championships to make the CFP top four UGA, Mich, tOSU and Bama

[Del Tachi]

Assuming no shake-ups this weekend in the Top 4, it's Alabama to the Sugar and Tennessee to the Orange.  Citrus then gets a remaining SEC team of its choice (LSU or South Carolina?)  There's then a pool of six bowls that then get selected cooperatively between the conference, the bowls and the schools.  That probably looks like this: 

Outback:  LSU or South Carolina
Gator:  Mississippi State
Music City:  Ole Miss 
Liberty:  Kentucky
Texas:  Florida
Las Vegas:  Arkansas 

[Del Tachi]

Assuming no shake-ups this weekend in the Top 4, it's Alabama to the Sugar and Tennessee to the Orange.  Citrus then gets a remaining SEC team of its choice (LSU or South Carolina?)  There's then a pool of six bowls that then get selected cooperatively between the conference, the bowls and the schools.  That probably looks like this: 

Outback:  LSU or South Carolina
Gator:  Mississippi State
Music City:  Ole Miss 
Liberty:  Kentucky
Texas:  Florida
Las Vegas:  Arkansas 

I feel like Penn State should go to the Orange instead of Tennessee (I assume the Orange bowl, in a non-playoff year, can choose between an SEC team, Big Ten Team and Notre Dame, assuming all three are ranked by the committee. I could be wrong of course. The Orange Bowl is confusing.)

The Orange Bowl is confusing, but I think it has to take the highest-ranked team available among SEC and Big Ten non-champions or Notre Dame.  The committee showed Tennessee #7 and Penn State #8 tonight, so presumably the Vols are going unless Alabama gets into the playoff.

There are contractual limits on how many times the SEC or Big Ten can appear in the Orange Bowl over an 8-year period of time (each conference must be represented at least 3 times) but I don't know if those are relevant this year.

Embrace the orange vs orange Orange Bowl!

[Del Tachi]

Are we sure this isn't one of those things where Notre Dame (once again) gets special treatment compared to everyone else?  Like, the first-round byes are given to "each of the Top 4 ranked conference champions OR Notre Dame?"  Do we have actual language about how the new CFP is going to work?   

[Del Tachi]

Anyway, I've been ruminating and I think my preferred college football postseason set-up would be something that preserved all of the historical bowl tie-ins (i.e., #1 SEC vs #1 Big 12 in the Sugar; #1 PAC-12 vs #1 Big 10 in the Rose, etc.) and then had a committee pick the two best teams to play off in a national championship game the 2nd week of January.

Winning your conference would be important, conference teams would be playing for a chance to go to *their* bowl game, and a committee would be picking the Top 2 after the benefit of seeing how the rest of the postseason played-out. 

The worst thing about the CFP as its currently designed is that, in years where they aren't playoff games, the match-ups in the Rose and Sugar bowls are pretty lame, which is quite sad considering how old and historic these bowls used to be. 

[Del Tachi]

and down goes USC!

[Del Tachi]

Under my preferred post-season alignment, this would be the NY6:

Orange:  #7 Clemson vs #6 Tennessee
Sugar:  #1 Georgia vs #9 Kansas State
Fiesta:  #3 TCU vs #10 USC
Peach:  #5 Alabama vs #4 Ohio State
Rose:  #2 Michigan vs #8 Utah
Cotton:  #11 Penn State vs #16 Tulane

Georgia and Michigan most likely playoff if they both win, but the winner of the Peach Bowl is arguably in contention as well. 

[Del Tachi]

It is making its way around Starkville circles that Mike Leach has apparently passed away at UMMC in Jackson. 

[Del Tachi]

By all accounts, Leach’s condition does not appear to be survivable.  He’s on life support. 

A continuity hire makes the most sense under the circumstances (i.e., the Bulldogs having an interim AD.)  I do think Mississippi State is a better job than when Leach took over, so the idea of reprising Mullen is ridiculous.

[Del Tachi]

I 100% support an expanded playoff (in fact, I think it should be 24 to give basically every P5 program hope that they can get in and make a run, and allowing an autobid for every G5 conference to give those teams something to play for too), but under the 4-team model, there's just no way that any other team could have gotten in with the way the season played out.

12 teams is bad enough but c'mon...24!?  Scraping that far down into the barrel gets too messy.  How do you justify picking some 3-loss teams over others?  More teams realistically on the bubble only creates more unhappy fanbases and more calls for further expansion.  And for what?  We just saw the "No. 2" team in the country get blown-out in spectacular fashion.  There's too much separation in college football for a 12-team playoff to even be fun to watch, much less competitive.