2016 College Football Thread

[BuckFoston]

Pre-season top 25.

1 Alabama
2 Clemson
3 Oklahoma
4 Florida State
5 Ohio State
6 LSU
7 Stanford
8 Michigan
9 Notre Dame
10 Tennessee
11 Michigan State
12 Ole Miss
13 Houston
14 TCU
15 Iowa
16 Georgia
17 USC
18 Washington
19 Oklahoma State
20 North Carolina
21 Baylor
22 Oregon
23 Louisville
24 UCLA
25 Florida

Can't wait for the season. Go Duke.

[HollywoodLeo]

LOLSU

[BuckFoston]

Louisville is taking it to FSU.. Didn't see that coming. Figured they had a chance to win but didn't think they would be pounding them.

[BuckFoston]

NDSU beats Iowa.. Fun day so far in college football.

[HollywoodLeo]

Lole' Miss

[BuckFoston]

I was really hoping Louisville would beat Clemson.

[BuckFoston]

NC State could be beating Clemson if they weren't being idiots.

[dgfred]

It seems to be a bad habit.

[HollywoodLeo]

Since I'm in a ranting mood I'll ramble on about the CFP again.

Think about this for a second: Ohio State, with their win, basically became a lock for the CFP. They knew this, everyone knew this. As such, no matter what they may or may not have told the public in pressers they were rooting for Penn State to win so they don't have to play a meaningless Big 10 Championship Game where they'd have everything to lose and nothing to gain. (They're a lock right now, but a surprise loss to Wisconsin maybe gives the committee pause.)

So, here we have a system where a team doesn't want to win their conference because going for a conference title can do more harm for their championship odds than good.

College Football: The only organized sport where, even with a playoff system in place, champions are determined in the boardroom and not on the field.

[HollywoodLeo]

IMO there should be 8 teams in the CFP and the conference champions of the power 5 should all be automatic locks. I don't care if the conference champ has 5 losses. They won their conference, they earned the right. You still have 3 at-large spots (or wild cards, if you will) to keep your media darlings in. And if they're as great as the rankings say they are they'll prove it on the field.

At the end of the day champions should be determined on the field of play. If a team is not good enough to win their conference they shouldn't be a lock to play for a championship just because the people behind the rankings say they're great with the rankings system.

Will this lead to years where the "best" team doesn't win it all? Of course. But who cares? That's part of what makes sports great. If you want the "best" team winning every year then don't even bother playing the games. Just crown Alabama right now.

[dgfred]

Agreed.

[realmofotalk]

That's the problem when you have the CFP standings based on subjective rankings and conference standings based on objective conference W-L records at the same time. If it were up to me, I'd prefer the conference standings based on rankings (which is more or less based on overall W-L records but adjusted for strength of schedule), because otherwise by college sports logic, the SF Giants would be awarded the NL West over the Dodgers last year because the Giants had a better W-L record vs teams in the NL West.

[realmofotalk]

By the way, isn't it ironic that everyone hated the BCS because we think we're smarter than a computer algorithm in determining which teams are #1 and #2, but when we give the power back to humans, we then want a more objective way to rank teams.

[HollywoodLeo]

Except I wanted a more objective way even then.

That is a good observation outside of the conclusion I disagree with, though. Overall record should determine who's on top of the standings instead of just conference record.

The Giants don't win the NL West with college football's backwards system of determining champions in the boardroom, they win it with college football's backwards system of ignoring non-conference games in the conference standings.

[realmofotalk]

Thanks for nothing, Washington. No 1-loss team from the Pac-12 will get invited to the Playoff from now on.