Category Archives: Hypothetical Playoff

Hypothetical College Foootball Playoffs 2012: Week Nine

Posted on by
Reply

Alabama Continues to Look Invincible, Both on the Field and in Our Projections

Now that the dream of a playoff has turned into a reality (following the 2014 season), this realistic-but-still-hypothetical-for-two-years feature actually has some outside guidelines to follow: four teams, two semifinal spots and then a championship game. We currently have no clue how teams will be determined, how polls will be released, or who will put them together. So with that in mind, we’re going with the BCS rankings (courtesy of BCSGuru for teams outside of top 25), for lack of an on-hand committee to spit out a detailed list. Also, for our own enjoyment, you’ll find a 16-team hypothetical tournament below. Just because it’s too much fun not to think about.

If the Four-Team Playoff Started This Year…

Top Eight Seeds (in order): Alabama, Florida, Kansas State, Oregon, Notre Dame, LSU, Oregon State, Oklahoma

Semifinal 1: #1 Alabama vs. #4 Oregon

Semifinal 2: #2 Florida vs. #3 Kansas State

National Championship Game: Alabama over Kansas State

Oregon moved down again this week, however, they still have what may amount to four games against top 25 competition (and three against top-10 foes) left, meaning they could very well vault themselves right back up the line by season’s end. While ‘Bama-K-State may not sound like the most alluring matchup we could come up with, it’s still very much a battle of strengths: Tide defense vs. Wildcats offense.

If There Was a 16 Team Playoff…

Continue reading →

About these ads

Hypothetical College Foootball Playoffs 2012: Week Eight

Posted on by
Reply

Alabama and QB AJ McCarron Are Unstoppable Until Someone Proves Otherwise

Now that the dream of a playoff has turned into a reality (following the 2014 season), this realistic-but-still-hypothetical-for-two-years feature actually has some outside guidelines to follow: four teams, two semifinal spots and then a championship game. We currently have no clue how teams will be determined, how polls will be released, or who will put them together. So with that in mind, we’re going with the BCS rankings (courtesy of BCSGuru for teams outside of top 25), for lack of an on-hand committee to spit out a detailed list. Also, for our own enjoyment, you’ll find a 16-team hypothetical tournament below. Just because it’s too much fun not to think about.

If the Four-Team Playoff Started This Year…

Top Eight Seeds (in order): Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Kansas State, Notre Dame, LSU, South Carolina, Oregon State

Semifinal 1: #1 Alabama vs. #4 Kansas State

Semifinal 2: #2 Florida vs. #3 Oregon

National Championship Game: Alabama over Oregon

Many folks — Oregon coach Chip Kelly included — are a bit perturbed to see the Ducks placed third in the initial rankings, and we sort of agree. That said, since Alabama and Florida may have to face off in the SEC Championship Game (or lose trying to get there), it’s also likely the Ducks can move up rather easily.

Continue reading →

Hypothetical College Football Playoffs 2012: Week Seven

Posted on by
2

No Matter Which System We Use, Alabama Looks Like a National Championship Team This Year

For those who may not remember 2011′s version of this feature, we basically seeded the conference champions (mostly based on BCS rankings) and then inserted the five best at-large teams, irregardless of conference affiliation. This 16-team playoff was the result of a pipedream and the wishful thinking that we’d one day see a college football playoff system put in place by conference presidents.

Now that the dream of a playoff has turned into a reality (following the 2014 season), this realistic-but-still-hypothetical-for-two-years actually has some outside guidelines to follow: four teams, two semifinal spots and then a championship game. We currently have no clue how teams will be determined, how polls will be released, or who will put them together. So with that in mind, we’re going with the BCS rankings (courtesy of BCSGuru), for lack of an on-hand committee to spit out a detailed list. Also, for our own enjoyment, you’ll find a 16-team hypothetical tournament below. Just because it’s too much fun not to think about.

If the Four-Team Playoff Started This Year…

Top Eight Seeds (in order): Alabama, Oregon, South Carolina, West Virginia, Florida, Notre Dame, Kansas State, LSU

Semifinal 1: #1 Alabama vs. #4 West Virginia

Semifinal 2: #2 Oregon vs. #3 South Carolina

National Championship Game: Alabama over Oregon

Continue reading →

College Football Playoffs Are Finally Here!

Posted on by
6

With a College Football Playoff, Fans Have Scored the Biggest Victory of All

Somehow, THIS happened yesterday. From years of moaning and complaining, to best-seller “Death to the BCS,” and an all-SEC title game — suddenly, everyone in charge came to their senses. All 11 conference commissioners, plus Notre Dame‘s John Swarbrick, got in a room together and actually (for once) listened to the fans of their game. We wanted a playoff. Well, we finally got one… or at least, the beginnings of the one we’d really prefer.

Believe me, I’m not going to be an ingrate about this. I understand that it’s taken well over 100 years for the sport to adopt the same system of determining a champ that literally every other athletic organization in the world has used since day one. But, I can’t deny how much I’m holding out hope for bracket creep, and the eventual growth of the tournament out to at least six or eight teams. I’ve always been of the mindset that asks, “What’s better than one of the things you really like? Two of the things you really like,” so it’s only natural that I (along with most college football fans) would want to watch even more nerve-wracking, late-season football. Continue reading →

College Football Playoffs: How BCS Success May Help ACC’s Earnings Share

Posted on by
Reply

Virginia Tech and Florida State Lead the ACC in BCS Achievement, But They Aren’t the Only Ones to See Success

The Daily Press’ David Teel brought up an interesting point last week about how well the ACC would fare if college football playoff revenue were distributed based on previous BCS performance. The catch, as has been rumored elsewhere as well, is that it would count everything from 1998 through today, and your league would be evaluated on membership in 2014, with no regard to previous alignments. So any team that’s joined the ACC since 1998, so long as they’re still in the conference, those numbers count for the ACC. This is where the power five conferences have a monumental advantage over everyone else. But can the ACC really count on previous success to help out its financial future?

While we get all worked up about the league’s issue of parity for the past five seasons or so, looking at the overall BCS figures do tell a slightly different story. Florida State and Virginia Tech appeared in eight and 10 final BCS rankings, respectively — each showing a remarkable amount of staying power over the 14-year time period. Additionally, in nine of the 14 seasons accounted for, the ACC had at least one team in the top 10. In 2000, they had three of the top five, and in 1999, they had the top two teams (again, remember that all current schools count, so VPI’s title game appearance vs, FSU that year is two tallies for the ACC). The team-by-team numbers, indicating appearances in the final BCS rankings, and average rank in those seasons: Continue reading →

College Football Playoffs Have Finally Arrived (Say Conference Commissioners)

Posted on by
Reply

A College Football Playoff (And Annual Games Like Stanford-Oklahoma State) Is a Few Mere Approvals Away From Being Official

Finally! After long, long last college football appears to have a playoff system ready and waiting to name a champion once 2014 rolls around. As agreed upon by the conference commissioners, the four-team model will pit the top four schools against one another, irregardless of league affiliation. The BCS is dead, the sites will rotate amongst the current larger bowl spots (plus a few, we assume), and the title game will be shopped out to cities for bidding on what will quickly become the country’s second-largest sporting event (behind only the Super Bowl).

With this basic framework in place, all the commissioners need to do is head on back to their conference presidents and get a big ‘APPROVED’ stamp on the proposal. Unless the Big Ten suddenly sees a stodgy, traditionalist mutiny, this only appears to be a formality. There’s still another issue, however, which will take a good deal of time to address (luckily, we have a few seasons to work it all out): How will the participants be chosen?

Talks in Chicago gathered several ideas, including a football-equivalent of the RPI (Sagarin rankings!), strength of schedule and conference championship components, and a selection committee. Together, this mashup of methods will produce our four teams, and because of the human element (yes, I’m a proponent), I’d say we’ll end up with the “right” four teams far more often than not. That is, if they construct the committee correctly. Continue reading →

College Football Playoffs: Negative Impacts for ACC, Orange Bowl

Posted on by
Reply

To the ACC, a College Football Playoff May Seem Great, Until the League Takes a Look at the Disadvantage It's Dealt

As we’ve detailed before, a college football playoff is happening. There’s no turning back, and the most likely outcome is a four-team “event” matching the top four teams at neutral locations. The twist now, is whether they’ll implement the “Mandel Plan” — a design that gives a slight nod to its possible architect, Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel. Under the “Mandel Plan,” the two semifinal matchups are played at the traditional conference bowl tie-in sites of the one- and two-seeds, respectively. The theory goes that this preserves the bowls (the Rose Bowl would still host at least one of the Pac-12/Big Ten champs, unless they were the third and fourth seeds) and ensures higher seeds aren’t forced to “host” games in hostile environments.

For the five power leagues, this all would make perfectly equitable sense… if everything were perfectly equitable, that is. A look at how the four-team playoff would have been set up over these past 14 years, using the BCS standings as our ranking tool (a revised version of the same rankings will probably be deciding the actual playoff participants, albeit under a different moniker): Continue reading →