College football playoffs
 

It seemed every first round game was a cake walk for the home teams and did the playoffs committee get the teams wrong? My personal opinion is that the committee got most of teams correct but the seeding is what was wrong with weaker teams such as Arizona and Boise should have never gotten the first round bye based on the weakness of the conferences they come from.

I guess it turned out ok - Boise and Arizona St have to play the two highest seeds that advanced .
What didn’t happen BUT could’ve happened is #10 #11 and #12 seeds could have won and #1 Oregon would have had to play the highest seed to advance (#8 or #9) .. And that would’ve been screwed up

That is very incorrect. Boise State and Arizona State are way underrated in the rankings.

Cfp
 

The quarters were mismatches. We find out what’s what on New Year’s Day. Could be compelling sports TV! Trent King

Boise +11 and ASU +14. Tempting.

ASU will cover, take those points....they might win. Skattebo is a beast.

I might be wrong but I believe Arizona is going to get dog walked out the stadium but I do believe Boise State might put up a fight

As a Sun Devil alum, I have no problem with your voicing your opinion that Texas will win big, but I can think of nothing more disrespectful and fight provoking than to call my team Arizona. It's Arizona State University, not that team down in Tucson. Fear the fork. :D

Yah kinda hard to respect the opinion of someone who can't even get the teams right.

Who do you like in the UPenn Boise State matchup?

I was fine with the choices and seeding. I also don't care about weaker conferences argument. We hear that crap every year in March Madness, and then some conference that was complaining loudest can't get a single team into round 2.

BSU is my favorite football team. Their Fiesta Bowl victory so long ago is still bitter sweet. Their RB Jeanty is a stud muffin, and they were holding him back most of the season to keep him healthy for this moment. I have high hopes for them.

As for ASU, I hope they do well and show that West Coastish football is alive and well. I'm very bitter about the way PAC12 was broken up.

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

Ohio State with two losses -1 against Oregon.

Oh c'mon Peter, you know you want to give a shout-out to the other team that beat the Buckeyes. Why so coy?

OSU that day certainly did not look like a team that should be favored against an unbeaten team that already defeated them, if only by one point. Great win though for an otherwise mediocre UM team.

Penn state vs Boise State is going to be a good game with that running back for Boise State being a absolute monster

Update
UGA note dame postponed to Thursday 845pm est
Sugarbowl

Anyone watching Texas-Arizona st game???
ASU cannot score td
Really sucks after the safety
Skateboo is getting better but gosh do a toss sweep

Monster slain...

Wasn't expecting Ohio State to be beating Oregon this badly.

Ohio state eat Oregon lunch in the rose bowl which i didn't expect and I'm a ohio state fan

college playoffs
 

I'm an OSU fan as well. Looks like the OSU offensive minds finally realized
that Oregon's defensive backs were giving up 4 inches of height and tons of
weight to each OSU receiver. But for OSU's insane decision to play soft at
end of first half/beginning of second, the game was a massacre.

Lots of credit to Arizona State vs Texas, THAT was fun to watch. Still
scratching my head over the failure to call Targeting on the Texas DB who
actually did Target someone! (This same DB committed PI twice on the same
play earlier in the game). That game was neutral fan Heaven:)

Not sure how UGA/ND plays out, should be interesting.

Trent King

It seems as if the teams given a bye week struggled to get out of the gate-- two were down 14-0 after 1st qtr and ASU was down 14-3. I wonder if there is actually a disadvantage to having the bye--too long a wait can get teams out of rhythm sometimes. Let's see how Georgia starts today.

Personally I would prefer a 16 team tournament with no Byes, essentially structured like one region of March Madness. Give the conference champs an automatic home game in the first round as an incentive, but use rankings to establish "normal" seedings.

I loathe the way overtime works now.

Damn this ND-Georgia game is a slug fest.

College playoffs
 

TUM- It is indeed! Tight game, like it should be.

Trent King

Top 4 seeds all lost in the quarterfinals. None were actually favored in their games so maybe not too surprising.

3-1/2 weeks off for a team is ridiculous, they lose all their end of season momentum.

So many things to fix and hopefully they will.

8 Playoff games so far and only 1 of 8 was close late in the 4th.

7 of 8 games were over with 5 minutes to play.

The highest seeded team left (8) is the favorite to win it all. Yep, they got some fixing to do.

The Penn State - Boise State game was closer than the final score indicated, but overall I agree that most of the games were non-competitive. Hopefully the semifinals and championship will be better.

Interesting! This could be Notre Dame's year.

I am rooting for Notre Dame at this point, but if I had to bet, would take Ohio State much as I dislike them. Man, what happened to the days where the best teams in the SEC were better than everyone else?

This could be a all big ten national championship game possibly

The SEC has only won 13 of the last 18 championships, so it's not like this hasn't happened before. SEC Champion Georgia lost their starting QB for the season in the SEC Championship Game. Otherwise, we probably have 2 SEC and 2 Big 10 teams in the final four.

The biggest reason for the drop in SEC dominance is the retirement of Nick Saben. In this year's recruiting rankings, Notre Dame had the 12th rated class. The 11 teams above them are 7 from the SEC and 4 from the Big 10. So, don't worry, the SEC will be back.

NIL and newer portal rules have had as much to do with college football as anything. Conferences, with all the movement it’s become the “Wild West” out there.

It's not really the long layoff that is noticeable to me, since that historically has been true-- all teams end their regular season or conference championship the end of November or early December than play the "big" games around January 1st.
Instead it seems that a team with a game under its belt a week or so prior is more tuned to go than one that had a bye. Kind of a rhythm thing. We of course have a small sample size since this is the first year, but as I posted before, it seems better if there are no byes and we move to 16 teams. You know they are going to expand this thing at some point anyway.

None of the top 4 seeds were favored in the quarterfinals. Seeding played a part in that since many didn't think Boise State and Arizona State deserved to be seeded high enough to earn byes. Georgia was playing without their starting quarterback. Oregon was playing the team, Ohio State, many considered to have a good chance to win the championship before they lost to Michigan. In reality, none of the 4 "upsets" were really upsets based on the odds, just on the seeds.

I would disagree somewhat. Georgia being a 1 point underdog was primarily due to their starting QB being out, and to a lesser extent because of ND's first-game dominance--not because those teams were incorrectly seeded. Ohio State would never have been a favorite over Oregon at all if it were not for their first game dominance over Tennessee, so seeding wasn't the issue there either-- no one was going to take away the #1 spot from Oregon when they were the only undefeated team. As for ASU and Boise State, I mentioned in my prior post, if you eliminate the byes and give conference champs an initial home game, the seeding can return to "normal". But it remains that three of the four teams that received byes got off to very poor starts, and the fourth--Georgia- at best played even early.

Sorry if I wasn't clearer in my post. My comment about seeding was in reference to Boise State and ASU only. I wasn't saying Oregon shouldn't be the number one seed. However, because of the other seedings, Ohio State and Oregon, 2 teams many people thought would win the championship, ended up playing each other in the quarterfinals which shouldn't have happened.

Playoffs
 

Both semis are compelling on paper. Great to see 3 Northern teams in it. Re: the banter above about SEC, they are realizing it isn’t as easy to win when every team pays their players too:) Trent King

Just for the fun of it, here's how the first round would have been set under the 16 team format if conference champs were given home games:

Miami at Oregon
Ole Miss at Georgia
South Carolina at Notre Dame
Texas at Clemson
Penn State at SMU
Alabama at Tennessee
Ohio State at ASU
Indiana at Boise State

Some interesting matchups and home field scenarios. Does Penn State dominate SMU if the game is in Dallas? Same result if Texas travels to Death Valley? I am quite confident the Buckeyes do not roll over ASU in Tempe, coming off their loss to Michigan and the Sun Devils thrashing of Iowa State. SEC gets two put up or shut up games between their conference powers. This would have been a very compelling schedule IMO.

Oops, my bad. Penn State would still have been at home, so that one likely plays out the same.

I was rooting for the Ducks, Broncos and Sun Devils so I was left disappointed.

:(

I guess so but how big a deal is that? Looking at the above 16 team scenario I posted, assuming all of the games were decided according to chalk, Ohio State would have won its first-round game (which it did) and lost in the second round to Georgia, playing the number 2 seed instead of the number 1.
Again, if the higher seeds all held serve, the final four would be:
Oregon
Georgia
Notre Dame
Texas

Seems pretty close to where we are, no?

I'm not sure what ranking you used to come up with your hypothetical 16 team match ups so it's hard to respond, but if you're saying the top 4 teams were Oregon, Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas, then we're only half there which I wouldn't consider pretty close to being there.

Let's just use the final rankings used to pick the 12 team field, and re-seed them 1-12, giving the top 4 seeds a bye.
1 Oregon
2 Georgia
3 Texas
4 Penn State
5 Notre Dame
6 Ohio State
7 Tennessee
8 Indiana
9 Boise State
10 SMU
11
12 Arizona State
13
14
15
16 Clemson

After the bye, and assuming all the better seeded teams won, you would have seen:
5 Notre Dame beats Clemson
6 Ohio State beats ASU
7 Tennessee beats SMU
8 Indiana beats Boise St.

That means this past weekend's games would have shown us:
Oregon vs. Indiana
Georgia vs. Tennessee
Texas v. Ohio State
Penn St v. Notre Dame

with the Final four:
Oregon vs. Indiana
Georgia vs. Tennessee
Texas v. Ohio State
Penn St v. Notre Dame

I agree that Indiana would have been an easier foe than OSU, but don't forget the Buckeyes limped into the playoffs after being beaten at home by Michigan-- the regard for them was at a season low, so it's all fine and good to now say they are some sort of juggernaut but that was far from foreseeable.
But anyway, that leaves us with a final four of Oregon, Georgia, Texas and Penn State if we give credence to the higher seeds. Having watched the actual games and seeing how the teams played, would it be better to have Georgia or Tennessee in the final Four instead of Notre Dame or Ohio State? Did Oregon get screwed, given the way they played? Personally, I'm not convinced they would have beaten any of the other 7 teams seeded below them, other than maybe Indiana.
If the Oregon/OSU game had ended up a double-OT thriller like ASU-Texas, then maybe I could get a little worked up about how unfair the seeding played out to eliminate one of those two. But to suggest that it's somehow a shame that Oregon and Georgia aren't around for the final four because of seeding and some team that made it is undeserving or the beneficiary of seeding doesn't wash with me.

16 teams is too many. 8 is fine IMO, forget conferences which mean very little any more, just go by rankings.

So far in this playoffs ohio state has been the most dominant team on both sides of the ball plus having the most difficult path to the national championship

Rock Fight
 

Well that ND-Penn St game last night was one hell of a slug fest. It had it all, physical play, penalties, Big plays, controversy and best of all Down to the wire finish. P St clearly controlled the 1’st half but credit the ND staff for halftime adjustments. Most compelling game of the 1’st CFP so far I M O, stay tuned. Hopefully tonight is just as good. On a side note, Penn St obviously needs ANYONE wideout. Not one WR caught a pass for them last night. Amazing!!

Penn State could also use a better quarterback. He had 2 interceptions in the end zone erased by penalties, but both were terribly thrown balls. The late interception that led to the winning field goal is another ball that just can't be thrown. In the first half, he couldn't complete anything other than screen passes. He was better in the second half but still cost them the game overall.

What the deal Penn st guy grabbing the Nd qb nutsack
Why did Penn st have 2 guys deep on the fg attempt??

UPDATE NEWS:
UGA QB Carson Beck not going NFL draft, but enter tranfer portal-- maybe Miami, Fl St, or Alabama

College playoffs
 

What a defensive struggle between OSU and Texas! The title game will draw a
massive number of viewers for sure. Can't wait:)

Trent King