NCAA College Football 2019-20: Official Thread

Fedaykin98 wrote:

https://twitter.com/BKubena/status/1...

The visitors' locker room in Austin doesn't have AC. Typical longhorns. Should be a rule mandating equal conditions, like there is with communications equipment.

Hard to know the truth in this with all the he said she said (Ed Orgeron vs. Texas), but it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out if things like this go on across all the major conferences. What's the old NASCAR adage? If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'?

That said, I agree with the rule you're suggesting in principle. An agreed-upon rider of basic things that have to be made available to visiting teams for things to be on the level and not stretch the definition of home field advantage too far would make a lot of sense (if something like that doesn't exist, maybe it does and there's just no teeth to enforcement?).

Thanks for all the explanations and info. So it's basically a lot of people watching a lot of teams play a lot of football in a lot of divisions

As someone who loves soccer, it does seem like with the number of teams and spread of them that it's one of the few sports in America that might be suited to the promotion/relegation system.

EDIT: Hang on a minute - The army, navy and air force join in all this?!

Clusks wrote:

EDIT: Hang on a minute - The army, navy and air force join in all this?!

Yep, and they are VERY competitive among one another when it comes to sports. It's quite something.

Speaking of, Army almost knocked off Michigan with their triple option offense last weekend (it's always annoying to deal with when done correctly). It was thrilling and I was pulling for them hard.

WizardM0de wrote:
Clusks wrote:

EDIT: Hang on a minute - The army, navy and air force join in all this?!

Yep, and they are VERY competitive among one another when it comes to sports. It's quite something.

Speaking of, Army almost knocked off Michigan with their triple option offense last weekend (it's always annoying to deal with when done correctly). It was thrilling and I was pulling for them hard.

The service academies are very prestigious four year universities that award both a college degree and an officer's rank upon completion along with a mandatory requirement to serve in that academies' branch of the military.

There are a few other schools that offer office training through a similar ROTC program, but the officer commission upon graduation is optional.

Clusks wrote:

EDIT: Hang on a minute - The army, navy and air force join in all this?!

The annual Army-Navy football game (the Military Academy at West Point vs. the Naval Academy) was decades ago one of the biggest sports events of the year. Nowadays, it's played on the last regular season weekend of the year, right before the bowl games start. (Mid-December, in other words.) It's pretty much the only college football game on that Saturday, so a lot of folks watch. It's usually pretty entertaining because the two schools take it way too seriously.

P.S. There's a very informal promotion/relegation system in college sports, but it's determined by the schools themselves. They'll move up (or down, but rarely) as they grow (or shrink or blow their budgets). It's a prestige thing for the most part. Like wants to be grouped with like, though that fails to explain why Vanderbilt wants to associate with the rest of the SEC (and vice-versa).

Enix wrote:

Like wants to be grouped with like, though that fails to explain why Vanderbilt wants to associate with the rest of the SEC (and vice-versa).

Everyone wants more Quality Losses and Vandy probably has more than anyone else.

The SEC pays the best and distributes the TV revenue equally, and they get the umbrella effect of being associated with the best conference, even if they're not the best in the sports people care about the most (but they are good at baseball).

Fedaykin98 wrote:

... they get the umbrella effect of being next door to the best conference, which is the ACC

FTFY, mostly to distract Fed from the fact that every SEC team past and present is in the top 10 of the AP poll this week.

In related news, I'm glad to see the SEC Game of the Week is back on CBS starting Saturday. I have absolutely no dog in any of those fights, but it's always an entertaining game.

* checks schedule, sees Alabama at South Carolina *

OK, usually entertaining.

I think I might skip watching CFB this weekend. App State is off, and the marquee games all look pretty lopsided. That means I'll miss a ton of upsets, starting with NIU knocking off Nebraska (fingers crossed)

Yeah, this weekend doesn't appear to offer much in the way of great matchups. One guy I follow suggested the best game is Florida - Kentucky. You laugh, but last year UK snapped the longest current losing streak in a college football rivalry. I believe I pointed out that the new longest is Texas A&M vs TCU, but that doesn't happen very often. We should try to fix that.

Ugh, get all these non-conference games outta here Week 3! This week my eyes will be on:

UNC at Wake Forest (Fri night) - god you should hear all buzzing from the Tar Heel crowd about Mack Brown having them 0-2 right now. I'm hoping Wake brings them back down to Earth swiftly. This is the first time they've played each other since 2015 and Wake's a 3-point favorite.

I'm mostly hoping UNC gets worn out and banged up a little for when App State goes to Chapel Hill next weekend after their bye, because we can't stop anybody right now defensively.

UTC vs. Tennessee (Sat) - what's going to happen if UTC makes it 0-3 the season for Tennessee? (popcorn.gif)

UMass at Charlotte (Sat) - O/U is set at 61 for Will Healy's 3rd game. Hoping to see a basketball score with a Niners victory.

Iowa at Iowa St. (Sat) - always an entertaining game, spread is just 1 point, both teams undefeated, Iowa #19 and Iowa St. just outside Top 25.

Cal home vs. North Texas...

< ackbar> ITS A TRAP! < /ackbar>

After the huge win up in Seattle and @Ole Miss next weekend, this has all the makings of a let down game. North Texas returns 2018 C-USA player of the year QB Mason Fine. While Cal's 2nd Half in UW was good and efficient, it still doesn't show any sign of being able to score 30 on any given Saturday.

Our D still continues to impress and it is particularly strong against Air Raid type offenses that can't handle the pressure and the scheming we have up front to disrupt the rhythm and put bodies in the lanes, but our offensive woes give the D very little margin of error. Any team that goes up 2 scores on us quickly could cause problems. FCS team UC Davis did it in week 1 and the D had to do everything it could so the Toyota Tercel offense could get going.

Hopefully that week 1 game was Cal's wake up call that they can't take anyone lightly and everyone shows up for business this week and then worry about Ole Miss after that.

Texas plays Rice this weekend. If this were an academic decathlon, I'd be all about Rice. As it is...Hook 'em.

How in the world is Wake a three-point favorite against Carolina?! The Deacs beat Rice by 20 and all of a sudden they're checking on the date of the Orange Bowl.

Tbh, that might be the most interesting game of the weekend. NC State at WVa might be OK, too.

bighoppa wrote:

Texas plays Rice this weekend. If this were an academic decathlon, I'd be all about Rice. As it is...Hook 'em.

Hoppa, why is Larry Fedora on the UT sideline? Is he to blame for y'all going 0-for-8 on first-and-goal against LSU?

Enix wrote:

Hoppa, why is Larry Fedora on the UT sideline? Is he to blame for y'all going 0-for-8 on first-and-goal against LSU?

He's in charge of cramp prevention. Results speak for themselves. LSU - 7 injury timeouts for cramps. UT - 0 cramps. BOOM!

Clusks wrote:

Thanks for all the explanations and info. So it's basically a lot of people watching a lot of teams play a lot of football in a lot of divisions

As someone who loves soccer, it does seem like with the number of teams and spread of them that it's one of the few sports in America that might be suited to the promotion/relegation system.

EDIT: Hang on a minute - The army, navy and air force join in all this?!

Just wait until later in the season and we start discussing the "playoffs". Luckily there is a very easy analogy to soccer.. the UEFA Champions League.

In Champioins League, its pretty well determined which leagues get how many bids into qualifying and the group stages, and all teams know the formula going in.

In FBS College Football imagine there are 130 or so teams divided into leagues. There are 5 "power" leagues.. similar to Spanish, Premier, German and Italian leagues. And a number of smaller leagues. However instead of the 70 or so teams that end up in qualifying in Champions League we are only going to allow 4. So in the Champions League, maybe you would say "OK, well its not fair but the winners of Spanish, Premier, German and Italian" they are the only 4 teams that can compete.

Well, that really wouldn't be fair for the other European leagues, but it is what it is and people would be upset but at least everyone would know who would qualify.

But wait.. that would mean Liverpool and Tottenham wouldn't have qualified for last years Champions League since Man City was the champ!

So what happens is the fans of the premier league (we'll call them "SEC" for lack of a better term), complain that their league is so much better than everyone else's that they deserve more teams in the Champions League. They claim that losing to Man City is better than beating Juventus or Valencia, and so they wage a campaign in the media to promote this idea.

And this in a nutsell is the FBS playoff system in terms even an Englishman can understand

Good to see that Carl's take on the EPL is just as bizarre as his take on the SEC! As a watcher of both, though, I definitely endorse the analogy! Both are far deeper than competing leagues.

On an even more serious note, though: Carl, you've heard of UEFA coefficients, right? There's at least math behind the rankings and which leagues get the most spots.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

On an even more serious note, though: Carl, you've heard of UEFA coefficients, right? There's at least math behind the rankings and which leagues get the most spots.

All I know is what I read on the wikipedia page before making my post That being said, I think everyone would be fine if there was some math that said 2 teams from the SEC, 1 team from the Big 12, etc.. People may get upset but at least the math is there. Of course even with that math, fan of 3rd place SEC team would still complain.

Math, you mean like some kind of computerized ranking system? I'm sure everyone would be cool with that if only it existed.

Carl - leagues and teams in UEFA are ranked according to how well they do against each other. The result is called their coefficient. A league does periodically get its number of UCL teams adjusted. Currently, the EPL gets four, so placing top four in the EPL season is crucial.

You would be scandalized to learn how non-competitive European leagues are, and how the top teams blatantly buy success. Think of the Yankees, but if the rules that nurture competition were so relaxed that they won the World Series eight years in a row: That's where Germany and Italy are now.

The EPL actually has the most true competitors, hence your brilliant comparison to the SEC.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

You would be scandalized to learn how non-competitive college football is, and how the top teams blatantly buy success. ...

FTFY.

Sports are so corrupt yet we love them so. There's your real scandal.

I assume you're just having a laugh, but you could be misleading folks unfamiliar with our fun-filled game! One of the chief reasons people love CFB is its unpredictability!

Well, sure, broadly, but that's because there's fifty-leven teams playing each year in a (allegedly) amateur sport with often-undisciplined non-professionals who cannot drink legally.

But at the top end, it's been kinda predictable. Everyone knew it was going to be Clemson v. Bama after week 3 last year. The last 3-5 years, CFB has been fairly predictable. I mean, who was the last CFP surprise? Washington? who got immediately defenestrated by Alabama?

Since the introduction of the CFP in 2014-15, the championship hasn't included Alabama or Clemson exactly once and the CFP has never not involved one of those two teams. Does anyone seriously think that, short of Auburn showing up just to ruin Bama's year (a la Palace to Liverpool back in 13-14), both of them won't be in the CFP again? Because God help us all if we're looking at Ohio State or Georgia as "surprise outsiders".

EDIT: Actually, looking at it, I'd argue that, thanks to Leicester, the Premier League has had a more shocking out-of-nowhere champion than CFB has had in the entire post-poll era (and probably before that).

CFB has plenty of top-end royalty and chalk, is all i'm saying.

Ah, but Clemson won the first of their two championships more recently than Leicester; before that, they were similarly a non-factor.

Anyway, I was drawing my earlier comparisons to leagues like Germany and Italy, who have had the same one team winning for nearly a decade.

Germany used to have some decent variety in champions the 00's! But yeah, since 2010, if you're a fan in Italy/France/Spain, there's only one, or maybe two teams who realistically have a shot at winning year-in and year-out. And the money is only making it worse.

Anyway, that's enough of the wrong football for this thread. I'm taking bets. After getting 60+ hung on them by Maryland, who wants to guess how badly Clemson is going to annihilate Syracuse by? I'm going with 55-3, and only because Dabo puts in the 3rd-stringers to start the second half.

pizzaddict wrote:

Math, you mean like some kind of computerized ranking system? I'm sure everyone would be cool with that if only it existed.

From what I understand (Fed can elaborate I'm sure), Champions League uses a computer system so before the season starts, every league already knows how many teams it will send to the big tournament based on the results of the previous season.

So if a computer before a single FBS game was played said "2 from SEC, 2 From B1G, 1 from Pac- 12, 1 from ACC, etc will be in the championship"., I think the conferences would live with it.

Unfortunately our computer system isn't determining that, its just another data point on our muddled way of picking a champion in FBS football.

Or I have a great idea.. the champ of the Pac-12 and the B1G play in the Rose Bowl and they don't give a crap about what happens in the SEC. Still the only championship that matters to me.

See, I’m a fan of the playoff system as the bowls have never really meant much to me, even the rose bowl. It means absolutely nothing to me if Oregon beats Wisconsin in the rose bowl if it doesn’t me they have a shot at the championship.

pizzaddict wrote:

See, I’m a fan of the playoff system as the bowls have never really meant much to me, even the rose bowl. It means absolutely nothing to me if Oregon beats Wisconsin in the rose bowl if it doesn’t me they have a shot at the championship.

I'll change my attitude when Cal goes to the Rose Bowl. Take something away from you for 60 years and we'll see how you feel.

Carlbear95 wrote:
pizzaddict wrote:

See, I’m a fan of the playoff system as the bowls have never really meant much to me, even the rose bowl. It means absolutely nothing to me if Oregon beats Wisconsin in the rose bowl if it doesn’t me they have a shot at the championship.

I'll change my attitude when Cal goes to the Rose Bowl. Take something away from you for 60 years and we'll see how you feel.

Calm down bro, you haven't been alive for 60 years.

I don't know what Les Miles put in the Jayhawks' Gatorade tonight, but I'll take some please.

Boudreaux wrote:

I don't know what Les Miles put in the Jayhawks' Gatorade tonight, but I'll take some please.

Was just coming to post about it! Fourth quarter Pooka TD allowed Kansas to beat the 21.5 spread in their 48-24 win over Boston college.

Wait, what? Kansas was the 21.5 dog? Even better! Carter Stanley was outstanding. Hopefully he can use this to build confidence and become more consistent.

Maybe they can win a couple of Big 12 games.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/J0tof6w.png)